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Jess Walter: 'An Exercise of Play and Wonder'

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‘For Jess Walter, writing is a place of ludic discovery and invention, an exercise of play and wonder,’ said Professor Eric Freeze, introducing this year’s MacGregor Visiting Writer to the Wabash community Wednesday night. And for the next hour, Walter immersed the Korb Hall audience in that play and wonder, reading excerpts from his best-selling novels Beautiful Ruins and The Financial Lives of Poets and a piece from his upcoming collection of short stories, and answering myriad questions from the audience about his work and craft.

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'We've already had great conversations about writing,' Walter said of his time with Professors Eric Freeze and Warren Rosenberg and their students. Walter, a National Book Award finalist and winner of the Edgar Allan Poe Award, talked with students in the College's creative writing track during lunch.

a man in a red plaid shirt talking to another man

Walter enjoys his lunch with students. In an interview not long after the publication of his first novel, Walter said, 'Being paid to write fiction is like winning a $10 lottery ticket every day. You’re not going to get rich, but damn, if you don’t feel lucky'

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Professor Eric Freeze was Walter's host during the writer's visit

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Walter also spoke with students in Professor Warren Rosenberg's Introduction to Fiction literature course. 'The class has been studying some of the greatest short stories ever written, works by Hawthorne, Willa Cather, and Ernest Hemingway,' Professor Rosenberg said. 'We've been intently discussing and debating their meanings and techniques. But of course we couldn't talk to these writers about how and why they wrote their stories. But when we read Jess Walter's wonderful story 'Thief,' the students were excited to be able to engage the author in a discussion of his own story.'

a man sitting at a table

'The students learned much from hearing Walter talk about how he came to write the story, that his practice is to start with a situation—this one autobiographical—and then start to write, without knowing where he'll end up—in this case with a unexpected twist at the end.'

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Nick Gray, Mark Troiano, and Ben Niksch take part in the discussion.

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Nick Gray ’15 and Ben Niksch ’15

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Alejandro Meyer ’13 and Ryan Horner ’15

a man sitting at a table talking to a woman

Jess Walter speaks with Professor Rosenberg's students. During his reading that evening, Walter was asked about the future of the novel. He was cautiously optimistic: 'You get an experience reading a novel that you get nowhere else. As a reader, you're part of creating this thing. It's not like a movie. I think of it as being like a piece of music I write, and the reader plays.'

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Among the challenges for today's writers: 'The pace of information coming at us today is not the pace at which you write fiction. Stepping out of that information stream and letting the river go by long enough to write fiction is difficult.'

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A student takes notes during Walter's visit.

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