The Financial Lives of the Poets

Walter, Jess.  The Financial Lives of the Poets.  New York: HarperCollins, 2009.

[T]he truly stupid mistake was believing that when we fell, a net made of money could catch us.

- Matthew Prior in Jess Walter’s The Financial Lives of the Poets

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Thanks to the layovers and delays endemic to modern air travel, I had the pleasure of reading Jess Walter‘s The Financial Lives of the Poets in nearly one sitting.  I found the novel off-putting at first; Walter’s propensity for composing lists felt disruptive rather than stylistic, and the novel’s sex-obsessed protagonist-narrator, Matthew Prior, diminished my remaining hope that men achieve emotional maturity as they age.  A few chapters in, however, I came to appreciate the novel as a commentary on life in the current economic recession.

At the novel’s outset, the Prior family — Matthew, his wife, Lisa, their two sons, and Matthew’s senile father — clings to a middle-class dream founded on car loans, mortgages, and home equity lines of credit.  After quitting his job as a newspaper reporter in order to found poetfolio.com, a site that blends poetry with financial advice, Matthew panics at the uncertainties of self-employment and returns to his old job, only to be laid off weeks later.  Realizing that he owes more on his Nissan than the car is worth, that his home is going into foreclosure, and that he can no longer afford private school tuition for his sons, the desperate Matthew determines that the only way to turn a quick profit in this economy is to become a drug dealer.  Thus The Financial Lives of the Poets traces the journey of a middle-aged, sleep-deprived, unemployed man who cashes in what remains of his 401(k) in an effort to procure large quantities of marijuana.

Hyperbolic as Matthew’s story is, the factors that drive his darkly humorous decisions ring uncomfortably true.  There is all too much reality in Matthew’s repeated efforts to figure out which company owns his mortgage and how to get in touch with an actual human being at that company.  Particularly insightful is Walter’s linking of financial and marital stability; as the Priors’ financial security declines, so, too, does the quality of their relationship, as Lisa uses Facebook and text messaging to reconnect with her former high school flame and heir to a successful family business.  His job loss and descent into bankruptcy reveal to Matthew how much of his middle-class happiness — his home, his car, his children’s education, his job, his retirement, his nuclear family — is grounded in money, and how the sudden loss of that money threatens to destroy everything he holds dear.  It is a lesson all too many have been forced to learn in recent years.

Within the satire, though, lies hope.  Ultimately, The Financial Lives of the Poets is a tale of humility, of learning to live with less, of valuing relationships and memories more than material items purchased through unsustainable debt.  It is a story of scaled-back dreams that, in a way, prove more satisfying than middle-class success.  Amidst all the unlikely plot devices and black comedy, Walter’s novel emerges as timely, teachable, and illuminating.

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