The Financial Lives of the Poets

By: Jess Walter

Narrated by: Jess Walter

Length: 7 hrs and 55 mins

Publisher's summary

Meet Matt Prior. He's about to lose his job, his wife, his house, maybe his mind. Unless...

In the winning and utterly original novels Citizen Vince and The Zero, Jess Walter ("a ridiculously talented writer" - New York Times) painted an America all his own: a land of real, flawed, and deeply human characters coping with the anxieties of their times. Now, in his warmest, funniest, and best novel yet, Walter offers a story as real as our own lives: a tale of overstretched accounts, misbegotten schemes, and domestic dreams deferred.

A few years ago, small-time finance journalist Matthew Prior quit his day job to gamble everything on a quixotic notion: a Web site devoted to financial journalism in the form of blank verse. When his big idea - and his wife's eBay resale business - ends with a whimper (and a garage full of unwanted figurines), they borrow and borrow, whistling past the graveyard of their uncertain dreams. One morning Matt wakes up to find himself jobless, hobbled with debt, spying on his wife's online flirtation, and six days away from losing his home. Is this really how things were supposed to end up for me, he wonders: staying up all night worried, driving to 7-Eleven in the middle of the night to get milk for his boys, and falling in with two local degenerates after they offer him a hit of high-grade marijuana? Or, he thinks, could this be the solution to all my problems? Following Matt in his weeklong quest to save his marriage, his sanity, and his dreams, The Financial Lives of the Poets is a hysterical, heartfelt novel about how we can reach the edge of ruin - and how we can begin to make our way back.

©2009 Jess Walter (P)2009 HarperCollins Publishers

Top Notch

I'd normally be wary about an author reading his own book, but Walter does a great job. You can hear the deadpan humor in his voice, and he reads it beautifully. (Note: he talks about his experience of reading this book in the afterword of "Beautiful Ruins.")

Excellent story, great characters, and I laughed out loud at least a dozen times.

Balance

My parents got a divorce during the financial crisis, and it always felt like part of my youth died during that time. this book kept me on the verge of tears the entire time; it was lyrical and console and true.
as for performance I am very impressed that Jeww Walter wrote and read this. Seems like he was invested in making every step of this production as good as possible.

A sad, depressing but well-written story

I usually shy away from books read by the author himself, but Jess Walter does an excellent job of bringing his characters to life. This is a contemporary story of economic challenges that lead good people to make poor choices, and the spiraling downhill path that can follow. It's a kinder, gentler "Breaking Bad" where one man's desire to help his family leads him -- in innocence, at first -- to see drug dealing as a way to provide for his family. This is not a violent tale, just a sad and inevitable one.

A beautiful, rich and funny modern fable.

After finishing and falling in love with Jess Walter's New York Times Bestselling novel "Beautiful Ruins" recently, I'm happy to say that "The Financial Lives of the Poets" did not disappoint. "The Financial Lives . . . " is Walter's fifth novel ("Beautiful Ruins" being his sixth) and tells the story of journalist Matt Prior, who quit his job as a business reporter to start a website in which he was going to give stock market advice in free-verse poetry. Unfortunately, along comes the financial meltdown of 2008 and Matt finds himself unemployed and in dire straits. Facing bankruptcy, his mortgage upside down, his marriage in crisis, Matt turns to . . . something illegal. The story is by turns hilarious and heart-breaking--and often both at once. Walter's prose is high-energy, lyrical and it's no coincidence that he created a protagonist with a poetic bent. This exhilarating book probes the depths of human fate, relationships and modern life in America and comes up smiling and breathing deeply. Walters is one of the best and most agile novelists writing in this country today.

Love it

My type of dry and always bad timing humor. Very well written and just a great book.

I listened to this one almost straight through.

This is a story about a middle-aged couple who hit bottom financially, and the stupid decisions they make to try to recover, and then how it all falls apart. But while that sounds boring, it is anything but. I didn't want to stop listening and always looked forward to getting back to the story to find out what happened next. The narration by the main character Matt is fast and witty, kind of like a hyperactive kid all giddy about his topic. The poetry is corny, but sort of endearing because you're rooting for the guy but at the same time shaking your head at how effed up his reasoning is. And that's another thing that makes this such a good story - it gently shows how tiny stupid decisions can lead to big fallout, but at the same time, that sometimes the fallout isn't such a bad deal after all. It just helps to put things into proper perspective, if only for a time...

