Richard Russo sets his latest novel in Thomaston, New York, where the defunct tannery, once the lifeblood of the blue-collar town, has poisoned the river and its citizenry. Lou C. "Lucy" Lynch and his wife, Sarah, who inherited the family’s convenience store and slowly moved up the social ladder, are preparing for a trip to Italy. Before leaving the region for the first time in his life, Lucy starts a memoir that divulges his needy boyhood and his relationship with his cynical mother and blindly optimistic father. He also writes of his and Sarah’s dual obsession with Bobby Marconi, whose teenage anger led him away from Thomaston forever.
No novelist writes better about struggling (or dying) small-town and hardscrabble working-class life—and the difficulties of escaping that existence—than Russo. Bridge of Sighs (see our review on page 29), Russo’s first novel since the Pulitzer Prize–winning Empire Falls (2001), once again asks universal questions about how family and class determine destiny and the degree to which people can change. Is choice only an illusion, or do we ever truly "stand before a hundred doors, choose to enter one, where we’re faced with a hundred more and then choose again?" Russo asks in Bridge of Sighs. Or might those doors close faster than we can walk through them?
The limits of opportunity and the weight of the American dream hang heavily over Russo’s novels, which reflect his own upbringing. Russo was born in the working-class town of Johnstown, New York, and raised in Gloversville, once the center of American glove making. His father, a construction worker, left the family when Russo was young; tortured father-son relationships feature prominently in his fiction. Russo earned his undergraduate and graduate degrees from the University of Arizona; during summers, he worked on construction and road crews. His first novel, Mohawk (1986), introduced readers to the author’s central themes—blighted small towns in New York and New England and the effects on their inhabitants; the (im)possibility of change; luck and acceptance; community pride; and the ties of friendship and love. Since that first novel, Russo’s characters—misfits, failures, angry youth, eccentrics, the unemployed, and the faded upper class, all of whom he conveys with deep compassion, humanity, and humor—have endeared themselves to a wide audience.
A retired Professor of English and American Literature at Colby College, Russo, who has two grown daughters, lives in Maine with his wife.
Another Blue-Collar Town
The Risk Pool (1988)
In his previous novel Mohawk, Russo introduced the blue-collar town of Mohawk in upstate New York; here, he continues the sad, hilarious, and outlandish saga of the decaying town. Written while his father was dying, the story is based on their relationship.
The Story: Ned Hall, "Sam’s son," tries his best to grow up in the desperate, decaying town of Mohawk. When his mother has a nervous breakdown, Ned moves in with his father, a perpetual drifter, in dilapidated rooms above the department store. Soon, Ned starts to pick up his father’s bad habits, but he remains torn between both unstable parents.
"This is a superbly original, maliciously funny book, peopled by characters that most of us would back away from plenty fast if they ever lurched toward our barstool. It is Mr. Russo’s brilliant, deadpan writing that gives their wasted lives and miserable little town such haunting power and insidious charm." Jack Sullivan, New York Times, 12/18/88
The Movie: 2008, starring Tom Hanks, and directed by Lawrence Kasdan.
The Best Seller
Nobody’s Fool (1993)
Mohawk was destined for oblivion; North Bath, New York, the setting of Russo’s third novel, is one small step up—barely. Russo demonstrates the same pathos for his characters’ lives, however, with his trademark mix of humor, compassion, and despair.
The Story: In 1984, 60-year-old Sully, a classic underachiever, finds himself divorced from his wife, seeing another man’s spouse, and crippled by a bad knee. To make matters worse, life in North Bath isn’t what it used to be. The town, a defunct mineral spa, abuts the prosperous resort area of Schuyler Springs but enjoys none of its benefits; Sully’s landlady’s banker son may soon evict him; his estranged son has problems of his own—and the specter of Sully’s abusive father follows him everywhere he goes.
"Dialogue is what Mr. Russo does best, and the fun of this novel is in hearing these guys (and women) talk, giving one another a hard time—they’re funny, quick and inventive. … Like his characters, Mr. Russo deals with interesting themes (he’d have to, in all these pages): change and stasis, free will and obligation, luck, responsibility, forgiveness—the bonds of community, friendship and family." Francine Prose, New York Times Book Review, 6/20/93
"Russo’s pointillist technique makes his characters astonishingly real, and gradually the tiny events and details coalesce, build up in meaning and awaken in the reader a desire to climb into the page and ask for a beer. … In Nobody’s Fool the random hand of chance is everything, and the best that can be hoped for in the end is a shift in luck." E. Annie Proulx, Chicago Tribune, 5/30/93
The Movie: 1994, starring Paul Newman, Jessica Tandy, Bruce Willis, and Melanie Griffith, and directed by Robert Benton.
The Academic Satire
Straight Man (1997)
In this academic satire, Russo diverges from his tales of hardscrabble, blue-collar life. He nonetheless still creates all-too-human characters—hilarious, sympathetic, and pathetic all at once.
The Story: The rebellious, once-promising William Henry (Hank) Devereaux, Jr., chairs the English department at a small, second-rank college in Pennsylvania, which harbors some of the biggest, ugliest wars ever seen in academia. In a single week, Hank alienates a colleague and considers the allure of another, imagines his wife’s affair, threatens to kill a campus duck on TV, and is jailed and hospitalized. Then, of course, there’s his ailing, philandering father and his own midlife crisis to consider.
"What makes Straight Man grandly universal is Russo’s ability to convey how despair and resignation bubble up as people drift into middle age. What drives Hank and some of his colleagues out of their well-educated gourds is the realization that the lives they are currently leading are, indeed, the only lives they’re going to get. It’s that simple." Deidre Donahue, USA Today, 7/3/97
"[Hank’s] creator knows inside out the gifts and challenges of social realism, of deep truths posing as one-liners, and he casts those lessons within the humble guise of an eminently flawed and witty man." Gail Caldwell, Boston Globe, 7/13/97
The Pulitzer Prize Winner
Empire Falls (2001)
"The history of American literature may show that Richard Russo wrote the last great novel of the 20th century," noted The Christian Science Monitor about Empire Falls. A quintessential American novel, it uses a cross section of society to paint a panoramic view of small-town life in an economically depressed former mill town in Maine, which could stand in for many such towns in the United States.
The Story: Miles Roby, manager of the Empire Grill, once saw beyond his blue-collar life, but circumstance dictated his return to Empire Falls. Now trapped, he must deal with his meddling father, his troubled brother, a member of the town’s fading ruling family, his soon-to-be-ex-wife, and their adolescent daughter, Tick, who he hopes will one day escape from Empire Falls. Like everyone else, Miles once had dreams of his own, but they always clashed with his obligations and his family’s history.
"Clear writing, a sharp eye for life’s accidental absurdities and sympathy for universal dilemmas are Russo’s raw ingredients. … This genetic secret is essential to the dynamics of present-day Empire Falls, but it also introduces the new Russo reader to the qualities that make his books such a good read—the keen wit and subtle humor applied to conflicts that cross the boundaries of race and class, issues that hit the moral and ethical core of his characters and, thus, readers." Robin Vidimos, Denver Post, 5/27/01
"To create a world with such a rich history and such real characters needs an incredibly large scope for a novel, but Russo expertly manages it, showing how the sins of the parents are visited upon the children who hope for a better future but are limited by their surroundings." Gavin Quinn, Chicago Sun-Times, 5/27/01
The Movie: 2005, TV, starring Ed Harris, Philip Seymour Hoffman, and Helen Hunt, and directed by Fred Schepisi.
