Where to Start With Russell Banks
Russell Banks, 2011
Photo: Larry D. Moore. Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0
Acclaimed and prolific writer Russell Banks died on January 8, 2023. He authored 21 books including fiction, nonfiction, short stories, and poetry, and his work was translated into more than twenty languages. Born and raised in New England, much of his work focused on class and race reflecting his blue-collar upbringing and the working-class struggle he saw around him.
Banks's breakout novel, Continental Drift, published in 1985, was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for fiction as was his 1998 novel Cloudsplitter. He received numerous awards including the St. Lawrence Prize for fiction, the Thornton Wilder Prize, the American Book Award, the Literature Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters and Guggenheim and NEA grants. Banks was the official New York State author from 2004 to 2008. His novels The Sweet Hereafter and Affliction were adapted into celebrated films.
When asked during an interview at the Miami Book Fair International in 2014 what the job of writing is, Banks had this to say:
I don't think of it as a job. I think of it as a relationship that one bears to other human beings—strangers, but to the species almost. And the main job, the main task, let's put it that way, for the writer in the tribe is to really clarify for the rest of the tribe what it is to be human for better or worse: our angelic side and our evil side. All aspects of what it is to be human...we don't know what it means to be human until our artists tell us and show us.
Novels
The Sweet Hereafter (1991)
Four narrators—bus driver Dolores, upright Bill, shrewd Mitchell, and teenaged Nichole—address agonizing questions as they describe an accident that killed fourteen children and the effects of the tragedy on themselves and their town.
Cloudsplitter (1998)
Offers a fictional re-creation of the turbulent landscape of pre-Civil War America and of John Brown's 1859 raid on the federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry, Virginia, as narrated by the enigmatic abolitionist's son, Owen
Affliction (1989)
Wade Whitehouse, a gentle man and the victim of a violent father, is driven to sudden criminal acts by a fellow cop whom he suspects of murdering a local labor official and by an ex-wife who limits his contact with their daughter.
The Magic Kingdom (2022)
In 1971, a property speculator records his life story, reflecting on his time in a community of Shakers in Florida, which saved his family from complete ruin, and meditating on youth, belief, betrayal, Florida’s everchanging landscape and the search for an American utopia.
Foregone (2021)
A septuagenarian leftist documentary filmmaker gives a last interview from his mythologized life to a former star student to whom he discloses his experiences as a draft dodger who fled to a new life in Montreal.
Continental Drift (1985)
The story of a young blue-collar worker and family man who abandons his broken dreams in New Hampshire and the story of a young Haitian woman who, with her nephew and baby, flees the brutal injustice and poverty of her homeland.
Rule of the Bone (1995)
Slipping into the dangerous world of drugs and petty theft as a means of rebelling against an abusive home life, Chappie takes on a new identity and encounters a host of characters, including a sexually victimized young girl.
A Permanent Member of the Family (2013)
A collection of twelve short works that examine the myriad ways we try and sometimes fail to connect with one another, as we seek a home in the world. Moving between the stark beauty of winter in upstate New York and the seductive heat of Florida, Banks's acute and penetrating collection demonstrates the range and virtuosity of both his narrative prowess and his startlingly panoramic vision of modern American life.
Lost Memory of Skin (2011)
Taking up residence with other convicted sex offenders, the Kid, on probation after doing time for an affair with an underage girl, forms a tentative partnership with the Professor, a university sociologist who finds him the perfect subject for his research, until he is faced with a new kind of moral decision.
Short Stories
A Permanent Member of the Family (2013)
A collection of twelve short works that examine the myriad ways we try and sometimes fail to connect with one another, as we seek a home in the world. Moving between the stark beauty of winter in upstate New York and the seductive heat of Florida, Banks's acute and penetrating collection demonstrates the range and virtuosity of both his narrative prowess and his startlingly panoramic vision of modern American life.
The Angel on the Roof: The Stories of Russell Banks (2000)
A collection of short stories extends into the vast territory of the heart and world, from working-class New England to Florida, the Caribbean, and Africa.
Nonfiction
Voyager: Travel Writings (2015)
An acclaimed novelist takes us on some of his most memorable journeys in this revelatory collection of travel essays that spans the globe, from the Caribbean to Scotland to the Himalayas. Highlights include interviewing Fidel Castro in Cuba; motoring to a hippie reunion with college friends in Chapel Hill, North Carolina; eloping to Edinburgh, with his fourth wife, Chase; and driving a sunset orange metallic Hummer down Alaska's Seward Highway.
Dreaming Up America (2008)
Examines the motivations, ideals, and spiritual and material impulses of the early settlers of the United States, and discusses how the American character was formed and has persisted throughout American history, from colonial times up to the present.
The Invisible Stranger: The Patten, Maine, Photographs of Arturo Patten (1999)
with Arturo Patten
In this unique collaboration Arturo Patten, one of the most important portrait photographers of our time, and acclaimed writer Russell Banks study the inhabitants of the hardscrabble north country of Patten, Maine offering a sense of the life people endure in such places.
Summaries provided via NYPL’s catalog, which draws from multiple sources. Click through to each book’s title for more.