How much of a treat? Well, I have been so drawn into the world of Russo’s writing that I have twice taken my wife and daughters on detours into the down-and-out NY Thruway towns of Mohawk and Fonda which provide the essential setting for his early novels Nobody’s Fool and The Risk Pool. (Each time we were supposedly stopping for a bite to eat in the midst of racing across upstate New York—and each time we found the dining options so abominable that we ended up having to drive a few miles deeper off the Thruway to a great pizza place in the dilapidated spa town of Sharon Springs.)
Moreover, I have several times used a particular passage from The Risk Pool in my Introduction to Creative Writing course to illustrate a) how a first-person narrative can be used to reveal features of another character and b) how character should be revealed not by telling but by showing through both words and deeds. In this passage the narrator, Ned Hall, is picked up at the Albany airport by his father, Sam Hall; Ned grew up in Mohawk, NY, but has recently taken a job as an editor with a publishing house in New York City:
Between the airport and the Thruway entrance he told me all about the Subaru, which somebody’d talked him into buying. That little shit? he wanted to know, but then he figured what the hell. We’d taught the Japs a thing or two. Maybe they’d learned how to make cars. People said they did, and the guy who’d owned it didn’t want an arm and a leg, so . . .Russo's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, Empire Falls, is set in an equally down-and-out river town in Maine. I believe that his latest novel, Bridge of Sighs—which I picked up just on Sunday—revisits the setting of his earlier novels. I look forward to sitting down with it, as Russo tantalized the audience with the finely nuanced first-person narrative of the opening pages.
000“What troubled me, but apparently not my father, was the way people kept honking and swerving around us. My father honked back, waved, and continued talking. People honked hellos at him all the time in Mohawk, where they knew him, and he saw no reason why they shouldn’t in Albany, where they didn’t.
000“Do you have your lights on?” I said finally, noticing that the dash wasn’t lit up.
000“He looked down over the rims of his glasses and had to let go of the wheel to catch them when they fell off. “Should be,” he said.
000The Thruway entrance was a hundred yards away. We pulled in. When the attendant at the gatehouse handed us our ticket, he said, “Your lights, Mac.”
000“Right,” my father said, and he put the Subaru in gear. “Not this shit again,” he said, flicking the light switch in and out. I tried the radio, windshield wipers, cigarette lighter. Nothing. My father tried the turn signals. Nothing. We merged onto the Thruway, regardless, a big sedan careening around us at the last second. I put on my seatbelt.
000“I’ll show you a little trick,” my father said when a double-hitch Peterbilt roared by and tugged at us. Slipping into its wake, my father goosed the Subaru, which strained dutifully until we got right on the Peterbilt’s big, well-lit ass end.
000My father, pleased with himself, looked over at me from above the black rims of his cockeyed glasses. “You worry too much,” he said. “You always did.”
000I checked the speedometer, which was vibrating between sixty-five and seventy. Mohawk was forty black miles away. I wondered if, when we hit the Peterbilt, I’d be able to get down quickly enough to avoid decapitation.
000“I’ve always wanted a Subaru,” I said, trying to sound more full of admiration than terror. “But there’s not much point in owning a car in the city.”
000“I can’t live without one,” my father said, punching in the cigarette lighter, having already forgotten. After a few seconds he began to lean slightly toward the lighter in anticipation of its clicking out. His Camel dangled from his lips as he divided his attention between the big truck only a few feet in front of us and the recalcitrant lighter. Finally it dawned on him. “Argh!” he said, pulling the cold lighter out, examining it, putting it to his stubbled cheek to make sure. Then he tossed it out the window and turned to me. “So,” he said. “Tell me about this editor shit.”
000“Editorship,” I corrected, and pointed at the Peterbilt. “Are those brake lights?”
As for Perrotta . . . well, I am happy to remind all and sundry of the following upcoming event at UMass Boston:
4th Annual Shaun O’Connell Lecture
The Abstinence Teacher (2007), Little Children (2004),
That’s how highly some of us regard Perrotta’s work! And on the basis of his reading yesterday—a humorously “erotic” section from his latest novel, The Abstinence Teacher—the event promises to be both entertaining and substantial.
