Richard Russo: Trajectory

Soooo… I am not the hugest fan of collections of short stories.  There was a time I enjoyed them.  I used to read those Best Short Stories compilations.  Somehow I got over it.  I like the longer narrative.  I read the occasional short story in the New Yorker but it seems like every other one is written by some hot new Asian writer.  I don't know.  There are some good ones but I just kind of got out of the habit. I am not sure it is so different even when a writer I like comes out with a collection but… Richard Russo… definitely one of my faves… when he writes… I read.

He has a new collection.  “Trajectory”.  It is… great.  Four pieces and maybe I like them because they are a little longer than your usual short story.  All the stories involve people at “difficult” times in their lives.  Three of them are about men who are perhaps past their prime but...still alive.  Still coping.

Desperate people.  Funny people.  Broken people.  My people.

“Horsemen” tells the story of a female english professor dealing with her past, her impaired son, her caretaker husband and memories of an old laureate genius who told her her writing was perfect but, didn't have it when she was a grad student.  She experiences all in the context of discovering an entitled student plagiarizing his final paper.  So much texture here in 38 pages.

The next story, “Voice” follows a man on a group trip to Venice for Biennale.  I had never heard of Biennale before but I was reading this in europe while it was going on.

http://www.labiennale.org/en/Home.html

It is clearly too sophisticated for my understanding but serves as a nice backdrop for a tour with his brother with whom he is estranged, running from (or at least hiding from) a humiliation at his university where he is one of the leading scholars on… wait for it...Jane Austen.  Just a lost, lonely man with a problem in his family in Venice.

“Intervention” tells the story of a New England realtor trying to sell houses in a declining market and stuck with his sister's house, which is full of her life accumulations.  He has a brother too and memories of a father who was a saver and a brother who is a deal guy. Closure comes hard.

The book finishes with a beautiful little story of “Milton and Marcus”.  It is the story of an author and screenwriter who travels to Colorado to “take a meeting” on a little treatment he did years before for good friend.  The actor who wants it is all Hollywood and he is whoring himself out for health insurance for his ailing wife back home… and running out of time.  Beautiful.

The thing about Russo is he just is...evocative.  He is not the guy who wrote “Mohawk”.  His is not the kid who wrote “Ransum”.  He is a man who understands ageing and understands the pain and beauty of life and writes what he knows.  I strongly recommend this one.

Summer Reads

 

Soooo… August.  Summer is quickly expiring and you probably have not left your desk or your job for a decent vacation.  This is a sin and a microcosm of what is wrong with our country.  We don’t want “European Style Socialism” but they shut down for August.  People go the water or at least they stop working and that should be the goal of sensible people everywhere.  I know that no one reads anymore but it is still one of the greatest pleasures or summer.  Reading has become a victim of two things in my opinion:

1.    No time

2.    No trusted sources or filters (like music)

99% of people dont care about books at all.  To the extent they care about anything other than FOX NEWS or the business report they read magazines and once again those tend to be more about business and current event than literature.  This is a shame.  As people stop reading their ability to express themselves in writing declines and as I said, this is a shame.  Reading shouldnt be painful so I suggest some summer reads….from east to hard.

“Sweetbitter”-Stephanie Danler

NY Times Book Review-http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/29/books/review/sweetbitter-by-stephanie-danler.html?_r=0

“Sweetbitter” is the best sort of cotton candy.  That does not mean it is crap.  It is very well written, very well paced and excellent.  It is the novel Anothny Bourdain would have written had he been a girl instead of a boy and working front of house instead of the kitchen.  It is a coming of age (late) tale about a midwestern girl moving to NYC and snatching a job as a backwaiter in a great restaurant.  There is romance, competition, mentors, heartbreakers, crazy bosses, funny stories and lots of drinking, cocaine, sex and regret.  She narrates as a sympathetic character and then you get to the authors picture on the jacket flap and it is more like, “boo hoo...pretty girl goes to NYC and gets a job and adventure in the mean city”.  It is kind of trite, kind of funny and kind of sad but as I said, she can write.  If you like food and you like restaurants and you like NYC, it is just a fun read. It requires no thought and in many ways is the perfect summer book.  You can put it down, pick it up and not worry about missing or fogetting anything.

