Dead Russell Banks, the bard of humble Americans – Corriere.it

Russell Banks, who passed away on Saturday 7 January at the age of 82 after a long illness, used to amaze the public at presentations of his books: they had really read his novels instead of simply watching the films, however beautiful, that they had inspired (Sweet tomorrow by Atom Egoyan e Affliction by Paul Schrader)? It defined a gift offered shyly the simple phrase I read his book, and this shyness – this modesty – he reciprocated by answering in a low voice, smiling without showing his teeth like the character in one of his most beautiful books, The lost memory of the skin (translated into Italy by Dalai in 2012).

The relationship between reader and writer, in a brilliant little essay published by an American non-profit, the intimacy of strangers, more intimate than sex even because if we talk about books and readers sometimes the author is gone, for centuries, or like Homer is the author of Upanishads he has seen his identity transformed into myth. Reading Banks is always an intimate experience, but he never feels like a stranger.

Publishing mysteries: two intellectual directors shoot almost simultaneously,between January and March 1997, two films based on books by the same writer little known to the public, and the stories – the fatal crash of a school bus, a mysterious death during a hunting trip in the New Hampshire snow – are so well written and deep enough to attract actors who, as Banks said, usually get paid for real: Nick Nolte (Oscar nomination), Sissy Spacek, James Coburn (who won the Oscar), Willem Dafoe, Ian Holm.

If Gore Vidal was the biographer of imperial America seen from Washington DC, from the founding fathers to Roosevelt (seven novels from Burr to The Golden Age), Russell Banks has worked humbly for tell the America of those who will never enter the history books. Richard Yates — going against the mood American — was the bard of the broken dreams of middle class; Russell Banks, through a career spanning half a century and transformed, when he was now in his sixties, by cinematic success (critical: Banks was also a niche film) was the bard of humble Americans. Courageously willing to face with empathy — but heart always proudly left, ever since high school and falling in love in college to the revolution castrista — the racial issue, empath before the term became fashionable.

Banks recounted poverty without romanticism, describing the brutality that affects its victims, in the freezing northeast as in the Florida Keys of tourism which, for those who have nothing, are like and worse than what was once called the third world.

Incest, drugs, alcohol, lies and abuse: infernal poverty — the working class never goes to heaven in his books — also because solutions are not at hand, and good intentions can have bad consequences. Very difficult material to handle for a less sensitive writer, less capable of completely mastering the technique of what happens immediately after a scene, as Mavis Gallant said, much loved by him and to whom he reserved – for the New York Review of Books – a beautiful introduction .

Di Gogol ‘and Chekhov – who were among the writers of his life, with Twain and Kerouac – loved the sense of shared humanity, the sense of the absurd and the healing ability not only of love but also of humor. Of her excellent and abundant bibliography which starts from 1975 – in the US he published fourteen novels, six collections of stories, two of poems and three of essays – Italian readers have at their disposal Continental drift, Blizzard (in original Affliction), Sweet tomorrow, Bone’s law – all published in Italy by Einaudi – which are also among his most beautiful books. The highly documented, epic is missing Cloudsplitter of 1998, unpublished in Italy (presumably seen as too long and too American: it narrates in 750 pages between history and novel the impossible dream of John Brown, to abolish slavery, and the orgy of violence in which it ended) and nominated both for the Pulitzer and at Pen/Faulkner (he deserved both). For her fellow students at Princeton Toni Morrison and Joyce Carol Oates (who remembered him for a long time on Twitter, enormous talent and magnanimous heart) Banks’ masterpiece.

Last year Italian readers found in the bookstore the masterpiece of his luminous old age, The betrayals (Einaudi Freestyle) in which an elderly filmmaker takes stock of his life — life of lies, Banks’ supreme theme, where Banks sprinkles acid on his protestant ideals of youth. The latest novel, released in the US in November and still unpublished by us: The MagicKingdomhistory of the Shaker fundamentalist Christian community who lived where Disney World now stands in Florida: the extreme Banks, ironic and elegiac, intent on telling once again the forgotten America.

Half a century of United States in the latest novel

Shortly before his death, in 1971, the real estate speculator Harley Mann decides to record his life on tape, starting from his childhood spent – after his father’s death – in Florida, in a Shaker community (branch of Puritan Calvinism of the Quakers) dedicated to work, faith, charity, rejecting all the temptations found outside the colony. The protagonist’s past emerges through the account of half a century of American history in the latest novel written by Russell Banks, The MagicKingdom (translated: The Magic Kingdom), released in the United States last November by the publisher Penguin Random House and described by Margaret Atwood thus: Extremely timely, it addresses our innermost desires to reach some kind of paradise. The book will be released in Italy by Einaudi Stile libero in the second half of 2023.