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    The Financial Lives of the Poets
    The Financial Lives of the Poets
    The Financial Lives of the Poets
    Audiobook7 hours

    The Financial Lives of the Poets

    Written by Jess Walter

    Narrated by Jess Walter

    4/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    “Darkly funny, surprisingly tender . . . witheringly dead-on.” — Los Angeles Times

    Named one of the year’s best novels by: Time • Salon.com • Los Angeles Times • NPR/Fresh Air • New West • Kansas City Star • St. Louis Post-Dispatch

    A comic and heartfelt novel from the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Beautiful Ruins and Cold Millions about how we get to the edge of ruin—and how we begin to make our way back.

    What happens when small-time reporter Matthew Prior quits his job to gamble everything on a quixotic notion: a Web site devoted to financial journalism in the form of blank verse?

    Before long, he wakes up to find himself jobless, hobbled with debt, spying on his wife's online flirtation, and six days away from losing his home. . . . Until, one night on a desperate two a.m. run to 7-Eleven, he falls in with some local stoners, and they end up hatching the biggest—and most misbegotten—plan yet.

    Editor's Note

    Heartfelt & hilarious...

    A pointed critique of the American male’s traditional role in society, this novel is the bridge between Walter's noir works and “Beautiful Ruins”, framed in a heartfelt & hilarious rock-bottom-to-comeback story.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperAudio
    Release dateNov 17, 2009
    ISBN9780061988134
    The Financial Lives of the Poets
    Author

    Jess Walter

    Jess Walter is the author of six novels, including the bestsellers Beautiful Ruins and The Financial Lives of the Poets, the National Book Award finalist The Zero, and Citizen Vince, the winner of the Edgar Award for best novel. His short fiction has appeared in Harper's, McSweeney's, and Playboy, as well as The Best American Short Stories and The Best American Nonrequired Reading. He lives in his hometown of Spokane, Washington.

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    Reviews for The Financial Lives of the Poets

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    78 ratings49 reviews

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    • 4/5
      Matt Prior's life as he knew it is circling the drain the night he heads out to the 7-Eleven for some overpriced milk. He lost his job some months ago, the job he was forced to crawl back to after he risked it all on a website venture dedicated to financial advice written in mediocre poetry. It's starting to seem inevitable that he will lose his house if he doesn't come up with a significant sum of money before week's end. His wife is carrying on an affair of sorts with an old boyfriend via Facebook and text messages, and his dad's mental health is declining rapidly. When Matt, shuffling under the fluorescent lights of the 7-Eleven in his bedroom slippers, happens upon two of the sorts of guys that you'd rather not run into in a 7-Eleven he soon finds himself driving the two stoners to a party and smoking way better weed than he ever smoked in college. With a clarity that only weed can produce, Matt knows that this weed is the weed that can solve all his problems. He just needs to sell it.The Financial Lives of the Poets drew an inevitable comparison to the TV show Weeds for me. Both are at once laugh out loud funny and sad in their biting satirization of what the American dream has become. Mercilessly does Jess Walter spear the new American family unit that builds its ambitious life on hard work and mountains of debt. He harpoons the people who seemingly without a second thought take out loans on houses and cars they never had any hope of affording sold to them by slick salesmen peddling an unrealistic way of life. Walter mocks the people who, once they've attained some semblance of security, throw it away on goofy dreams and online shopping binges all the while ignoring the important things in life like their spouses, their children, and their friends. Hidden within Walter's laugh out loud satire, however, is a set of real, recognizable characters that draw readers' sympathies. There's Matt who got lost while he was trying to find his dreams, who can't sleep at night for worrying about what fate will befall his family now that he's failed as their provider. There's his wife, Lisa, who desperately misses the powerful, sexy career woman she used to be before she gave it up for kids. There's Matt's father who is slowly going senile, but still thinks he's "got it" because he can't remember that a stripper named Charity took him for all he was worth. There are countless would-be customers of Matt's pot dealing scheme who feel like they need to have a smoke just to make it through a day at the office. These are people we know, and in some cases these are people we are, and despite all his squeezing them into ridiculous situations for laughs, Walter doesn't let us forget that. The Financial Lives of the Poets is an engaging story of a family gone awry full of cannily delivered truths and a potent satire of life in today's USA.
    • 4/5
      This was an enjoyable read & once I picked it up, I zipped through it much more quickly than I expected. Matt Prior is the narrator & I have to admit that at first I felt he was self-indulgent (I didn't care that that was the point), I didn't much like his wife either (I loved the children & Matt's father) but somehow I was pulled in & felt that I wanted everything to work out for he & his family eventhough he was making decisions high on the epicly stupid list. The main of the story takes place over a series of days as the foreclosure of the Prior's house looms & when Matt's plan finally goes completely off the rails, I was just relieved. I was rooting for the family to lose everything except each other because I couldn't take the crazy anymore.

