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In Saïd Sayrafiezadeh’s fictional short story, “Minimum payment“The protagonist is deeply in credit card debt and desperately needs a way out.
The fact that this experience is so common—more than one-third, or 38 percent, of U.S. adults have credit card debt, according to Bankrate—terrifies the narrator.
Debt collectors won’t stop calling him. At the same time, he couldn’t even admit how much he owed his therapist.
“He waited for me to run through the numbers in my head, the various principals, late fees, fines, surcharges,” Sarafizadeh wrote. “Then I did what everyone does in denial and shame: I rounded up and underestimated the number. That’s still a lot of underestimation.”
The narrator seeks advice from self-help books, therapy, and even cults, but he’s in too deep. No matter how much he pays off his debt each month, the debt will never decrease.
Sayrafiezadeh is a novelist, memoirist, and playwright living in New York City. CNBC interviewed Sayrafiezadeh this month for his story, which appeared in new yorker In November, he chose to use fiction to explore credit card debt.
Annenova: You never tell us how much credit card debt the narrator actually owes. I’m curious, what is the significance of this omission?
Said Sayrafizadeh: It’s like Jaws: you don’t want to over-expose the monster. I think it would be better to let the reader think about this and picture a number in their mind, rather than giving them a hard number.
AN: You did say debt went from “four figures to five figures.” So that’s all we know. But it could be $10,000, it could be $99,000.
SS: Exactly.
AN: In the story, you mention that compound interest on his credit card debt is increasing every day. We feel like this character will never get out of this mess. It’s described in a very horrific, graphic way. I’m wondering if you’ve ever dealt with credit card debt.
SS: In fact, I am the opposite of this person. I didn’t even wait until my statement was paid off. It makes me happy to know that I don’t owe anyone anything.
AN: Did you do any credit card debt research for this story?
SS: No, I haven’t. I just put myself in the shoes of someone in this situation. I guess I have to just feel it. Maybe we all feel this to some extent. Even if you don’t have debt, it’s always there, lingering. What if I can’t pay my bill? Maybe it was 2008, when we had the Great Recession and everyone lost their homes. I have no idea. It doesn’t seem difficult to imagine what it would be like to be this character.
AN: In the opening scene of the story, the narrator receives a phone call. It turned out to be an old friend, but he was initially convinced it was 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 is through debt-tinted glasses. Everything is his debt.
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AN: The only person the narrator confides in in the story about his debt is his therapist. But even for him, he would lie and say he owed less than he actually owed. Why can’t he tell the truth?
SS: There was a certain amount of shame about him. There may be some who deny this. Telling the therapist the actual amount would make it real, and it wasn’t something he could really face.
AN: I think this is a really interesting detail, the narrator is a software engineer at a tech startup. Although he may have a good, well-paying job, he is deeply in debt. Why include these details about him?
SS: I want it to be about the algorithms that operate in him, in us, and in our society. He talked about how Tony Robbins’ book appeared on his Instagram feed. There are algorithms that target us with ads that we are susceptible to. But I also wanted him to be the one who creates these kinds of algorithms, so that he becomes part of the cycle. I wanted to satirize the code he wrote, but I was also susceptible to the code he wrote.
AN: So how did this character find himself with so much credit card debt? Is it a spending issue?
SS: Here’s a good question: Why is he in so much debt? The only thing he said was that he was easily influenced. So that’s all he knew. This isn’t really the answer. But that means he’s vulnerable; he’s easily preyed upon. The story really doesn’t get to the root of why he did it. I wanted to make it more mysterious. He didn’t know why he was like this, why he encountered all this and was burdened with all the debts.
AN: Do you think your story will make people feel less alone about their debt?
SS: That’s great. I try to write about things that are disturbing, that haunt lonely characters. But yeah, this story might make someone feel like, oh, yeah, it’s not just me. Maybe this is the end of the story, where the reader no longer feels alone.
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