Jess Walter is an American author of six novels, one book of
short stories and one nonfiction book. He received the Edgar Allan Poe Award
for his novel Citizen Vince in 2005,
and his short story compilation We Live
in Water (2013) won the Pacific Northwest Booksellers Award. His work has
been featured in Best American Short Stories, Best American Nonrequired
Reading, Harper's, Esquire, McSweeney's, and Byliner. Walter lives in
Washington with his wife and three daughters.
Being a straight white male, Walter is a man who fits
perfectly within the classic literary canon. He has a habit of writing “loser
men” who are down on their luck and turn to questionable means to make things
write. In The Financial Life of Poets, a
down-on-his-luck poet who turns to illegal activity to provide for his family.
So, it’s a bit of a surprise that this short story would take place from the
point of view of a successful woman who is entertaining a movie star who is
questioning himself.
The only part of the story that is consistent with his
larger body of works is one thing: his voice. Famous Actor’s narrator and actor have very strong and clear
personalities through the pages. Walter takes his typical miserable guy setup
and tells the story from the perspective of a woman. It is through these voices
that we learn more about these characters and begin to care about them and
their histories.
What do you think the author is trying to say with the voice
of Katherine? Do you think the story works better in her POV than the Famous
Actor or not? And why?
I really didn't like this story or the characters in the story. Not that it wasn't interesting or well-written, but the characters and dialogue annoyed me. I'm having a hard time deciding if the characters are supposed to be portrayed as hyper normal or showing that there is no such thing as normal. I kind of liked the narrator's voice and some of the quirks to her personality, but there were also a lot of parts where I felt like it was trying too hard to be quirky and to throw in little things. I'm not sure if I would've liked the story better in his POV. I think it might have made him seem more genuine and less generic, more like a real person (they both struck me as very real and unreal people) because we would be in his head and not just getting his dialogue. But then at the same time it would've taken away her perspective, and I liked her slightly more than him, so I might have disliked it even more than I already did.
ReplyDeleteI think what Jess Walter was going for, or at least what I took away from this, was no matter how special we feel or insecure we are, we're no more screwed up than anyone else. Everybody has their own issues to deal with and that makes us all pretty equal. It showed through Katherine's "no fucks given" attitude toward Famous Actor that she couldn't care less about his difficult life as a wealthy actor because she had problems of her own. Walter writes from Katherine's POV, "He really seemed to think famous people were the only ones who didn't know themsleves."
ReplyDeleteI think it worked from her perspective because the story was an observation of Famous Actor instead of it being Katherine's story. If it were in Famous Actor's POV I think we would lose the funny opinions about his terrible movies, which makes him such a loser. For what Walter was attempting to do, I think it worked, but his tendency to write stories of sad men felt too familiar and is something I can learn from.
I sort of laughed at Walter's story because of how real the situation seemed. If you look at magazines or the media a famous actor/actress is going through something that an "ordinary" person goes through. I think this is why the story benefits from Katherine's perspective, because of her attitude towards the Famous Actor. I agree with Ryan's view of the voice of Katherine. It doesn't matter how special you think you are, you're just as screwed up than anyone else.
ReplyDeleteI think the POV is more beneficial in Katherine's story, than if the it were the Famous Actor. Katherine's humor and attitude towards him keeps the reality that everyone is connected. If the POV was from the Famous Actor I feel it would lose that quality.
I like this story for it's arresting beginning, and the way in which the tension builds in a flat plain outward instead of a deep hole downward. The narrators perceptive statement about her boyfriend, when she explains how his infidelity wasn't as much of a problem as his need to tell her about it made me think. Since she knew, and he knew, that he was going to do it again, it was a farce for him to even be guilty or sad about it, which ties into the deadening of the characters own emotions that is referenced throughout the story. .
ReplyDeleteIt is good to know that Jess Walters is a man who writes demure sad "loser men" on the whole. This explains more why I got a sense that the pieces that narrator chose to embellish about their opinions felt more heavy handed and less emotionally driven, like the moments where she speaks about wanting to stab her ovaries because of the chick flick. While it speaks to the way in which Jess Walters may see women affected by things in the public sphere, were this story written by woman, I wonder what she would have chosen as the scene that would make her want to stab her ovaries.
The tension builds in a flat plain outwards because we start with a sadly tranquilized character, that gets converged on by larger issues, that tranquilize them further, and the hopelessness washes over the reader not like drowning, but like sleeping.
Interestingly as I read, I find myself more and more convinced that Walters doesn't necessarily want the protagonist to be completely belivable, especially given the last line, "You're one of us." I thought maybe Walters was making a transparent statement about their own knowledge that it may seem hard to believe that they were writing from a female perspective. It was as though the choice of narrator tone almost lined up with a literary YA novel that didn't quite impress due to it's relatability. Although we learn much about her interesting life, and the way she feels, and finally eventually her name and the way she lies about it, the story ends up being about the Famous actor, adding to the conciete in my mind that the author is aware possibly of the fact that his intimations aren't necessarily a completely truthful feminine perspective.
But I hesitate to say whether it's a viable opinion to believe that there are feminine and masculine perspectives that differ when it comes to losing your little sister and coping with your parents never being the same. I think that those parts of the story, are exactly as I believe they are, and that makes me feel like the pieces about chick flicks, and objectification, are there to further a discussion, and are valuable.
I cannot definitively say if the perspective change would make the story better, but I do think, that the character is very interesting as it is now, and it would be unfortunate to know less about them.
I believe that the only way this story could work is through the voice of Katherine. The point of the story is that Famous Actor wants to be normal, but that he can't achieve that because he doesn't respect a 'normal' person and doesn't accept that even with her 'normal' life, she still has issues and problems. The very way the story is set up precludes him as the narrator, the story is about her perception of him as based on his actions, and her opinions on the films he's acted in. The way the second section on is structured is that she describes one of his movies, and then transitions to the scene of their night together, with more reflections on the movie stitched into the scene. She sees him and dislikes him both because of his actions and because she can't disassociate him from the movies he's been in. She refers to him as Terrific Todd and Famous Actor because of both the legal restrictions preventing her from naming him and because she associates him with the roles he's played. There's a fascinating duality there, both the actor and the role, along with the duality of the narrator as normal but with problems of her own. It's that duality that makes the story interesting. If it was written from Terrible Todd's perspective then we'd only have half of the duality that we get since he's not perceptive enough to notice enough about Katherine as she noted about him. We'd only have half the story.
ReplyDeleteI loved the way this story worked, although I am still grappling with why the POV is Katherine's and not the Famous Actor's. I do appreciate Katherine's character, and the humor and observations she lends to the story do have value, but I have yet to understand the POV as a definitive author's choice. To me, that doesn't make the POV a flaw in the story, but just something I have to spend more time unpacking. Her perspective lends a lot to generating thought and questions in my mind -- how would her character change from another POV? How would the story as a whole change? I appreciate that I can't definitively answer these questions, because it's left up to reader interpretation, and in a sense, readers imposing their experiences and biases onto the story. That's what we do when we read a story, anyway, and I felt that if I were able to say definitively how, when, where the story would change from a different point of view, I would be turned off from enjoying the story. I enjoy the open-endedness of these questions.
ReplyDeleteI think Katherine's POV works well with the piece. I think we are told this story through Katherine's POV is smart because we see the life of celebrity's out of context always. We are seen through second, third, fourth, fifth steps away from the actual person, so seeing this account from Katherine brings us closer to the Famous Actor. In a way this can be considered meta-fiction in that way, but it is really cool that we get all of this narrative in such a short piece.
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