      Though satire, I must say that this pulled at my heart a bit. It felt a little crazy but I cared what happened to the characters. The ending was happier than I expected & I enjoyed that as well. Jess Walter certainly didn't disappoint.
    • 4/5
      Absurd and fun book!
    • 3/5
      All the reviews of this say that it's hilarious, a laugh riot. So funny!

      I didn't laugh even once. This is maybe the saddest book I've ever read, or at least the most poignant.

      I'm approximately the same age as Walter, and prey to the same generational conceits, fears, and acting out. There's a lot of heartbreak, a lot of realism, a lot of sad truth here. Not so much with the hilarity.

      So close to home, so well-written, so heartbreaking.
    • 5/5
      I just fell in love with Jess Walter's "Beautiful Ruins", and I was really happy to see that he's been able to do his magic with this book too. The striking element in Walter's writing (in these 2 books at least) is his sense of humor, and that's where I see some readers not liking 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 "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" or something), "The Financial Lives" strikes a wonderful balance between comedy and drama, between very light-hearted 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 have an idea of how hard it is to do that? To strike this kind of balance? It takes a very unique kind of alchemist, one who knows 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.
      The best books are the ones where you can feel the writer's own enthusiasm and joy of writing, and I can say I felt that playfulness and joy all through the book, despite the very serious subjects.
      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.
    • 4/5
      Entertaining but slight. While reading, I did get very wrapped up in the wild ups and downs of the plot, but I'm not sure there's much here that will stick with me. I did like the way poetry was incorporated into the text, and I loved the adorable drug-world characters. But overall, I would have preferred this book to have more hi-jinks and less self-pity.
    • 4/5
      I don't usually like books about money (like Janelle Brown's All We Ever Wanted Was Everything), but this one has heart. It's about a flawed but likeable man whose wife is having an emotional affair, and his finances are in the garbage.
    • 4/5
      The dilemma that the protagonist faces is self-created, but the author ratchets up the tension very well. Nothing world-shaking here, no epiphanies. I enjoy the use of poetry to reveal the character and in itself. The author works on several levels at the same time.
    • 4/5
      Jess Walter begins The Financial lives of the Poets with his protagonist Matt Prior in a 7-Eleven buying milk. Walter was already writing the book when the economy started to fall apart. He saw the panic- people losing their houses, the banks going under, friends losing their jobs. Walter writes, “I saw that my 7-Eleven book was actually about that, as if every secret, every hypocrisy, every clue to our culture lay in the overpriced, snack-filled aisles of a convenience store. So I made the book about that.” It’s a comedy.When the economy was still healthy, Matt Prior was doing well. He made some pretty savvy investments. So well that he decided to quit his job as a financial reporter and started a website offering financial advice in verse: poetfolio.com. Poetry has always been his secret love. Then everything fell apart. He crawled back to his reporting job but was soon laid off. His house is now worth less than what he owes on it, and the bank wants its money. His dad now lives with him and has early dementia. Thanks to Facebook his wife is now flirting with her old high school flame, who happens to own his own successful business. We meet Matt in the aforementioned 7-Eleven buying milk in the middle of the night so his two boys can have cereal for breakfast. In that fateful 7-Eleven, Matt stumbles into a new plan for saving his home and his marriage.The Financial Lives of the Poets is a wild adventure. There is rarely any down time, as Matt is not sleeping much these days, and he bounces from one hilarious thought or circumstance to the next. For example, this conversation with his financial planner: "…unless you are about to inherit some money, what we’re talking about here is irreversible, fatal. You have fiscal Ebola, Matt. You are bleeding out through your nose and your mouth and your eye sockets, from your financial asshole." "See! Fiscal Ebola? My financial asshole is bleeding? This was exactly why I started poetfolio.com; there are money poets everywhere."We are treated to some of Matt’s quirky poetry. He doesn’t just write about finances. He expounds on seeing a middle-aged mother with four kids in the grocery store parking lot bend over and reveal that she is wearing a thong. He waxes: Now I know there are people out there who constantly fret about the Fabric of America: gay couples getting married, violent videos, nasty TV, that sort of thing. But it seems to me the Fabric of America would be just fine if there was a little bit more of it in our mothers’ underpants. And that is the issue I will run on when I eventually run: Getting moms out of thongs and