Jess Walter
Jess Walter
Jess Walteris an American author of six novels, a collection of short stories, and a non-fiction book. His books have been published in twenty-six countries and translated into twenty-eight languages. He is the recipient of the Edgar Allan Poe Award, among others, and was a finalist for the National Book Award in 2006...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionAuthor
Date of Birth20 July 1965
CountryUnited States of America
motivation real believe
All we have is the story we tell. Everything we do, every decision we make, our strength, weakness, motivation, history, and character-what we believe-none of it is real; it's all part of the story we tell. But here's the thing: it's our goddamned story!
life real character
I think so, too. I know I felt that way. For years. It was as if I was a character in a movie and the real action was about to start at any minute. But I think some people wait forever, and only at the end of their lives do they realize that their life has happened while they were waiting for it to start.
corners energies figure throwing ultimately various
Ultimately if you're a journalist, one day you're writing about figure skating, one day a political debate. I loved that about reporting. I like throwing my energies into various corners of the world.
art feeds people twitter whose works
There are some people whose Twitter feeds are works of art. They intuitively understand how much of themselves to put out there.
asked dexter dive fewer great joan less likely maybe mourn people piano pick played playing programs route
I teach in M.F.A. programs now, and I think that's a great way to become a novelist, but I mourn that Pete Dexter and Joan Didion's route is maybe less likely because there are fewer of those jobs. I always liken it to playing piano in some great dive jazz bar. You didn't pick the songs, you played what people asked for, but you got your chops.
explode flames
I think I would explode in flames of irony if I were to option an idea that I was satirizing in a novel.
binge hunch keyboard morning played regimen tend totally until
My writing regimen is not very regimented. I tend to be a binge writer, working sometimes in the morning and sometimes all night. When I get going I like to hunch over the keyboard until I feel totally played out.
poetry
My poetry is the most disappointing thing for me that I've ever written. When I say I can write everything, I don't say I can write everything well.
My poems... the ones that start out as jokes become these big ponderous things and the ones that start out ponderous devolve into jokes.
assign cops criminals genre itself minority spies stories suppose suspense
I think suspense should be like any other color on a writer's palette. I suppose I'm in the minority but I think it's crazy for 'literary fiction' to divorce itself from stories that are suspenseful, and assign anything with cops or spies or criminals to some genre ghetto.
almost arch good imitation lives pale photo understand
I think celebrity has become almost normalized. I feel like we all live our lives in a pale imitation of celebrity. With Facebook, we choose a photo that is not too good a photo - we're more arch than that. We're our own celebrity publicists. We understand it so innately.
create desire hero myth perverse pure triumphant victim wake
There was a real conflation of hero and victim in the wake of 9/11, in our perverse desire to create a triumphant myth out of pure tragedy.
bay behalf created electronic guantanamo war
The war in Iraq, the abuse of detainees, electronic eavesdropping, Guantanamo Bay - these things were all done on our behalf and they may turn out in the end to have created more terrorists.
publicists
With Facebook and Twitter, we're all our own little publicists in a way.