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In Saïd Sayrafiezadeh’s fictional short story, “Minimum payment due“, the main character is trapped in it credit card debt and is desperately looking for a way out.
The fact that the experience is common – more than a third, or 38%, of US adults have it credit card debt, according to Bankrate — doesn’t make it any less terrifying for the narrator.
Collection agents won’t stop calling the book’s main character. Meanwhile, he can’t even admit how much he owes his own therapist.
“He waited while I calculated the figure in my head, the various principals, late fees, fines, additional fees,” Sayrafiezadeh writes. “Then I did what everyone does when they’re overcome with denial and shame: I rounded and reduced the number. The bad was still big.”
The narrator turns to self-help books, therapy, and even a cult for advice, but he’s gone too deep. No matter how much you put toward debt each month, it won’t go down.
Sayrafiezadeh is a fiction writer, memoirist, and playwright living in New York. CNBC interviewed Sayrafiezadeh this month about his story that appeared in the A New Yorker in November, and his choice to use fiction to explore credit card debt.
Annie Nova: You never tell us exactly how much credit card debt the narrator has. I wonder what the purpose of that omission is?
Saïd Sayrafiezadeh: It’s like Jaws: you don’t want to show too much of the monster. I thought it would be better for the reader to have to wonder about it and create a number in their mind, rather than giving them a hard number.
AN: You say the debt is going from “four digits to five”. So we know that much. But it could be $10,000, and it could be $99,000.
SS: That’s right.
AN: You mentioned in the story that the compound interest was compounding daily on his credit card debt. We have a feeling the character will never be able to get out of this. It’s described in a really scary, vivid way. I was wondering if you have been dealing with credit card debt.
SS: I’m actually the opposite of this guy. I don’t even wait for my statement to pay it. Knowing that I owe nothing to anyone gives me satisfaction.
AN: Did you research credit card debt for this story?
SS: No, I didn’t. I just put myself in the position of someone who was in this situation. I think I just have to feel it. Maybe we all feel it, in some way. Even if you are not in debt, it is always there, floating. What if I can’t pay my bills? Maybe something about 2008 when we had the big recession and everyone was losing their homes. I don’t know It seems like it wasn’t hard to imagine what it would be like to be this character.
AN: In the opening scenes of the story, the narrator receives a call. It turns out to be an old friend, but at first he’s convinced it’s another call from a collection agent. Is credit card debt so all-consuming for the narrator that he can’t see anything else?
SS: Yes, absolutely. Everything he sees, he looks through oblong colored glasses. Everything is his debt.
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AN: The only person in the story the narrator confides in about his debt is his therapist. But even he lies to him, saying he owes less than he really does. Why can’t he tell the truth?
SS: There is a certain amount of shame that it carries with it. Maybe there is a denial of it. Telling the actual amount to the therapist would make it real, and that’s not something he could face.
AN: I thought it was a really interesting detail that the narrator is a software engineer at a tech start-up. He is in debt even though he supposedly has a good, well-paying job. Why add these details about him?
SS: I wanted it to be about the algorithms that act on him, and on us, in our society. He said something about a Tony Robbins book showing up on his Instagram feed. There are these algorithms that target us with advertising that we are sensitive to. But I wanted to make him someone who creates those kinds of algorithms, so that he’s part of this cycle. I wanted to have the irony of him writing code, but also sensitive to the code he was writing.
AN: How did this character end up with so much credit card debt? Is it a consumption problem?
SS: That’s a great question: Why is he in debt? The only thing he says is that he is sensitive. So that’s all he knows. And that’s not really the answer. But what this means is that he is vulnerable; he is vulnerable to being preyed upon. The story doesn’t really get to the root causes of why he works the way he does. I wanted it to be more of a mystery. He doesn’t know why he is the way he is, why it has come to this, with all these debts.
AN: Do you think your story will make people feel a little less alone with their own debt?
SS: That would be great. I try to write about certain things that are troubling and bothering a lonely character. But yeah, the story might make someone feel like, Oh yeah, it’s not just me. Maybe that’s how the story ends, and readers don’t feel alone.
