Episode 35 with The Brilliant, Best-Selling, and Award-Winning (and Obama-Accolade-Getting) Jess Walter

Show Notes and Links to Jess Walter’s Work and Allusions/Texts from Episode

 

On Episode 35, Pete talks with Jess Walter about his incredible fiction, his nonfiction roots, basketball, writing genres, chill-inducing lines, Jess’ masterpieces Beautiful Ruins and The Cold Millions, and much more. 

 

Jess Walter is the author of nine books, most recently the national bestseller The Cold Millions and #1 New York Times bestseller, Beautiful Ruins; The Zero, finalist for the National Book Award; and Citizen Vince, winner of the Edgar Award. His short story collection, We Live in Water, was selected by Barack Obama as one of his favorite reads of 2019. His work has been published in 32 languages and his short fiction has appeared three times in Best American Short Stories.

Article on Background of Beautiful Ruins

Jess Walter’s Personal Website

Jess Writes about His “Esquire Magazine” Credentials and Interviewing Kurt Vonnegut 

Article about POTUS Barack Obama listing We Live in Water as one of his favorite reads of 2019

Buy Beautiful Ruins Here

Buy The Cold Millions Here

     Jess Walter describes the thrill of his short-story collection We Live in Water being listed by former POTUS Barack Obama as one of his favorite books of 2019-at around 3:10

 

Jess describes his place among the greatest basketball players of all-time (and among writers-”for a writer, [he’s] decent-at around 5:15

 

So cool! Jess describes playing on a basketball team with great writers Sherman Alexie, Shann Ray, Natalie Diaz, called “The Spokane Dirty Realists”-at around 6:15

 

Jess talks Gonzaga hoops (Go Zags!)-at around 7:10

 

Jess describes the cool 1-on-1 game that he has played throughout much of the pandemic with his brother-at around 7:55

 

Jess and Pete talk about the pandemic’s impact on aging basketball players-at around 9:40

 

Jess talks about wanting to play basketball into his 60s and 70s, maybe playing against Slick Watts or some great Seattle legends; Pete references upcoming guest Jon Finkel’s excellent book, Hoops Heist, about the insular and special basketball community that is Seattle-at around 10:45

 

Jess describes the importance of growing up in Spokane in a blue-collar family and literary influences-at around 12:05

 

Jess discusses the childhood injury that led to his “falling in love with books” and later getting into science-fiction and loving the inventiveness and play of Kurt Vonnegut-at around 12:45

 

Jess discusses some formative writers in his own journey to becoming a writer-”1970s cinematic realism” like Dog Day Afternoon, Raymond Carver, Hemingway, and in discovering that he loved nonfiction and journalism, Joan Didion-at around 14:00

 

Jess talks about “stalking” writers as a fan, writing letters and bugging them, and -at around 14:50 

 

Jess talks about getting press credentials to set up a one-on-one meeting with Kurt Vonnegut at Gonzaga University in the mid-80s, memorialized in this article-at around 15:30

 

Pete and Jess discuss the similarity between Jess’ fandom of Kurt Vonnegut, and scenes from Tobias Wolff’s Old School in which poet Robert Frost is a visitor to a prep school; this leads to a broader discussion about writers and celebrity-at around 17:40

 

Pete and Jess discuss “Bullet in the Brain,” Tobias Wolff’s epic short story that has inspired the podcast and its title-at around 21:45

 

Jess, off the top of his head (!), reads the opening line of One Hundred Years of Solitude and talks about its significance as a “chill-inducing line” for him-at around 23:45

 

Jess talks about trusting himself as a reader to give himself the inspiration for writing, pointing to truisms from his short story “Wheelbarrow Kings”-at around 25:50

 

Jess talks about his early writing: journalism and his first book, based on Ruby Ridge-The Truth and Tragedy of the Randy Weaver Family-at around 28:00

 

Pete and Jess talk about the common link of many great writers, such as Jeff Pearlman, guest on Episode 33, and their formative years in crime reporting-at around 29:15

 

Jess talks about Beautiful Ruins and his distaste for classifying literature, particularly “historical fiction”-at around 31:20

 

Jess reads and discusses the importance of his epigraph for Beautiful Ruins-at around 33:00

 

Jess talks about the importance of the title of Beautiful Ruins, discovered in a thrilling fashion many years after he’d started the book, and how it informs a throughline of the novel-at around 34:25

 

Jess talks about and reads from The Cold Millions and reflects on its title’s importance-at around 35:40

 

Jess and Pete talk about the masterful ways in which Jess uses flashback/flashforward/juxtaposition in his last two novels to craft incredible storylines; this leads to a shared appreciation of the last scene of The Godfather Part II, discussed on Episode 25-at around 37:40

 

Jess discusses the non-linear construction of The Cold Millions and Beautiful Ruins-at around 40:00

 

Jess talks about the line between fiction and history in his writing of The Cold Millions-at around 42:00

 

Pete talks about the power of the ending-due to its structure-of The Cold Millions-at around 43:45

 

Jess talks about the parallelism of War and Peace and The Cold Millions and its ending-at around 45:00

 

Jess reads from the ending of Beautiful Ruins-CHILLS!-at around 44:40 (POSSIBLE PLOT SPOILER-if you don’t want to know the last part of the book, skip this part: 48:10 to 49:15