The Fixers:  Michael Thomas

This is another easy read.  It is narrated by an old school, monied, CIA trained art afficianado.  He gets recruited by his old boss to help throw the 2008 election and explains the financial crisis through the lense that Wall Street bought and paid for the 2008 election, pulled strings to make sure that none of their were prosecuted and moreover made sure the government did nothing to impede (and instead actually enhanced) their ability to continue to pilfer and victimize.  It is well written.  Short chapters and speaks very poorly of Wall St. and what Wall Street culture has become.  The narrator eventually and long after the fact has pangs of conscience and there is a longing for the Wall Street and the ethose of old.  He makes very clear that the top 1% of the 1% make their decisions solely on the basis of what is perceived to be “legal” and if it is “legal” there is no question about anything silly like ethics.  He walks you through the whole thing, the mortgage meltdown, the greek crisis, the LIBOR fix, Fannie, Freddie, The Big Short.... Everything.  It is kind of stomach churning and kind of amazing that we survived at all but this too is an easy fun read that also makes you think.

Everybodies Fool-Richard Russo.  This is my personal Book of the Year!  I ave always loved Richard Russo.  “Mohawk”, “Straight Man”, “Nobodies Fool”, “Ransom” and all the rest.  Most of his books are set around upstate New York and the failing industrial economy that seems especially relevant in light of the fact that the rust belt and angry, under employed white people, seemingly left behind have been mobilized to support one of the two cantidates for the most powerful office in the world.  No one writes dialogue or colors characters like Russo and he is the top of his game with this follow up (of sorts) to “Nobodies Fool”.  He takes us back to North Bath NY.  A failed manufactuing town that was poisoned on the way out by industry fouling their streams as well as their downtown.  He draw a colorful list of down in the mouth characters who are all compelling, many of them from “Nobodies Fool” but they have changed as life has continued to kick the shit out of them and their town.  It is a hard book to put down and is so well written as to be mesmerizing.

NY Times Review-http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/08/books/review/t-c-boyle-reviews-richard-russos-everybodys-fool.html

Book Review: Richard Russo "Elsewhere"

Soooo... maybe I will read this year.  Or maybe not.  Seems like at best an even money bet if you could get someone to take it.  I have some optimism if I can find books like Richard Russo’s new memoir by one of my favorites Richard Russo.  I love this guy.  I have read everyone of his books and some of them twice.  He has a nice conversational style and his stories never go anywhere which is just...perfect.  Most of his books are set around dying New England towns and largely rely on family to provide the drama and it tends to show that family drama is the most compellingdrama and it is one of the constants in your life.  I also take from his books that heartbreak and regret are a constant of life... if your lucky.

His newest book is a memoir and it largely follows his life but if tracks his life through what is apparently the most important character in it, his mother.  Which seems like it would make for a boring sad story and though there is a somewhat momotonous repetition to the story it is not boring but it is pretty relentlessly sad.  He was raised by a single working mother who took pride in her “independance” from her alcoholic, gambling WWII vet of a husband who was never around and could never be counted on.  She read to Russo (an only child) and made sure he did his home work no matter how tired she was.  They barely made it by and did so as their home town died around them, with the help of her parents who lived downstairs.

it seemed heartening and problematic until he left for college in Arizona and... she came along.  From that point till the end the tables solidly turn.  Somewhere in college he comes to grips with what his father and grandparents had known but could never voice and that is that his mother is mentally ill.  The rest of the book is a catalogue of his (and his wife and daughter) coping with her mental illness as she traveled with them along as his career processed.  It is painful but riveting as you read occasionally and briefly of his long suffering wife and wonder why she tolerated her husbands devotion to this woman with so many problems who despite her proud independance was always a burden.  

