Geoff Bennett:
Richard Russo has written ten novels, won the Pulitzer Prize for “Empire Falls,” and collaborated on screen adaptations and TV series based on his work. Now his latest book has just been published 40 years after his debut novel.
Senior arts correspondent Jeffrey Brown visited him recently for our arts and culture series, Canvas.
Richard Russo, Author, “Under the Falls”: “Funny thing about the Adirondacks. Head up the north way toward Montreal, and right away, you sense you’re leaving the Rust Belt.”
Jeffrey Brown:
The opening lines of the prologue to Richard Russo latest novel, “Under the Falls,’ about a man who leaves behind a hometown fallen on hard times, but finds he can’t quite escape it, like the author himself.
Richard Russo:
If you look back to my earliest fiction, the lens through which I look at the world has really not changed. It’s place, it’s character, and class, place, character, and class.
Jeffrey Brown:
For many years, Russo has lived and worked in Main along the coast in and near Portland. But many of the books for which he’s best known are set in the industrial factory towns of the Adirondack Mountains in Upstate New York, especially his hometown of Gloversville, once known as the glove-making capital of the world. Of the Adirondack mountains in Upstate New York. Especially his hometown of Gloversville, once known as the glove-making capital of the world, before most of the manufacturers and tanneries left the country.
Russo’s mother, separated from his father, wanted out and wanted him to see a bigger and, in her mind, better world. He did leave, but, he says:
Richard Russo:
I think it was particularly difficult for her to realize that — after those first few novels, that the place that she was so determined to escape from, somewhere along the line, I learned who I was, who and what I loved.
That was the last piece of becoming a writer for me, because I learned how to do the technical things at the University of Arizona and the MA program there. But I hadn’t figured out who I was yet.
Jeffrey Brown:
That, he would figure out in his fictionalized versions of Gloversville, calling it Mohawk in his first novel, Thomaston in “Bridge of Sighs,” North Bath in the Fools Trilogy. His Pulitzer Prize-winning “Empire Falls,” while set in a main mill town, also draws on his roots.
Richard Russo:
“If, for instance, you were to head up Route 29, not just north but also west, into those same Adirondacks, what you would find is a place called Stone Mountain.”
Jeffrey Brown:
And now comes “Under the Falls.”
Richard Russo:
Stone Mountain is yet another left-behind Richard Russo locale.
Jeffrey Brown:
What does that mean? What is left behind?
Richard Russo:
Well, left behind means people there don’t have as many opportunities to make a decent living.
Jeffrey Brown:
A place, he told us, modeled on the real town of Caroga Lake, near Gloversville, with a once-thriving, now-shuttered amusement park, which figures into Russo’s story, in which a man named Tyler Sinclair, now a famous Nashville musician, returns to Stone Mountain after fleeing years before without a word to his closest friends.
Richard Russo:
He has done what he thinks is a pretty incredible thing. He has left this town with really nothing but his guitar, nothing but his talent.
Jeffrey Brown:
Right. Yes.
Richard Russo:
And he’s…
Jeffrey Brown:
And made it.
Richard Russo:
And made it. He’s gone to Nashville and become a major singer-songwriter. And he’s done the thing that — I mean, every band he’s ever been in has been called Stone Mountain.
Jeffrey Brown:
Right. So he’s left, but he but he also hasn’t left.
Richard Russo:
He’s left, but he hasn’t left. Exactly.
Jeffrey Brown:
One thing new for Russo, this is a thriller, as Tyler gets caught up in violence, police corruption, the opioid epidemic that’s ravaged so many parts of the country.
And his character is doing something like Russo himself, continuing to write of the place he left behind, telling its story whether people there like it or not.
Part of your novel is clearly about who gets to tell the story of a place.
Richard Russo:
Yes. Yes. That’s true for Tyler, I suppose, because it’s been true for me.
Jeffrey Brown:
In his memoir, “Elsewhere,” Russo, for the first time called Gloversville by its real name, warts and all. Not everyone was happy.
Richard Russo:
And what happened was that people in town who had loved my writing when I was calling it Mohawk or calling it Thomaston, when I called it Gloversville, what I was getting was an angry response that says, Russo, you have done pretty well for yourself, haven’t you?
And the question that they were asking me is the same question that gets asked of Tyler.
Jeffrey Brown:
In the new novel, yes.
Richard Russo:
In the new novel. Where’s our cut?
Jeffrey Brown:
Yes.
Richard Russo:
And that’s what Tyler is facing when he goes back to Stone Mountain.
Paul Newman, Actor:
He’s a sissy.
Jeffrey Brown:
Russo has also had success as a screenwriter, including for the television version of “Empire Falls with Ed Harris and Paul Newman. And “Under the Falls,” in fact, began as a TV script before being turned into a novel.
He showed me a similar work now in progress.
Richard Russo:
I’m taking this old screenplay. That’s what a screenplay page looks like, lots of white space on that. And eventually it’s going to be a novel, and, of course, the pages, the pages are going to look more like that, more words.
Jeffrey Brown:
But that’s actually happened with “Under the Falls.”
Richard Russo:
That’s what happened with “Under the Falls.”
Jeffrey Brown:
You started writing the…
Richard Russo:
It started out. Yes. You can’t wait around for Hollywood to get its act together, because who knows?
Jeffrey Brown:
Meanwhile, the love of books and writing has been passed down. One of Russo’s daughters, Emily, co-owns a bookstore in Portland, Maine, that carries the works of another Russo daughter, Kate, herself a novelist and artist.
And at 77, Russo keeps going.
Richard Russo:
To me, after doing it now for my fourth decade, it seems absolutely necessary. And, strangely enough, I think the worst times we go through, and I think we’re going through some pretty awful times right now, art is more important in bad times than in good times.
Jeffrey Brown:
From Portland, Maine, I’m Jeffrey Brown for the “PBS News Hour.”
