So Far Gone

If you haven’t read a novel by Jess Walter–what you waiting for? Hurry up–start reading!

What a great writer. So much fun to read—with the rare ability to make you laugh on one page and cry on the next.

Plus, he employs this literary device where he fast forwards in the lives of his characters. So you see what’s around the bend.

And he’s a lefty at heart–and not afraid to show it. Even if his lefty characters are unable to effectuate the change they want so much to achieve because they always manage to be their own worst enemies.

And so they have to confront the painful realization that the world is no better, and maybe worse, despite their efforts. Which would be depressing, if, like I said, Walter wasn’t so damn funny.

I just finished So Far Gone, his latest. Which I’d say was his best. Except there are others better than it. As hard as that may be to believe. For what it’s worth, here are my top three Jess Walter books or stories.

Jess Walter and his number one best seller...

Beautiful Ruins, his most romantic.

Cold Millions, his most political.

Angel of Rome, a short story that’s probably his funniest. And sweetest. But not too sweet. Just right.

The Way the World Ends. A short story that somehow makes climate change funny. While exposing the idiocy of climate change deniers. And tells the true tale of the time Johnny Cash got busted for public drunkenness and spent the night in a jail in Starkville, Mississippi.

And The New Frontier, which you’ll find in a collection called We Live in Water. It starts like this…

“I'm on my way to Vegas with my friend Bobby Rausch to rescue his stepsister from a life of prostitution.”

Which may be his best opening line.

And...oh, wait! That’s more than three. My bad.

Back to So Far Gone…

It features Rhys Kinnick, a 60-something-year-old, burnt-out journalist who, unable to deal with the world of humans, takes off to the woods to live a life of contemplative isolation, like he’s a 21st-century Thoreau.

Until his grown daughter pulls him back to civilization and drags him into a showdown with some whacked-out MAGA militia men. It winds up being a story about fathers and their daughters. And how hard they try to move past their grudges–cause life’s short and why would you want to waste it fighting with the people you love?

It also includes this priceless observation about the age of Trump…

"A familiar feeling of grim hopelessness washed over Kinnick, the sense that, just when he thought it couldn't get worse, it not only got worse, but exponentially more insane. Some days, reading the news felt like being on a plane piloted by a lunatic, hurdling toward the ground."

It’s enough to make any sane man run to the woods like a 21st-century Thoreau.

Well, I’ll stop writing this post. So you can hurry and start reading Jess Walter. You won’t be sorry.