Credit card debt explored by Saïd Sayrafiezadeh in a new story

In Saïd Sayrafiezadeh’s fictional story, “Minimum Payment Due,” the main character is trapped in credit card debt and desperate for a way out.

The fact that the experience is common (more than a third, or 38%, of adults in the US have had it) credit card debt, according to Bankrate, doesn’t make it any less scary for the narrator.

The collection agents won’t stop calling him. Meanwhile, he can’t even admit how much he owes his therapist.

“He waited while I calculated the figure in my head, the various principals, the late fees, the penalties, the late fees,” Sayrafiezadeh writes. “Then I did what everyone does when consumed by denial and shame: I rounded down and lowered the number. There was still a lot.”

The narrator turns to self-help books, therapies, and even a cult for advice, but he’s in 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 City. CNBC interviewed Sayrafiezadeh this month about her story, which appeared in the New Yorker in November, and his decision to use fiction to explore credit card debt.

Annie Nova: You never tell us exactly how much the narrator owes in credit card debt. I’m curious, what was the point of that omission?

Said Sayrafiezadeh: It’s like with Jaws: you don’t want to show the monster too much. I thought it would be better for the reader to have him wonder about it and create a figure in his mind, rather than giving him a concrete number.

AN: You say that the debt increases from “four figures to five.” So we know that. But that could be $10,000 and it could be $99,000.

H.H: That’s exactly right.

AN: In the story, you mention that compound interest grows daily on your credit card debt. We get the feeling that the character will never be able to get out of this. It is described in a really scary and vivid way. I was wondering if credit card debt was something you had to deal with?

H.H: I’m actually the opposite of this guy. I don’t even wait for my statement to pay it. Knowing that I don’t owe anyone anything is a pleasure for me.

AN: Did you research credit card debt for this story?

H.H: No, I didn’t. I simply put myself in the position of someone who was in this situation. I think I should feel it. Maybe we all feel it, in some way. Even if you’re not in debt, it’s always there, hanging around. What happens if I can’t pay my bills? Maybe something about 2008, when we had the Great Recession and everyone was losing their homes. I don’t know. It just didn’t seem 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 collections agent. Does credit card debt consume the narrator so much that he can’t see anything else?

H.H: Yes, absolutely. Everything he sees, he sees through debt-colored glasses. Everything is your debt.

AN: The only person in the story the narrator trusts with his debt is his therapist. But even he lies to him, saying that he owes less than he really owes. Why can’t he tell the truth?

H.H: There is a certain shame that comes with it. Maybe there is some denial about it too. Telling the actual amount to the therapist would make it real, and that’s not something I can really deal with.

AN: I thought it was a really interesting detail that the narrator was a software engineer at a tech startup. He is in debt even though he presumably has a good, well-paying job. Why add these details about him?

H.H: I wanted it to be about the algorithms that operate on him and on us in our society. It says something about how Tony Robbins’ book appears on his Instagram account. There are these algorithms that target us with advertising that we are susceptible to. But I also wanted to make him someone who is creating those types of algorithms, to be part of this cycle. I wanted to have the irony of him writing code, but also being susceptible to the code he writes.

AN: So how does this character find himself with so much credit card debt? Is it a spending problem?

H.H: That’s a big question: Why are you in debt? All he says is that he is susceptible. So that’s all he knows. And that’s not really an answer. But what it means is that it is vulnerable; It is vulnerable to being attacked. The story doesn’t really get to the root causes of why it is operating the way it does. I wanted it to be more of a mystery. He doesn’t know why he is who he is, why he has come to all this, with all this debt.

AN: Do you think your story will make people feel a little less alone with their own debt?

H.H: That would be great. I try to write about certain things that are disturbing and that torment a lonely character. But yeah, the story might make someone feel: Oh yeah, it’s not just me. Maybe this is how the story ends, when readers don’t feel so alone.