It also promises to be a writing clinic of sorts, for I have found Perrotta to be no less a master at making a scene (as it were) than Russo is. In fact, I have also used in my Introduction to Creative Writing course a passage from Perrotta’s The Wishbones to illustrate the effectiveness of filtering through a third-person narrative point of view—in this instance, the novel’s protagonist Dave Raymond is the center of consciousness—descriptive details, graphically presented action, and revealing dialogue: the effect here is very subtle, as the reader gets only the same glimpse into the complexity of the characters that Dave himself gets—but the reader also gets a sense of how Dave is slightly disconcerted by his sudden awareness of this complexity. The narrative context for this scene is Dave’s brief encounter with Alan Zelack, a member of a “rival” wedding band, in the men’s room of a banquet complex where both Dave’s band, The Wishbones, and Alan’s band, Sparkle, are playing wedding receptions; four years earlier, Dave had auditioned for Misty Mountain Review, a Led Zeppelin tribute band that Alan was forming, but Alan had rejected him because he didn’t “look the part”:
This past Sunday was my first visit to Newtonville Books, an independent bookstore celebrating its 10th anniversary. After the one-two punch of Perrotta and Russo, I will certainly be back for more.A study in contrasts greeted Dave as he stepped into the basement men’s room. Alan Zelack and a priest stood side by side at the urinals, one tall and blond in garish red sequins, the other short and balding in funereal black. As though they’d rehearsed the maneuver, the two men flushed and whirled simultaneously, capping the routine with a synchronized zip. Dave felt like he’d wandered onto the set of a creepy musical.
000“Hey,” Zelack said, instinctively thrusting his hand in Dave’s direction. “Long time no see.”
000Despite a qualm or two on the hygiene front, Dave saw no recourse but to shift the beer to his left hand and shake. It was possible that he shook hands frequently with people who hadn’t washed up since last using the bathroom, but rarely was he presented with such irrefutable evidence.
000“This is Father Mike,” Zelack added, draping his arm around the priest’s shoulder with a proud grin. “We went to high school together.”
000Father Mike offered his hand as well, but Dave didn’t mind shaking it. On some deep, irrational level, he didn’t believe that a priest’s hands could really be dirty.
000“Mike and I haven’t seen each other in what—thirteen or fourteen years?” Zelack grimaced as he performed the calculations.
000The priest nodded. Despite his pleasantly boyish face, his wire-rimmed glasses and receding hairline gave him an air of gravity and wisdom.
000“My parish is in Arizona,” he said. “I just flew up for my sister’s wedding.”
000“Mike and I used to get stoned before gym class,” Zelack announced with a laugh. He shook his head at the mysterious workings of the universe. “I still can’t believe you’re a priest.”
000Father Mike reddened slightly. “That was a long time ago, Alan. We’ve both changed a lot since then.”
000“What happened?” Zelack asked. His curiosity seemed genuine. “Did you have some sort of religious experience?”
000Dave found himself curious as well, even though the priesthood ranked near the bottom of his scale of occupations, way down below prison guard and clerk at the DMV. The celibacy thing was a real sticking point.
000“I don’t know.” Father Mike consulted his clunky black shoes, which, to Dave’s surprise, turned out to be Doc Martens. “I took this solo hiking trip up to the Adirondacks the summer after my freshman year in college. My last night there was this incredible thunderstorm. Like the sky was breaking open. I took off my clothes, stood outside the tent, and let myself get drenched.” Father Mike held his open hands out in front of his chest, as though presenting Dave with an invisible gift. “That was when I realized that my life belonged to God.”
000“Really?” said Zelack. “You became a priest because of a thunder-storm?”
000Father Mike thought it over. He seemed troubled by the question.
000“I guess so. That’s the closest I can come to explaining it. Nothing was the same for me after that.”
000The door behind Dave swung open; three college-age guys in suits squeezed into the rest room, creating a severe shortage of space. In the confusion, Zelack and Father Mike slipped out the door without washing their hands.
000Dave set his beer down on the sink, stepped up to the urinal, and unzipped. On the porcelain lip below, he saw two red sequins and a pubic hair.