back into hammocks with leg holes the way God intended.Although the book is a comedy, there are moments of clarity regarding how precarious Matt’s situation really is. He remembers his youngest son used to love to play Jenga and realizes that life seems to reflect that game. "so you look for a board to slide, gently . . . slide . . . gently . . . even though you can never win, and it’s always the same . . . breathless and tentative . . . the world teetering above you head."Luke Baumgarten wrote in the Pacific Northwest Inlander that the book is not just about Matt’s financial crisis. He adds “the crisis of early middle age, the crisis of estranged love, the crisis of mistaking objects for security and of mistaking security for happiness.” Somehow Jess Walter takes all of that and makes it a irresistibly funny read.
    • 4/5
      This is a story of a dreamer: Matt Prior quits his job as a newspaper reporter to start a website (poetfolio) that gives financial news in the form of poetry. Faced with crushing debt, a wife who is very probably having an affair, two small childiren, and a live-in father with dementia, Matt struggles to cope. He decides to start selling pot to nostalgic baby boomers. Imaginative, laugh out loud funny at times, Matt's struggles touch issues that resonate: providing for family, parenting, making a marriage work. With his poet's soul, Matt is a character that you will root for.
    • 1/5
      This book is funny and well written - but I couldn't finish it. Too sad.
    • 1/5
      I swore, after reading "Citizen Vince", that I would never read another thing with Jess Walter's name on it. Imagine my chagrin upon finding this book was my book club choice this month!This book has 290 pages. It took 200 pages before any plot or anything substantive took place. So actually we end up with a Short Story, and I hate short stories!Jess Walter is 99% adolescent smart-alec banter and 1% substance, in my opinion.
    • 5/5
      After losing his job as a journalist, Matthew Prior took a gamble on creating a website that mixed financial news and free verse. Needless to say, things didn't work out. Now he and his family are living under crushing debt and are about to lose their home, and their finances are in total meltdown. To make matters worse, Matt suspects his wife is having an online affair with an old lover from high school and his senile father has just moved in with the family. Then Matt makes a late-night trip to the 7-Eleven for milk and gets caught up in a very unfamiliar situation with some local thugs after agreeing to take a hit of their superior weed. As Matt winds his way through the troublewith his finances, marriage and family, he comes to find himself disastrously enmeshed with his new friends and must find a way to disentangle himself from all his weighty encumbrances, both new and old.I found this to be an uproariously funny book, and also one that was very economically portentous. From the moment that self-depreciating and clever Matt was introduced amid his myriad of difficulties, the humor seemed to pour off the pages in a casual and original way. I don't want to give away too much of the plot and ruin the book, but I really felt that Walter managed to create some outstandingly hysterical satire that focused on middle class American society. Although this book really brought the funny, there were some piercing and frightening fiscal portraits of today's tail-spinning economy, and it was eye-opening to see a protagonist like Matt having to navigate his way through the financial wasteland that was his life.There were two stories going on in this book: the tale of Matt's misadventures with his buddies and the interlocking story of personal financial ruin. Both played off of each other and took focus at various times in the book, and both focused on different and specific emotions. In a lighthearted way, the author manages to fuse both the reality of today's economic crisis and the story of how that crisis reflects itself in a typical American family. I thought it was really cool that some of the story was told in poetry asides, most of which were both elegantly written and fabulously funny. Walter even managed to stay grounded in popular culture and language in the sections that focused on Matt's new friends.Aside from being culturally significant and exceedingly funny, the book had some very touching and emotional scenes that made me snap back as a reader and take notice. There were, for example, many glimpses of conversation between Matt and his ailing father, some of which were startlingly sad and poignant, and Matt's nearly non-stop internal monologue on the slow destruction of his marriage and family. I thought that as a character, Matt was very straightforward and perceptive, and that his voice throughout the book was not only credible, but endearing. At times it was as if he was stuck in the middle of a comedy of errors, one situation building upon another as all threatened to collapse in a heap at his feet, but the fact that he never really lost his composure was something that I marveled at and admired.The book mainly focused on the protagonist as he fought his way through the quagmire of his life, and as such there wasn't a lot of development of secondary characters. I felt that this was just