I Felt the End Before It Came: Memoirs of a Queer Ex-Jehovah's Witness

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Most writers are obsessed with their origin story, but it’s endings that preoccupy Daniel Allen Cox in his kaleidoscopic and deeply felt memoir." Oh wow, it hit too close to home. Although the corporate office setting in the story is quite different from mine, it still feels like Joshua Ferris has mind reading abilities because this is extremely relatable which only goes to show that our work experiences whether good or bad as employees working behind the desk five days a week is a universal truth, something so many of us can relate to.

Like a lot of readers, I approached Then We Came to the End with a decent amount of wary skepticism. Could Joshua Ferris really pull this off? The first-person-plural narration? The multitude of characters? The humor in the face of such a depressing situation? The plight of a forty-something woman with breast cancer? Fortunately for all of us, the answer is an enthusiastic yes. I don't really know how Joshua Ferris did it, but he created something really special with this novel. It's hilarious and heartbreaking and, even though at the start you can't imagine sympathizing with most of the characters, eventually you root for them in spite of yourself. It's almost like working in a real office: You don't love or even like everyone, but if you spend enough time together you become a family of sorts, invested in everyone's outcome. I Felt the End Before It Came" focuses largely on two significant areas of Cox's life - a childhood spent as a Jehovah's Witness that largely ended around the age 18 when he disassociated himself after being essentially "outed" and then vividly (and somewhat hilariously) owning that outing and an adulthood where he’s swept up in a scene of photographers and hustlers blurring the line between art and pornography. It's not surprising that I would resonate deeply with Daniel Allen Cox's intimate and revealing memoir "I Felt the End Before It Came: Memoirs of a Queer Ex-Jehovah's Witness."

I Felt the End Before It Came is a candid and beautiful exploration of learning to save yourself from a fundamentalist childhood and the complications that come from the dizzying freedom after you leave its confines. A vital and unique addition to the queer coming-of-age genre.” Daniel Allen Cox is a true writer who can convey complexity with grace. His story inspires us to want to know our own contradictions, to see them as riches instead of shame. In this way our lives become enhanced by both his vulnerability and his gifts.” In this breathtaking spiritual, sexual, and artistic coming-of-age, Daniel Allen Cox troubles and subverts what it means to seek salvation . . . he takes us on a probing and candid journey to find a new language to think with, and into a new definition of paradise.” With I Felt the End Before It Came, Cox moves his eye for meticulous atmospheric detail to his own life, opening up a refreshing vulnerability." At first, I feared the entire book would be about the personal relationships and habits and put-downs and shifting allegiances of the workers, without any actual discussion of what they did for a living, but in fact some of their advertising work does find its way into the story.

Having been raised in this environment where traditional societal expectations, for example college, are minimized because they conflict with an absolute commitment to Jehovah, Cox at times feels like he's still processing the experiences as he takes us through his post-JW journey whether that be exploring college, entering the work force, taking up modeling, or learning how to be in relationships and friendships. I have to start by commenting on the first-person plural narration because it is something that is unique and identifiable about this book, and it's cleverly also embedded in the title of the story. I thought it was effective for the most part, especially in our initial tour of the office when we're trying to get to know all of the characters (and there are a LOT). What Ferris gets out of the "we" that a writer of lesser talents might neglect is real emotional content: "We were still alive,... The sun still shone in as we sat at our desks. Certain days it was enough just to look out at the clouds and at the tops of the buildings. We were buoyed by it, momentarily. It made us 'happy.' We could even turn uncommonly kind." Those kind of sentiments, even when they are surrounded by playfulness and absurdity and awful cynicism, they still worked for me.

