We Live in Water

The setting: 

A series of short stories in the lives of modern Americans. 

A bum on the street that has issues with his family. A working man that wonders if his own children are stealing from him. A dead-beat gambler in Idaho that screws the wrong lady and steals from her husband. A white collar convict that has to do community service in a school where many of the students never have contact with a male role model. Two tweakers try to sell a tv to a pawn shop to get enough money to eat. A law school student that never passes the bar and goes to Vegas with his best friend to find his best friend’s sister that has gone into prostitution. And a few more. 

I purchased Jess Walter’s book, Beautiful Ruins, for a song at the library (50 cents!). The library has a bunch of books out for sale when you first walk in, and I saw a picture of Italy on a book. I picked it up. Put it in my pocket. And then paid the librarian for it. 

Another day at the library, and another one of Jess Walter’s books, We Live in Water, seemed to jump out at me as we were wondering around the library. I picked it up. Put it in my pocket. And then I checked the book out from the library and left with the book then sitting their silently in my pullover as I left. 

I read the whole book in one night. 

The book is a pretty interesting, easy read, which was a great break from all the classical literature I have been reading to date. 

What the book is about

We Live in Water is a series of short stories about modern Americans. A couple of the stories struck a chord with me, and I’m looking forward to reading them again. A couple of noteworthy quotes I took from the book:

“Conversational Suburban” - a bum that has to make small talk with the foster parents of his son in a suburb says that speaking with the people in the suburb is like speaking another language. 

“Whole worlds exist beneath the surface.” 

“I guess remembering is better than living.” (Is this why I take so many pictures?) 

There are roughly 50,000,000 Americans currently on food stamps, and I haven’t read too many stories about what it means to live on food stamps, even though there are so many that are doing so every day. We Live in Water reminds me of the ol’ muckrakers, like Upton Sinclair, that try to shed light on the usually under reported perspective of an American life in poverty. 

The title was pretty interesting, We Live in Water, and was one of the reasons I checked this book out from the library. The analogy of struggling underneath water, never really being able to get out of it, always existing just below the surface, or right at it, seemed a propos for the genre. 

But really, the title comes from a story in the book about a dead-beat gambler in Idaho that messes up and has to make amends with a bookie. Things go badly for him. For some reason, he brought his son to the house where he met the characters, and the son, who was six, was looking at an 8 foot aquarium and noticed the fish moving back and forth, without much thought about where they were, or if the fish could ever leave their little life. The kid turns to his dad and asks, “Do we live in water?” Seeing the parallels to the fish swimming back and forth without questioning his surroundings and the people the kid saw in his life that acted the same way, it wasn’t too wrong of a question.

The reality is we do live in a type of water. It’s not as dense, but oxygen has mass. When you move your arm from side to side, you can feel the air move around your hand, like a fish that moves in water and can feel the water flow around his body. So in a way, we kinda do live like the fish in the aquarium.  

I liked the book and would recommend it to be read.