right for this book because it enabled me to realize that the focus of the narrative, in fact the very point of the narrative, was to be a reflection of Matt's thoughts as he raced to find some magical cure all for his life's ailments. As such, Matt remained the only fully developed three-dimensional character throughout the book.I also liked the fact that the book was very realistic, and that there was no license taken for dramatic effect or a more seemly narration. Matt was forced to take a real inventory of his life and face his problems in the way you or I would have to, and not everything was neatly tied up in an effortless way. Much of this book was ferociously funny, and I totally appreciated that, but what I appreciated more were the real bits of life that poked through the laughter and comedy, the real reactions and fears of the main character, who did his best trying to hold it all together.This book was one of the most engaging reads I have had in a long time, and I think that this book is one that I am going to hold on to and pass on to others who are looking for a witty and satirical slice of life. I had a lot of fun laughing at Matt's antics and situations, but in the end, I sympathized with him a lot more than I ever thought I would. I haven't read any other books by this author but I am planning on taking a much closer look at his work. His writing is powerful and at the same time capricious, and tells the story of the everyday man who is not so different from ourselves. A great read. Highly recommended.
    • 4/5
      This book is very funny and engaging. The story is all too familiar after the recession of 2008/09 - the main character quit is job to start a website (financial advice delivered in poetry!), and then the economy tanked and the website failed. He is unemployed, about to lose his house to the bank, and about to lose his wife to an old fling of hers. As depressing as all of that sounds, the book is hilarious. The main character meets some kids who let him smoke some marijuana, and he decides to spend the very last of his money in an attempt to become a drug dealer. What makes the book enjoyable is Walter's wonderful writing, his constant playing with words, and his brilliant humor. The situations keep getting more and more ridiculous, but Walter's amazing ability to conjure up characters in just a few words makes the story believable. Unfortunately the end falls a little flat... I'm not sure what I would have changed about the ending to make it work better, but for as insightful and ridiculous as the rest of the book is, the end is suddenly rather trite and down-to-earth.All in all, a very fun read.
    • 4/5
      Synopsis:Successful throughout his life, Matt Prior finds himself in the unexpected position of being unemployed, deeply in debt and weeks away from losing his home. Things have been difficult at home and he can't bare to tell his wife the true state of their finances. Matt continues with the everyday life - caring for the children, applying for jobs, negotiating with their mortgage lender, and the usual household chores. When one late night, Matt discovers a possible solution - wacky and dangerous though it may be - to solve their financial hell, he decides to give it a go.Review: In Jess Walter's The Financial Lives of the Poets, Matt Prior goes on a hilarious and absurd adventure triggered by today's financial crisis. Matt has his own crooked logic that will leave you chuckling, whether he's plotting ways to sabotage his wife's flirtation with her high school boyfriend or eke revenge against M_ who laid him or finding ways to reassure his father during his slow descent to senility. A fun and crazy ride - highly recommended!Publisher: Harper (September 22, 2009), 304 pages.Review copy courtesy of TLC Book Tours.
    • 5/5
      Jess Walter is a writer who refuses to write books that will allow him to be pigeon-holed. His Citizen Vince is the darkly funny and oddly warm story of Vince Camden, a low-level hoodlum relocated by the Witness Protection Program to Spokane from New York, coming to terms with his new environment in the only way he knows how. His next novel, The Zero, could not be more different; it is the vaguely surrealistic story of Brian Remy, an amnesiac cop recruited by a government agency to gather paper scattered in the attacks on 9/11. And now The Financial Lives of the Poets gives us Matt Prior, possibly the most relatable character Walter has written. He's forty-something, unemployed, and awash in debt. He and his wife have a big, big mortgage, having bought a great house in a bad neighborhood when prices were up, then poured tons of money into remodeling and upgrading. Matt had been a business reporter at a newspaper but he left his reasonably secure job to venture out on his own in the world of cyber-reporting. Poetfolio.com. Doesn't that sound wonderful? Business and financial news delivered in a variety of poetic forms. Each chapter begins with one of Matt's poems, which he disparagingly refers to as pedestrian and amateurish but some of which I found to be quite lovely. Unfortunately, Matt was unable to make a go of it, and, though the newspaper took him back he was among the first to go in a recession-related personnel purge.The Financial Lives of the Poets opens