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The collection of essays in author Daniel Cox’s I Felt the End Before it Came are at once fanciful and pragmatic, heartfelt and heartbreaking. In a style reminiscent of David Sedaris, Cox winds his narratives through personal history with intent, if not always ease." Truthfully, by the end of "I Felt the End Before It Came" I didn't really feel like I knew Daniel Allen Cox that well. I appreciated his journey absolutely, however, I felt like there was still a guardedness (understandably) that kept me from really understanding not just his journey but him. Cox: The Witnesses don’t tolerate queerness, so I didn’t have a choice. I was raised believing that anyone not cis-het would be obliterated at Armageddon. The Witnesses love to object to this, saying that gay people are welcome as long as they don’t “act on their desires,” or in other words, if they suppress and deny their identities in totality. If you had “homosexual feelings,” you were supposed to double down on studying and pray harder, which has overtones of gay conversion therapy. The memoir’s episodic essay structure is original and inspired. Each piece focuses on how Cox experienced and ultimately rebelled against a different method of indoctrination. “A Library for Apostates” highlights the Witness’s suppression of Cox’s education, and details how he became a writer and educator despite this. In “The Witness is Complicit,” Cox criticizes how the Witnesses use the promise of salvation from Armageddon to recruit new members, then ties this to his experience writing against the church during the COVID-19 pandemic. Cox’s effort to balance information and anecdote often results in a satisfyingly profound insight. Daniel shares his story of being a gay man and leaving JW as a "Jo Homo" and how his family members, friends, church goer's are suppose to cut him out completely. He could corrupt them or plant seeds of evil in their heads so the relationship must be severed. Daniel experiences all the emotions and numbs the pain with sex, drugs and alcohol but also discovers himself in the process.

Daniel Allen Cox grew up with firm lines around what his religion considered celebrating birthdays and holidays; voting in elections, pursuing higher education, and other forays into independent thought. Their opposition to blood transfusions would have consequences for his mother, just as their stance on homosexuality would for him. I had a love-hate relationship with this book. We got off on the wrong foot to start, since the blurbs had led me to expect the read to be a laugh-filled riot. It does have its funny moments, but the overall tone was much more despairing than one would expect from its copy. In addition, the large cast of characters and first-person plural narration left me grasping for someone to relate to. I kept reading mainly because I enjoyed the references to my hometown. Update: So, yeah, this is a home run. Deserving of every inch of its hype. It's too bad, however, that so much of the buzz focused on comparisons to The Office and Office Space (nothing against those fine entertainments) and the workplace-drone genre of humor. Because this book kind of is part of that on a surface level, but it's so much more--so much more expansive, humane, ambitious, detailed and moving. It hits my sweet spot of funny-sad. I love the funny-sad but I see it done badly so often, so often the funny's not that funny and the sad is too mawkish. But Ferris nails the perfect balance, much like George Saunders and Wes Anderson and They Might Be Giants (all established masters of funny-sad), except that Ferris nailed it right out of the gate. Hard to believe this is his first novel, harder still to believe he'll ever top it. Most writers are obsessed with their origin story, but it’s endings that preoccupy Daniel Allen Cox in his kaleidoscopic and deeply felt memoir, I Felt the End Before It Came: Memoirs of a Queer Ex-Jehovah’s Witness. The author of four award-winning novels, Cox has been chronicling queer life in Canada and abroad for nearly two decades. In his latest, he turns his gaze inward. As an ardent fan of Catch-22, I initially scoffed at the comparisons of this novel to Joseph Heller's masterpiece, but I'll be damned if I didn't come to agree with them: Then We Came to the End has the same large cast of characters, the nonlinear timeline, the smarts, the absurdity--plus, most importantly, the ability to wring both humor and compassion from such a grim scenario.Cox gives readers an enlightening glimpse of the stifling world he has escaped: door-to-door preaching, refusal of certain medical treatments, and the shunning of those who question the rules while waiting for paradise at the end of days. Cox’s own voluntary departure from the church came after he wrote a letter to the elders at the age of 18: “It was a breakup letter to Jehovah, the first proof I’ve ever had that I could think for myself.” And his queer life began just as his old life ended, all in the service of “a horniness for a future that made sense.” Rail: One aspect of your book I loved was seeing you emerge as a writer. You grew up in a belief system that you call “anti-education,” one that discouraged you from going to college. (After all, you write, “Why bother getting a degree when the world is about to end?”) How did you become interested in writing and how’d you get so damn good at it? A hugely entertaining, open-hearted, and insightful memoir that sheds light on what it means to grow up as a Jehovah’s Witness coming to terms with queerness, and how families survive and love one another after being fragmented by divergence of faith . . . a joy to read from start to finish.”