You kind of feel that Russo himself he had to write this book.  The cathartic feeling of it resembles a huge toilet bowl full of the dump of his psyche as he recounts the damage caused by his mother and his love of her.  He realizes as a 50 year old that he is a lot like her and that is probably the most painful revelation as he realizes that his wife and family suffer his less acute mental illness just as he has suffered his mothers and just as she was constantly hobbling herself with poor decisions, he was doing it as well, just with different decisions.  

Still, as in his novels there is a beauty here.  The writing style and the semse of pace and timing are always there.  The story reveals a lot about his history and his heart which are fascinating by a fan but interesting for anyone who is a reader because he writes so true.  Over and over again in this book, as in all his books there is an overwhelming love/hate relationship with family and all the baggage that ensues but despite all the pain and disasters there is an appreciation for the loyalties that can only exist in the context of family and it makes for a very good read.  It is relatively short and you can rip through it in a few hours if you are of a mind.  I was blessed with a nice mother who has always kept her problems to herself even now as she makes arrangements for she and my father to move into a retirement facility (so as not to be a burden).  But she likes to read, and she will like this book.  So will you.

Book Review 14: Bridge of Sighs: Richard Russo

Richard Russo
Bridge of Sighs
Alfred A. Knopf
528 Pages

Writers write. These words damn those of us who think we would like to write. A harsh indictment of lack of discipline or even worse lack of talent or creativity but... it is what it is. Richard Russo is a writer. Although you can only find 7 of his books at Amazon there is actually an 8th which has been published and they are all, surprisingly in their own way brilliant. Most of his prose is about small towns in upstate New York although he did a brilliant book about life as a university professor (Straight Man) which was, frankly, fucking hilarious. the narrator english professor of that book had a theory that life was one long punch line to a bad joke and that he was, in all respects, just a straight man. Brilliant.

As I said most of his catalogue are small town, upstate New York stories of shut down, dying factory towns. They are populated by small town powerful families with fortunes on the wane and the common people who brilliantly and heartbreakingly surround them. he has done it at least four times now. First in “Mohawk”, the “Nobody’s Fool”, the Empire Falls” and now in “Bridge of Sighs.” When I realized it was another book about a small dying factory town in upstate New York and that it was 528 pages I sighed and wondered inside my head whether I still had the strength for another Russo book of this genre. After all, a guy can only have so much to say about this topic...right? Well, it IS at least partially right.

Russo, who grew up there paints these towns like a portrait that you cannot look away from. Brilliant, heartbreaking detail on every page and to be fair in every word. Like a great painting no word is out of place and you marvel at the detail and how it illuminates everything and it just seems to real. And he does it in each book. Bridge of sighs is set in a town called Thomaston and it is no different then Mohawk or Empire Falls. Cities which once had a factory town, an economy and an A&P but now have a dead or dying downtown, a dwindling hard scrabble population and if they were in current times a Wal-Mart 20 miles away where everyone shops. No one moves to one of these towns voluntarily so outsiders are normally drifters or people whose lives tanked in some real city and they have been banished here. They wander around with the “locals” who have been there for several generations and as a family stood as witnesses for the decay all around them.

So that is the same in all the books and even though brilliant it is numbing. What makes a Russo book are the nuanced characters he draws and for good or ill as he gets older he draws them with more and more detail. You really do know his characters and as they develop you are never surprised but it is still insightful, into them and into the reader. He makes me self identify more then any other author with the doomed traits of his characters and also with some of the subtle joy and grace that comes from just living life. As his characters pilot their lives through every day occurrences, school, jobs, deaths and births he gives you a sense for the expansiveness of it all and the uniqueness related to the sameness of each persons struggle.