with a sequence that perfectly sets the tone, both of the novel and how its action will play out, and of Matt Prior's character. Matt is waiting in line to buy milk at the 7/11, a semi-regular occurrence despite it being "like, nine dollars a gallon." He remembers his mother in her last days, worrying that the terrorists would pull off another event like "7/11" (in a beautiful, spot-on writerly touch, each time Matt thinks of 9/11 throughout the novel he thinks of it as 7/11). And then, leaving the convenience store with the milk for which he could ill afford to pay the jacked up price, Matt has an interaction with a couple of young men hanging around outside. One thing leads to another in a bizarre if seemingly inevitable way, and Matt ends up driving the guys to a party and smoking some dope with them on the way, something he hasn't done since his college days. Why haven't I done this in so long, Matt thinks to himself, and, I bet I know a lot of people just like me who haven't smoked but would like to, and, at the prices weed is going for these days I could make enough money to make that balloon payment coming due…The rest of the book takes place over a sleepless week, during which Matt takes care of his two sons and father, who has Alzheimer's, worries about his wife's blossoming Facebook (and possible real world) affair with an old boyfriend, smokes an awful lot of dope, worries about paying the mortgage and the private school tuition, smokes more dope, and makes arrangements to spend his entire pathetic retirement account of $9,000 on product which he intends to resell to his peers and former coworkers. Matt is borne along on a series of events ridiculous, pathetic, hilarious, in a manner which is all too believable.The Financial Lives of the Poets is a nearly perfect book. It's beautifully written. It's funny. And, most of all, it has heart.
    • 3/5
      My review from my blog Rundpinne......"I enjoy a good satirical novel and the premise of looking at the harsh realities of life as the market crashed, while homes were being foreclosed and people were losing their jobs, marriages were on the rocks and life was at best rather bleak, is intriguing. The promising premise for the novel The Financial Lives of the Poets by Jess Walter, while a dark look into bleak times, was one I did not enjoy. The protagonist, Mathew Prior is about to lose his home, a fact he has yet to share with his wife who may or may not be cheating on him. His father lost all his money to a stripper by the name of Charity and now the protagonist, a father of two, husband and once respected albeit small time reporter has decided to hook up with drug dealers he meets outside a 7/11 while buying milk. I am all for a good satire, I have read some brilliant satires over the decades, yet this one did not resonate well with me. It is quite possibly due to the fact that I have no tolerance for drugs, especially when a middle aged married father of two decides to sell drugs in a spur of the moment, goes by nickname is Slippers, speaks the drug dealer lingo, and in case the reader does not catch on in the first twenty pages, Matthew Prior drives a Nissan Maxima, a point repeated quite often and apparently lost on this reader. There is tremendous promise in The Financial Lives of the Poets, yet I just did not care for the book as a whole. What I enjoyed most was reading the author’s “how the book came about” at the end of this story. I strongly suggest following the tour and reading other opinions about The Financial Lives of Poets before deciding if this is indeed a book for you."
    • 3/5
      An amusing little ditty about catastrophes both financial and personal. Made me feel a bit smug that I didn't believe that mortgage broker who wanted me to buy a house I obviously couldn't afford. What in the world were people thinking?! Bonus points for describing a Chihuly chandelier as "horrid."
    • 1/5
      Hated this - supposed to be funny - dealing drugs as a father is funny??? NOT!
    • 4/5
      The big questions I had when reading most of this book were "What kind of book is this?" and the highly related "Did the author do this on purpose?"Matthew Prior starts out the book in a 7/11 store, buying milk for his kids. In come a couple of rambunctious young men, making a scene. (Funny. So this is a humorous book). As these young men are playing out their stoned activities, Matt thinks back to his mom in her confused final days, worrying about 7/11, and whether the terrorists would be able to cause another day like it(hmm,so not just a fluff stoned adventure book).And on it goes. Matt is losing his house and his marriage, but this is presented in a funny way (dark humor?). He lost all of their savings on a web site that mixed financial advice and poetry, with some help from his wife and her love for all thing that can be bought on E-Bay (It's got to be satire).As I'm bouncing from one of these thoughts to the next, I keep coming back to the question of whether the author is doing it on purpose-- Particularly once the book stopped being funny.I decided yes, it was deliberate, and very well done. None of us lives just one kind of a life, why should Matt occupy just one kind of a book? It doesn't need a label (other than fiction). It is funny (for a while, at least), thought provoking (all the way through) and a reflection on life and the choices we have and the choices we make.
