RIP Russell Banks

[Benny Profane]

Bard of the upstate. He has written a few novels and many stories about the people in the towns you drive by to get to skiing in upstate NY and New Hampshire. You've seen a few of the film adaptations, I hope. Affliction, The Sweet Hereafter. Highly recommend a short story, to start. Firewood. In the collection, The Angel on the Roof.
Ha. Just read the first sentence. "Nelson Painter is a man who is old, but doesn't know it yet." Bell rung.

Russell Banks, praised author of 'Cloudsplitter,' dies at 82

NEW YORK (AP) — Russell Banks, an award-winning fiction writer who rooted such novels as “Affliction” and “The Sweet Hereafter” in the wintry, rural communities of his native Northeast and imagined the dreams and downfalls of everyone from modern blue-collar workers to the radical abolitionist...

apnews.com

 

[Harvey]

Which of his tales made the best movie?

 

[Benny Profane]

I like Affliction. Paul Schrader wrote and directed it (he wrote the screenplay for Taxi Driver and Raging Bull), and Nick Nolte and James Coburn and Sissy Spacek acted. Nolte I think owned the rights and was smart enough to hire good people. William Defoe is the narrator of sorts. If you know anything of Bank's childhood relationship with his father and subsequent escape to a more "refined" life, you can see the obvious autobiographical connection to Dafoe's character. It's a really troubled, dark story set in winter back when it used to snow.
He used to do a lecture or two at Skidmore when I lived in Saratoga. Only time I had a reason to be on that campus.

 

[jamesdeluxe]

I loved his run of novels in the 80s and 90s -- Continental Drift, Affliction, The Sweet Hereafter, Rule of the Bone -- read them all more than once. He nailed the northeastern smalltown mindset so accurately it was often a bit terrifying, like he was writing about people you personally know.

Both Affliction and The Sweet Hereafter are excellent though thoroughly depressing winter films. James Coburn deserved his Oscar for that role.