The Financial Lives of the Freelancers

I read a novel by Jess Walters called The Financial Lives of the Poets. In it, a hapless financial reporter finds himself laid off and unemployable and makes a stunning series of ill-thought-out mistakes in an effort to cling to his middle-class existence. The main character was a bit of a pud, but that probably only bothered me because he was my kind of pud -- his stunned disbelief at being in the position he's in and his utter lack of direction, now that he's adrift, were all too familiar to me. Laid-off, unemployable, scrabbling for freelance dimes that I swear used to be dollars -- yeah. It's hard to feel at a distance from that guy.

It was a still a good, funny, solid read though, and I appreciated this gem, in the acknowledgements at the end:

"...and all of my dismayed and displaced newspaper friends, whose talent and commitment deserve a better world."

I'll pretend he said "and magazine" and make myself part of the group. Blerg.