    • 4/5
      Matt's just a regular guy. Just a regular guy who lost his job when the economy tanked. Just a regular guy with a failing marriage. Just a regular guy who will lose his home if he misses the balloon payment due on his mortgage. Just a regular guy who met some teenage delinquents at the 7/11 and smoked weed for the first time since college. Just a regular guy, desperate enough to try his hand at selling weed. This is definitely not going to end well. This novel is funny, lyrical, poignant and very very relevant. Beautifully written.
    • 4/5
      Matt Prior is a decent family guy whose life is unraveling as he approaches middle age. He has been laid off from his job as a business reporter at a floundering newspaper, his elderly father has moved in, his mortgage is about to be foreclosed, and his wife is having an online flirtation with her high-school boyfriend. And oh yes, his website business dedicated to merging investment advice and poetry is an epic failure. A late-night milk run to his neighborhood convenience store opens up a new business opportunity for Matt, and he is just desperate enough to ignore the possible consequences of dealing in an illegal commodity. Unfortunately, these consequences rain down on him in a flood of biblical proportions. Matt’s unfailing humor, his ability to create poetry out of the financial news, and his love for his family are just a few of the things that contribute to make this an hilarious and heart-warming portrait of a middle-class good guy who discovers that you can lose it all and still have everything you need.
    • 4/5
      I kept wanting to know what would happen next with this book. ?The Financial Lives of the Poets? was one wild ride!?The Financial Lives of the Poets? is definitely a novel of the 2010s. It deals head-on with today?s issues:?Newspapers across the country are folding, or reducing their pages. Newspaper staff are finding themselves without jobs. ?There is a ?sandwich generation? of people ? people raising their kids, and at the same time finding themselves having to care for their aged parents as well.?Homes are losing their value, or no longer the investment vehicle they were once viewed to be. And, of course, there is the foreclosure crisis still going on.?Because of the internet and social media, people are finding themselves entangled with on-line affairs; including finding former sweethearts.?Some families find themselves living in school districts with questionable public schools, so they put financial strain on themselves to pay for private schools. Or they spend lots of money on extracirricular activities for their kids (to enhance chances of getting into a good college).Jess Walter manages to include all these in ?The Financial Lives of the Poets? ?with humor, but also with enough insight ? this novel may make some readers squirm with recognition of their own lives.The main character, Matthew Prior, is a former newspaper reporter who had left his job at the paper to invest a lot of money and time to establish a website that dispenses financial advice and stories in blank verse. Not surprisingly, the website doesn?t succeed. Therefore, Matthew is days away from his house being foreclosed on. His dad, who suffers dementia and lost all his money to a stripper who stole everything from him, is now living with Matthew and his family ? which contains two young boys and Matthew?s wife, Lisa, who is carrying on a facebook romance with an old boyfriend. The boys attend an expensive private school, because the nearby public school is ?Alcatraz Elementary?, as Matthew nicknames it. The boys? names are Teddy and Franklin, which makes me wonder if this is a nod to the Roosevelt presidents of past.What is Matthew to do with all that is happening in his life? This is where the wild ride comes in ? unknown to his wife, he decides to take the money from his tiny pension from the newspaper and invest it into a marijuana dealership. He has found that middle class friends and co-workers have a desire to re-live their college days and that they?re willing to buy pot. Matthew plans for this scheme to be temporary ? just long enough to be able to raise money to come up with the balloon payment on his mortgage. Meanwhile, he tracks down his wife?s on-line boyfriend and hilariously plots how he can do revenge on him. And, of course, things don?t all go according to plan.Here is a scene after Matthew reads a message from his wife?s online boyfriend where he says he ?can?t wait to see her agin? (glaring typo)? Matthew is thinking:?I?m dying here. Of emotional Ebola. And I just wish the little bugs would get it over with and gobble me all up, so that I could stop suffering, because I know the world goes on without us; my mother taught me that; it goes on and on, turning us over like broken sod. And hell, maybe it?s nothing, a little late-night nasty smack-smack talk between old lovers ? harmless! But agin? Agin? And when I imagined my wife?s narrow tapering back in our bed last night, cute face bathed in the blue light of a nasty cell phone message from the boy who used to sleep with her ? Jesus, it hurt more than I could bear? ?In spite of Lisa?s online