We live in water, Jess Walter

Each one of these 13 short stories shines like a bright gem. Many of the stories take place in the north-west United States: Seattle, Portland and Jess Walter's hometown of Spokane, Washington. The topics range from poverty to addiction to infidelity, but fundamentally these stories zoom in on individuals who, through bad choices or simply through fate, find themselves on the unlucky side of life.

You could say that the background theme for most of these stories is the recent economic recession. As I said in my review of Walter's "Citizen Vince", it takes a lot of skill to write fiction with a clear background theme, or a sub-plot that gives a certain flavor to the entire work. And Walter handles it with incredible style.

I am just mesmerized by Walter's ability. How can he breath so much warmth and life into everything he creates on the page, and how can he make me care so much about anything he writes? 

To achieve the "Walter level" of quality, which is the equivalent of a Volume level 11 in the 1 to 10 scale, there are two steps that a writer needs to do, both of them very challenging to pull off:

1) first, you need to infuse your writing with a certain music, a music that comes from the genuine empathy or sympathy you feel for your characters, and for their struggles. You need to go down deep, to the heart of matters. Staying on the epidermic level of thinking about words and crafting sentences won't cut it.

2) second, once you are there, despite it being the last place where one would expect it, you activate your sense of humor and sparkle your writing with funny moments that soothe the reader's heart and make the misery of what is being described not only bearable, but also much more interesting because it keeps reminding you that our human perspective is absurd to start with, therefore the best thing to do is to smile.

I've asked myself, what makes me prefer Jess Walter over editorial legends like Ian McEwan, Cormac McCarthy, Jonathan Franzen, or other big names in contemporary fiction.

Very simply, I think it's Walter's heart. He's got a lot of it. Too many writers, especially the ones who get the loudest choirs of halleluiahs from the critics, are wonderful wordsmiths but they don't have much heart and soul. I understand, it's also personal chemistry. But read "The road" or "Saturday" or "Enduring Love", or the highly acclaimed "Freedom", and you'll know what I'm talking about: I really don't care about phenomenal style and structure if your story feels cold, and it has the heart of a scientist.

We live in the Era of Technology, but what powers human beings is Emotion. Pathos. That is what we are made of. Written words are a tool that can preserve emotions, and transmit them to someone else.
 
Also, a note about the last story, the one about Spokane, with numbered paragraphs like a list. It's really inventive as it looks like a bureaucratic publication, but I noticed that how there is a perfectly balanced narrative arch in that story, too. With the main topic being Walter's relationship with his town. Brilliant.

What can I say? I love this author. He's about 50 years old, so even if he publishes something new every 3 or 4 years, that makes it at least five or six more books that I am looking forward to reading!

The financial lives of the poets, Jess Walter

Jess Walter is one of the best contemporary American writers. His voice is unique. His lighthearted depth is an unmatched delight. If you still haven't read any of his books, drop everything and make your life better by giving him a chance. I just fell in love with his bestseller "Beautiful Ruins", and I was ecstatic to see that he's been able to do his magic with this book, too. Yes, this book does mix finance and poetry. I dare you to find any other book that does that.

The striking element in Walter's writing - I have read most of his books - is his sense of humor, and that's where I see some readers might not like it because they just have a different sense of humor (or they just don't have one). I understand humor is a very personal thing.

However, while many supposedly funny books are just shallow, stupid, unfunny, or absurd, or very often unbalanced structural abominations (especially the ones with idiotic comments on the cover like "I barfed with laughter all the way through!", or "You will be laughing so hard your hemorrhoids will explode!"), "The Financial Lives" strikes a wonderful balance between comedy and drama, between very lighthearted moments and intimate, touching scenes. And all of it fitting in a harmonious structure. It is a joy to read. It is elegant, alla Italiana.

Do you know how hard it is to do that? To strike this kind of balance? It takes a very unique kind of alchemist, one who knows in his guts just how many drops of this and that substance is too little or too many.
I also loved the inventiveness of the poetry. Yes, of course is a joke, a game. But it's poetry, as well. And it bears meaning, too. Like this one, for example:

"And I wonder if we don't live like water
seeking a level
a low bed
until one day we just go dry.
I wonder if a creek ever realizes
it has made its own grave."

The very best books are the ones where you can feel on your fingers the writer's own enthusiasm and joy of writing, and I can say I felt that playfulness and joy throughout this book, despite the very serious topics being touched, like the economic crisis and unemployment.

Hats off, Mr Walter. This is the kind of story-telling that I wish I was able to pull off in my fantasy life as a writer. My pen name would be "Jeff Swelter", and you would know that it is me writing in honor of your work.