61 pages • 2-hour read
So Far Gone
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Background
Authorial and Socio-Geographical Context: Jess Walter and Spokane, Washington
So Far Gone is the latest work in Walter’s oeuvre to feature his native Spokane, Washington, as a setting. The novel harkens back to Walter’s beginnings as a crime reporter writing for the Spokesman-Review newspaper. In 1992, Walter covered the Ruby Ridge standoff, and his reporting formed the basis for his first book, Every Knee Shall Bow, a non-fiction account of this event published in 1995.
Walter branched out into fiction in 2001 with his debut novel, Over Tumbled Graves. Walter’s debut, along with his next two novels, featured Spokane as a setting, diving deep into its unsavory side in keeping with conventions of the crime fiction genre. Despite early attempts to write other settings into his work, Walter realized that the Pacific Northwest had an underappreciated literary tradition. This gave him the freedom to look at his hometown and its neighboring locales differently, considering how he might render it as though he were a visitor.
Walter also describes Spokane as an “isolated city,” which creates many story possibilities that allow him to disguise the city and also to introduce artificial elements that fit perfectly into the setting as he knows it (Ehrnwald, Gabe, et al. “A Conversation with Jess Walter.” Willow Springs Magazine, 2010). This doesn’t stop him from trying to examine Spokane’s idiosyncrasies, underscoring what separates it from its regional neighbors. His previous novel, The Cold Millions, is a historical novel that depicts the beginnings of the city’s labor movement in the early 20th century. Similarly, So Far Gone examines how the radical far-right political movements have influenced the attitudes of everyday citizens in Spokane. This speaks to Walter’s interest in capturing how the world affects the isolated city, allowing its true character to shine through the people Walter evokes in his writing.
Cultural Context: The Post-Truth Era
Walter’s novel captures the tensions of what some media outlets have dubbed the post-truth era, an emerging phenomenon in the 21st century in which public trust in institutions has degraded to such an extent that political opponents disagree not only on matters of opinion but on matters of fact. Despite the vast availability of resources that provide evidence-based grounds for truth, there also exist disinformation resources that reinforce subjective biases and influence decision-making.
These debates were precipitated in 2016 by the election of United States President Donald Trump and the Brexit referendum in the United Kingdom. Both outcomes were partly attributed to disinformation campaigns that captured the imaginations of populist movements.
In the case of Trump’s campaign, the populist movement was galvanized by various unfounded claims. One prominent example was his racist assertion that the government of Mexico was sending criminals to settle in the United States. By inventing a problem that appealed to his supporters’ emotions, Trump convinced them that he was committed to solving the problem, leading to his dramatic platform to build a border wall. A similar case occurred in the United Kingdom, where pro-Brexit lobbyists convinced voters that the British government’s contribution to the European Union was an unnecessary expense that could have been diverted into the National Health Service. While economists almost uniformly disagreed with this assertion, public surveys published years after the referendum showed that there were more British residents who believed that the claim was true than untrue. By the end of 2016, Oxford University Press would call “post-truth” the Word of the Year, citing the impact that the concept has had on social movements and political development.
Walter’s novel focuses on the impact that this post-truth climate has on the rural Pacific Northwest. A key element of protagonist Rhys Kinnick’s backstory is that he goes into self-exile after losing his temper with his son-in-law, Shane, who strongly supports right-wing conspiracy theories. An early scene in the novel shows Shane’s post-truth politics in action, using assertions about media control and Christian nationalism to stir Rhys’s temper. When Rhys returns to society years later, he reckons with the impact that his impulsive decision to leave had on his family. This extends Walter’s commentary on post-truth to the topic of escapism.
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