All that having been said there are not many triumphs for the characters in “Bridge of Sighs.” We meet the Lynch family who has a brilliant mother who has settled for a nice, pleasant local boy rather then go off to college and getting out of Thomaston. Mr. Lynch is a kind man and a well loved village idiot and they have a son and a small grocery store. The son, Lou C. Lynch is forever condemned to the name Lucy and his friend comes from another dark local family called the Marconis and his best friend is their son Bobby. The majority of the story is about Lucy and Bobby and a local girl named Sarah Berg who settles for Lucy, as her mother in law settled for Lucy’s dad.

We follow Lucy almost from birth and get introduced to Bobby and Sarah at appropriate points. Bobby’s part is narrated from Italy which was where he escaped to be an artist while Lucy and sarah are in Thomaston telling their story and bopping occasionally back to the present and their own bittersweet marriage as they watch their son, married to an unhappy woman, playing out what they view (or at least she views) as their failures. Sarah’s character is generationally removed from her mother in law Tessa Lynch and might have an over all kinder disposition but they are both women who love, keep secrets and try and make the shrewdest decisions for their families that they can determine at the time and wonder that this situational calculating never leads them anywhere else but with the same struggles they had in years past.

The other characters are all brilliant. Different husbands and fathers, the high school teacher, the bar owner, brother in laws, girlfriend’s parents.... they populate this little dying town like an ant colony and everyone has a purpose and when people deviate from the purpose they either get destroyed or leave. These side characters add the texture to this really rich novel that like a really good movie, never really goes anywhere but takes the reader on a long journey.

And that was the big bone I had to pick with Russo. I am now old and while I used to bang out 50 pages a night reading I find i nod off laying in bed after 10 -15 hard fought pages so it took me all of November to read this and as I was reading it, for 400 pages I thought...”I think I am done with this guy” (meaning Russo) and it was almost a relief thinking I could finish this one and I had finished with the author and his long novels about the same town with a different name. Sure the characters were interesting and the setting brilliant but seriously, 4 times is enough. but then i hit the last hundred pages. The people’s lives unfold in ways that keep you reading incredulously but as you read and think, you know these folks and it could not have happened any other way for any of them and it is all just so sad and so beautiful and so much like our own lives where we plan and scheme and struggle and in the end can never get away from ourselves. And while that might seem bad, even in his ugliest characters, class bullies, town drinks, philandering wives and husbands.... they all have some grace and beauty, just like we all do and he reveals that and as he does reveals us, and gives pause and seriously does everything a great book should do.

He has a way of letting his characters age and as they do they learn things about themselves, some of them good but most unsettling. As you read about their jouney he allows you through their lives to have little “aha” monets of your own which are sometimes good but mostly unsettling. 60 pages before the end of the book he ends a chapter as Lucy lays in bed a 60 year old man, staring at his sleeping wife who will leave him forever in the morning:

“The line of the gray horizon is brighter now, and with the coming light I feel a certainty: that there is, despite our wild imaginings, only one life. The ghostly others, no matter how real they seem, no matter how badly we need them are phantoms. The one life we’re left with is sufficient to fill and refill our imperfect hearts with joy, and then to shatter them. And it never, ever lets up.
Blame love.”

That is good stuff.
But after that he surprises again with a nice 60 page sprint to the finish. The story does not end up happily every after for everyone but there is discovery and there is some peace of mind and purpose for a few of the characters and a little nice symetry. The books characters are well enough drawn that even for me there is a lot of emotion in their successes and failures and weaker person (me) might even tear up.

Even though it sometimes felt like it was a marathon, This was the best thing I have read all year and perhaps in a long time. it is probably Russo’s best book because he draws with so much confidence and is obviously at the height of his game. Wait until it comes out as a paperback next year. take it to the beach and lose yourself in the life of a small, dying factory town in upstate New York with a poisoned river, cancer, no possibilities, human tragedies and broken souls. Enjoy it.

10 Slingers on the 10 scale