dalliance, she is not painted as an unsympathetic character. Matthew does adore his wife. She has struggles of her own ? after being a stay at home mom for quite a while, and because of the family?s situation, she has had to go back to work but at a fraction of what her former skills and salary was ? excaberated by today?s dismal job picture, thanks to the economy (I can relate to this ? I?d like to contribute to our family?s income, but I?ve been a stay at home mom for so long that I?ll basically have to start all over again in the working world). Lisa?s current boss?s idea of a ?Christmas bonus is twenty-five dollars at a craft store?. Matthew?s father is both funny and sad at the same time. As today?s aging population lives longer, we know more people who are affected by dementia and/or Alzheimer?s disease. Here, when Matthew is thinking about his father, pre-dementia:?My father did pass on plenty of wisdom, of course, a lot of it incidental, like other men from his generation, hints and clues glimpsed through his unfailing work ethic and his refusal to ever complain about anything?. I wouldn?t mind talking to that old clear-eyed Sears tie-and-coverall father of mine again. Or better, I wish I was five again, that he?d take my little hand and pull me up on his lap.?I wasn?t expecting to like this book as much as I did. I thought it would be fluff (albeit enjoyable fluff), but it actually goes past the surface; with humor that keeps it from being a downer. It won?t be for everyone, though ? there is swearing in there; but that is to be expected since Matthew is talking with drug dealers. Plus, who of us doesn?t think ?oh shit oh shit? when something crappy happens? Anyway, like I said, there are a lot of issues in here that I think many of us can relate to. It is nice to see that done with some humor and thoughtfulness, in ?The Financial Lives of the Poets?.
    • 4/5
      I think readers always have the "where did you get your idea" question running through their minds when they're reading a book. But, really man, how do you come up with financial poetry? Then how do you turn financial poetry into a book about a suburban dad who decides after endless economic hits to become a drug dealer with some dudes he meets outside 7-11 while picking up milk for his kids breakfast.I was explaining "The Financial Lives of the Poets" to my husband last night when I finished it and had to say "I know it sounds nuts but it's a great book". How can you not love a story about a newspaper business reporter who quits his job to launch a financial poetry website (WT....) only to find out the idea won't fly (really??) then gets stuck in the endless whirlpool of today's economic crisis? Then while trying to figure out a way to save his house and his way of life, becomes a drug dealer. This story never went where I thought it was going and I loved every minute of it. It made me laugh and think and there's not much more you can ask for in a book. The copy I have happens to be a PS edition which has extras at the end of the book including the incident that inspired to story. More and more books I'm getting are the PS editions and I have to say I love them. I really like being involved in what went into creating art. I love good dedications and acknowledgments too. I love feeling like I'm in the know of what goes on behind the pages of books I love. I hope more and more publishers come out with these editions. As for Jess Walter, I think I'll be checking out his other works and if he ever does decide to start up a financial poetry website I may just have to check it out.
    • 4/5
      Matt Prior was riding high; prestigious newspaper career, beautiful wife, two fine sons and a dream house. Suddenly his world collapses, along with the US economy and he finds himself jobless, nearly bankrupt and inches away from losing the trophy wife and the house. Late one night, in a fog of hopelessness, he stumbles into a convenient store, to buy milk and falls in with a group of local thugs and drug dealers. From this unusual meeting, a pact is formed, along with a dangerous plan to pull Matt out of the swamp he is mired in.Walter is a very good writer. He’s smart and darkly humorous. The one thing the story lacks, is freshness. There are a couple juicy surprises but most of the story-lines have a somewhat stale taste. I still recommend the book and will look forward to reading his other work.
    • 5/5
      A gem of a book and deserving of a higher profile like the previous book I read by the author "citizen vince". Tends to be classed as crime fiction but doesn't really belong there. It is a portrait of a midlife crisis stemming from redundancy, bloated mortgage debt, absurd internet startups and inappropriate use of facebook. Central character is an everyman character designed for you to identify with as he struggles with avoiding repossession and caring for a father who squandered his savings on a vegas stripper due to alzeimher's and of course along the way he makes some very poor choices but can you blame him. Oh and at the end the title will make sense!
    • 2/5
       If only I would have seen the recommendation by Nick Hornby on the cover of this book I could have saved the money. Not for me, a so called *funny* book, stupid people, for ever stuck in adolescence, doing stupid stuff, wasting time, money and their lives - I have no patience for that. Halfway through I gave up - these characters are not people I want to know.
