We Live in Water, NYT Book Review

Hard-Luck Cases
‘We Live in Water: Stories,’ by Jess Walter

By ALLISON GLOCK
Published: February 8, 2013

The men in Jess Walter’s pungent new story collection, “We Live in Water,” are coming apart. These men — and they are exclusively men, save a few catalytic female characters — are what society (and ex-wives) commonly label disappointments. Trading in ill-considered choices, they have made a habit of letting folks down — their women, their kids, their friends, their creditors and, chiefly, themselves. Walter’s protagonists endure a buffet of self- inflicted misfortune, everything from meth addiction to dodgy parenting, often served in a combo platter with a side of unlucky in love. His characters are all searching, with varying levels of commitment and insight. None succeed.


Instead, after years of deflecting criticism and judgment in favor of ego puffing, serial infidelities and soothing, mind- addling chemical baths, they finally hit the wall of recognition when it is too late — their girl is gone for good, their son eyes them with intractable pity, they are about to be beaten to death and tossed in a lake. Unlike what one is taught in therapy, their aha moments bring little comfort or joy. No one in Walter’s stories is made whole by epiphany. No one rushes out and buys an elliptical trainer or bran flakes. When self-awareness comes, as it does for a recovering addict named Bit in the opening story, “Anything Helps,” it offers only more gristle to choke down.

“Why can’t we be the things that we see and think? Why do we always have to be these sad stories?” Bit laments in group, still clinging to his survivalist, alcoholic charm. At the end, after an enervating exchange with his estranged pubescent son, now living in foster care with well- meaning but simple Christians, Bit’s enlightenment leaves him longing for death, believing all anyone becomes is “a twitching bunch of memories and mistakes, regrets.”

All of which is to say, this is not “Beautiful Ruins” — more just ruin; beauty here is something for suckers. Not that the book is a downer. Well, maybe a little. But that’s only because Walter is unflinching and, possibly, a bit depressed, which is what happens to any compassionate, reasonable person who stares too closely at the world. (As Walter does to captivating effect in “Statistical Abstract for My Hometown, Spokane, Washington,” which juxtaposes a running bit about bike theft with gut-punching observations about poverty and spousal abuse.) Walter makes you laugh, then makes you feel a little queasy about it. This is the alchemy of the damned.

Any wisdom, when it comes, comes from children — or rather, from the loss of their innocence and our observation of it. We see children in dire straits, children of tweakers, gamblers and other fallen men, and then we see what becomes of these kids when they too have grown, and reached, and failed.

Wade, a white-collar criminal sentenced to a pilot program tutoring second graders and sophomores, must read the same book every time to his student Drew, a waif with no healthy male role models in his impecunious life.

“Don’t you want to bring another book?” Wade asks.

Drew demurs, says he doesn’t know what’s in those other books.

“Isn’t that the fun, finding out?”

Drew remains dubious. He knows better. How for most of the planet, “finding out” is rarely fun. How when life is at its harshest, knowing exactly what the ending will be counts more than a hot dinner.

The last five pages of the book Wade reads to Drew contain no words. They are, Walter writes, the pages the boy likes best.

It is a moment of exquisite empathy. The stillness of the scene, a child safe on a man’s lap, transported, if only for a few minutes, is devastating. It calls to mind both the unparalleled power of stories and their limitations. (Few are the writers who appreciate how, not just for some things but for most things that matter, there are no words.)

Walter provides a few respites from the enticing murk. The naïve stalker in “Virgo” who alters horoscopes to manipulate his lover’s moods is funny and pitiful, as is the narrator of the zombie apocalypse romp, “Don’t Eat Cat,” who rightfully declaims: “Sure, the world seems crazy now. But wouldn’t it seem just as crazy if you were alive when they sacrificed peasants, when people were born into slavery, when they killed firstborn sons . . . ” And on and on, summarizing, “Maybe it’s always the end of the world.”

This is funny because it’s true, and horrible because it’s true, and funny because it’s horrible, and so on, forever.

Fortunately, Walter is a bighearted man who excels at writing about other bighearted, if broken, men. That generosity of spirit, coupled with Walter’s seeming inability to look away from the messy bits, elevates these stories from dirges to symphonies. For Walter, we do live in water, an immense soup of muddled humanity sloshing around and spilling over, soaking us all. Everything is a reflection of everything else, with no such thing as disconnection. Or isolation. Or edges. Or solid ground.

“Whole worlds exist beneath the surface,” thinks the lost son in the title story as he stares into a still lake. “And maybe you can’t see down there . . . but there’s a part of you that knows.”

Walter does see down there. He understands that no matter how often we insist we won’t be able to live with ourselves, we really have no other choice. It’s sink or swim.

Allison Glock, the author of the memoir “Beauty Before Comfort,” is a contributing editor for Garden & Gun magazine. She is at work on a poetry collection and, with her husband, a young adult novel.