A great story.

I love that the writer was also the reader. His voice is easy to listen to. I also enjoyed how easy it was to relate to the main character and his wife.

New favorite author

Funny, sad, smart, depressing, and hopeful all at once. Loved the characters and the narration by Walter was so good.

The Financial Life of Poets

Did not like it. It was loud and frenzied. Would not recommend to anyone at all.

Well-Written--And Buried in Snark

What could have made this a 4 or 5-star listening experience for you?

The book was weighed down by the constant drone of bitter, sardonic comments from the self-pitying narrator. The listening experience could only have been improved if Walter had written a different book, one with a variety of tones: lighthearted, non-sneering, or self-reflective, for starters. I wouldn't need a lot of those things, but I did need just a few of them, to break up the mean-spiritedness.

What was most disappointing about Jess Walter’s story?

Jess Walter is a great writer, and there are moments when this book sings--but far too few of them. The story is tainted by the relentless, self-pitying, whiny sarcasm of the main character, Matthew, who is described as a smart guy but who acts dumber (and a lot meaner) than most 12-year-olds.
Matt is married with two young kids. He's jobless, drowning in debt, and about to lose his house and perhaps everything else. I was completely ready to be on his side.
But my goodwill was ruined by Matt's pathological snideness. Almost every sentence in the book is packed to the bursting point with nasty, wisecracking, stereotypical comments about everyone in Matt's life, from the stupid, malignant former boss (the "Idi Amin of journalism"), to the stupid, over-the-top obnoxious financial advisor, to the stupid pot-smoking gangbangers he meets in a 7-Eleven while--surprise!--feeling sorry for himself.
Suspension of disbelief is a pretty tall order here. Matt leaves his newspaper job to start a website that gives financial advice ... through poetry. (Hmmm. "I think that I shall never see, a thing as lovely as ATT?") Not a single rational human being on the planet would think online poetry+stock tips=profits.
And how can we care about this character when there are so few honest, reflective moments, so few narrative breathers when we can simply see the scenery or hear some non-snarky dialogue, internal and otherwise?
For the first 6 chapters we don't see Matt have a compassionate interaction with his sons, his wife, his father, or anyone else aside from a single street dude who he talks down from a freak-out over a microwave oven.
Matt's advised to make some changes: sell his over-expensive car, shop at K-Mart and maybe even Goodwill on occasion, buy a little canned food, send his kids (oh no!) to public school. He can't do it--it's all too horrifying for him. The snobbishness, added to all the other character flaws, makes this guy beyond annoying.
I can honestly say that the only thing truly enjoyable for me in the first half of the book was a moment when a druggy lawyer read a contract he'd created for his weed-buying clients. When legalese is the most hilarious part of a novel, you know you're in trouble.

What three words best describe Jess Walter’s performance?

He has the perfect tone, but he's still reading a story about a guy we don't like, so even the best performance can't make this an enjoyable experience.

If you could play editor, what scene or scenes would you have cut from The Financial Lives of the Poets?

I would have deepened and drawn out his wife's character. As is, she's two-dimensional and nearly unknowable, other than scattershot observations about her shopping binges, online flirtations and hot bod.
I would have cut out the wife's bottle-blonde friend "with the skirt as big as a headband." She's a walking stereotype--the sexy mom looking for hubby number two.
I'd retool (sorry for the wordplay) the wife's high school boyfriend so he's not another stereotype: a hunky lumber store employee with a chiseled face and a woody. And I'd scrap the guy's name (Stehne, pronounced Stain).
The author is such a talented writer, but in this effort he uses cleverness to the point of overkill. The descriptions of the newspaper boss especially needed pruning. Walter describes the guy as the Idi Amin of journalism. All well and good. But he then proceeds to call him the Pol Pot of the newsroom, a bloated despot, a Sadam, a soul-disabled, budget hacking delusional budget monkey, a narcissist or complete sociopath, a sadist, a man who used things "right out of the Khmer Rouge playbook until he dumbed down management to a flock of morons," a guy who "loves journalism the way pedophiles love children," a self-aggrandizing bully, and a delusional general, for starters. We get all that in a rapid-fire space of a few paragraphs. It's way over-the-top.

Any additional comments?

I'm still a huge fan of Jess Walter! Beautiful Ruins was one of the best novels I've read in decades, and I know I'll like one of Walter's future efforts. I know many, many people who liked Financial Lives, as well.