    • 4/5
      I have to admit, a novel titled The Financial Lives of Poets is not something I would normally rush to read. Why would I care about finance and poets? But since people I respect raved about this book, I gave it a try.I'm so glad I did! Jess Walter has written a dazzling story of a young suburban family in the throws of the national economic crisis that threatens not only their financial stability but their very existence as a family unit.Matt left his job as a business writer at a newspaper to follow his dream- a website devoted to financial news, with advice columns written in poetry. Even in the best of times, this sounds like a risky venture. Matt and his wife Lisa take another mortgage on their house to invest in the company, and then the housing market crashes.Matt goes back to his job at the newspaper, only to be laid off when newspapers begin to lose advertisers and readers. Lisa works at a boring job she hates for little money and expresses her dissatisfaction by buying collectibles that she hopes to resell on Ebay. Now their garage is filled with boxes of junk she is unable to unload.Their house will soon be in foreclosure, and their children will be forced to leave their lovely Catholic school and go to the dangerous neighborhood public school. Matt's father, who suffers from dementia, has moved in with them after he met a stripper who stole all of his money, and Lisa is contemplating an affair with her old boyfriend. What's a man to do?After Matt meets up with some young potheads at the 7-11 one night, he becomes enmeshed in their lives. He hangs out with them hoping to forget his troubles. Eventually, as sometimes happens when under the influence of pot, a plan is created that Matt hopes will solve his money problems.The author writes well for his characters. The disintegrating marriage of Matt and Lisa is sad to watch."We're in a perpetual stalemate here; lost. I can see how we got here- after each bad decision, after each failure we quietly logged our blame, our petty resentments; we constructed a case against each other that we never prosecuted. As long as both cases remained unstated, the charges sealed, we had a tacit peace; you don't mention this and I won't mention that, this and that growing and changing and becoming everything, until the only connection between us was this bridge of quiet guilt and recrimination."While Lisa and Matt fall apart, Matt's relationship with his dad is so touching. Anyone who has someone in their own family with dementia will relate to Matt and his dad, the loving patience Matt shows his father, the loss of a once-proud man's self-reliance.Fans of Jonathan Tropper's This Is Where I Leave You should run to get this book. As a woman, I find this glimpse into the male psyche fascinating. (The cover is even reminiscent of TV's Mad Men opening credits with the falling man.) Matt's poetry is cleverly sprinkled throughout the book, adding an extra dimension for the reader. Walter's look at the economic crisis through the prism of this one family is an emotional, poignant ride.
    • 5/5
      Ever heard of a website that combines poetry and financial advice? That's because it's a terrible idea. Just ask Matt Prior, a former newspaper business reporter who quit his job in order to start poetfolio.com. Now is completely broke and about to lose his house, his wife and his sanity. So what does he turn to? The logical thing middle-aged men turn to when their life has completely gone down the crapper: weed. This story is so unlike what I was expecting. And still exactly what I wanted. While Jasper Fforde is my favorite author by far, Jess Walter is right up there. Maybe it is because he is a former reporter, so I connect with him and his characters. Maybe it is because I have actually met him and at a book reading he gave a speech about how the newspaper industry was not dead and people who want to be reporters should not give up. Maybe it is because he is just damn good at writing. All of his books are so different from each other, but they are all good. I am going to say this one probably qualifies as one of my favorites, though. The book manages to be both heart-touchingly sad and laugh out loud funny at the same time. It is difficult to achieve this, and I salute Jess for managing it. Even after reading the poetry interspersed throughout the book, however, I am more convinced that getting financial advice from someone writing in verse is a bad, bad, bad idea.
    • 4/5
      Walter's protagonist, Matt Prior, is the everyman for the current age of recession and financial despair. Though Matt is something of a journalism school Job, his story is not limited to poignancy. It is also hilarious. Walter has crafted a superb combination of poetic allusion, street 'cred' and modern American family life.Absurd though not unbelievable and warm without being mawkish. It is also comforting in that no problems of mine can quite match those of the Prior family. Likewise, it is a bit of a cautionary tale for those in reduced circumstances who may be looking for a desperate way to save the day!This book was impossible to put down!