* This is the last selection of this winter's book club. Next Tuesday, I will post the books for this Spring*
I'm a rather earnest and straightforward reader. I mean, I don't do very well with trickery, mirror games and whatnot. I'm not the ideal reader for a John Barth or a Samuel Beckett. They're cool, but they play a different game than I like to. Whenever I read a literary novel, I prefer emotional stimulation, rather intellectual swordplay. Richard Russo is kind of a best-of-both-worlds scenario. He writes a straightforward prose, he tells stories. But it's not as innocent as, let's say John Irving novels are. Russo writes with a purpose. EMPIRE FALLS is as realistic as it gets, but it's also a very patient novel, full of symbolism, that displays how everything and everybody are interconnected.
I might've passed by on Richard Russo if it wasn't for one thing. It beat Jonathan Franzen's THE CORRECTIONS by a nose for 2002's Pulitzer Prize for fiction. The latter made a lot of noise in 2001, being selected for the Oprah Winfrey book club and turning it down. It brought the novel AND Franzen a lot of attention. Russo's novel is quieter, less tortured, ambitious but not as ambitious as Franzen's breakthrough and is more controlled in general. Giving the Pulitzer to one over the other is a question of opinion more than anything else, because both are great. Sure thing, the streets of EMPIRE FALLS are a special place. They're full of people who just want to get by in difficult economic times. They are struggling with their lives, but also struggling with change and the way things are going in America.
THREE REASONS TO READ: EMPIRE FALLS
1) Janine Roby. Miles' estranged wife is awesomely tortured. She's that proverbial person who wants to be strong, who tells everybody she understood how things work, how to live her life. But you know how this is with people who talk too much about themselves. Reality is often a lot more complex than what they pretend. Janine was the showstopper for me.
2) The Whiting family meta-storyline. The more challenging part of Russo's novel. It's not that much of a headache, just enough to keep things fun. The Withing family has fallen, but the heiress is still the most important person in Empire Falls. Everything is tied to the Whitings.
3) The symptoms of change. Empire Falls is a city that struggles with the accelerated way America is changing. There are symptoms of that buried in every soul of Empire Falls. Part of the fun is to debunk those. To find them in everybody.
THREE TOPICS ABOUT: EMPIRE FALLS
1) Why can't Janine find happiness now that she left Miles? What was the source of her issues if it wasn't him?
2) The Miles that everybody knows and the Miles that Francine Whiting keeps around are two fairly different people. Who do you think is the real Miles and why?
3) How would you describe the relationship of Miles Roby with Empire Falls? Why does he adopt such a flat stance about everything and everybody, except his daughter Tick?
4 comments:
Hey! Sorry it's taken me all day to get on here and weigh in.
So yes, like you already know, I really enjoyed Empire Falls, and I agree with all three of your reasons to read it. I wish I had been thinking about the symptoms of change as I read. I'll have to revisit it someday with that theme in mind, because I know there are already things I've forgotten that would fit into it.
Soooo, about the questions...
1) I don't think Miles and Janine were ever really well matched. They settled for each other, and so the marriage was doomed from the start. Miles, duty-bound person that he is, certainly would never have left her, though, and that makes her the more interesting person to talk about. She seems to have gone through an "I want more out of life" midlife crisis type of thing- better body, better sex life, better financial situation. Since she hadn't been tied to Miles by love for ages and she's not a person who is motivated by duty, there was nothing holding her down.
I feel bad for Janine. She's obnoxious, naive, and selfish, but she also gets swindled by Walt, and nobody really cares about her very much. In a way, I can see her standing in for the "me first" part of the American dream and how harmful that can be.
2) I've already forgotten (or didn't pick up on) this. Can you refresh my memory?
3) This is a really interesting question. One thing that I loved about the book was Russo's insight into small-town relationships. All the people in the town, the people he's grown up with, are old news for Miles. He's labeled them, he knows where they've come from and where they're going, and they all feel the same way about him. But Tick, at only age 16, is still NEW to him. His long-buried idealism manifests itself through her. The relationship between the two of them rang so true- awkward and touching at once, just like real life.
I respect The Corrections, and it certainly would have deserved the Pulitzer. But I'm glad Empire Falls won it in the end, just because it suits my personal taste more. The overall feeling is hopeful where I thought The Corrections was cripplingly depressing. I read a goodreads review, though, that mentioned the loose ends being tied up too neatly at the end of Empire Falls. Did you think the ending was too happy?
I didn't like this book very much, found it too much like a soap opera. I thought the characters were a bit one dimensional, not that they didn't have complexities but I felt like they had very particular roles to play in the story. The evil matriach in the big house, for example.
And there's a certain style of Amercian novel where small town America is presented as this quaint community where "good" people try to do their best. It has that nostalgia for the 50s style of living which for some reason is seen as the golden period in America (unless you were black, gay, communist, foreign, a woman who didn't know her place...)
Have you read any Carson McCullers? I think she does this sort of thing better, and she also knows how to come up with a good title for a story. "Empire Falls" has such a thudding second meaning you almost think he's writing a spoof.
mood
1) You're right, they weren't. I think the issues with Janine all started with Janine. She was the one who deluded herself into loving Miles. I think he was just happy to have someone loving him for who he was. There is something deeply deeply broken about Janine and I thought it was beautiful to read.
2) It's just that Miles isn't his usual Carpet-Miles with her. It's like he enters survival mode, because he feels something very fundamental about him starts with her and we know he was right!
3) I agree, he lives through Tick somehow. Great observation.
I've read this book last December, so it's a little far away whether how perfect the ending was, but I don't think it was too perfect, no. Just an aesthetic choice from Russo not to leave things in the air. It's a little old fashioned maybe but not too neat.
I agree this is very old fashioned like I said in Christina's answer. But whoever wants to read Russo must make peace with the idea, though. I don't have an issue with it. I think it's kind of like a genre in itself. Let's call is the WASP novel :)
I didn't read Carson McCullers, but it's bound to happen for Sarah's reading challenge this year.
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