Deep-Hearted

    I think it is fair to say that, although particular books of his might receive a few less-than-effusive endorsements, Richard Russo is a highly regarded novelist among mainstream American book reviewers. Although Empire Falls seems to be the work that received the greatest praise, and remains a critical favorite, reviews of Russo's two most recent novels, Bridge of Sighs and That Old Cape Magic, only confirm Russo's standing. Ron Charles, not ordinarily given to hyperbole, called Bridge of Sighs "a lovely, deep-hearted novel," even though he also identified several seemingly serious flaws (and then wondered if "these complaints sound more damning than I mean them to.") Janet Maslin found it "richly evocative and beautifully wrought, delivered with deceptive ease," further lauding Russo's "wonderfully unfashionable gift for effortless storytelling on a sweeping, multigenerational scale," while Glenn C. Altschuler swoons over That Old Cape Magic, declaring it "suffused with [Russo's] signature comic sensibility, and with insights, by turns tender and tough, about human frailty, forbearance, fortitude, and fervor."

    In support of such praise, reviewers most often cite Russo's ability to evoke a sense of place, especially his native upstate New York, his creation of believable characters to whom he seems to have "affection," his "comic sensibility," as Altschuler puts it, although this is sometimes referred to as his "wry" tone, as well as his lively, if uncomplicated, prose style. Most importantly, these virtues are put in the service of an emotionally resonant, "humane" vision that, if it doesn't always make us feel good, nevertheless satisfyingly reveals to us what it means "to be human." ("When you finish a Russo novel," writes Geoff Schumacher in his review of TOCM "you feel you have really learned something about how human beings function.") You may like some of Russo's books more than others, but they are all "deep-hearted."

    Presumably many readers agree with these assessments, since, among "literary" writers, Russo is one of the most popular. And it may indeed be the case that to the extent there is a larger audience for "serious" fiction, a writer like Richard Russo is what those readers (and critics) want. However, although I can understand why many readers might enjoy Russo's novels, which provide a kind of expansive realism and a cast of characters with whom to "identify," I can't accept that this sort of fiction qualifies as "serious" or "literary" or that reviewers would so readily and eagerly celebrate Russo's novels as such. Both the qualities that might make his novels "good reads" and that make them critically embarrassing choices as exemplars of aesthetically serious fiction can be seen in Bridge of Sighs and That Old Cape Magic.

    Bridge of Sighs is a family saga centering around the life of Lou C. ("Lucy") Lynch, introduced to us as a 60 year-old married man and proprietor of several convenience stores. Told mostly from Lucy's point of view, the novel chronicles Lucy's childhood in Thomaston, an upstate New York equivalent of a decaying mill town, his love/hate relationship with his parents (love for his father, a good deal of hate for his mother), his intense friendship (intense on Lucy's part, at least) for Bobby Marconi, his courtship of Sarah, who eventually becomes his wife. Most of the drama enacted among these characters is pretty soapy. Indeed, as Louis Menand has it, Bridge of Sighs is "high-quality soap opera," distinguishable from a book like Peyton Place mostly in that it is "gentler." 

    Menand thinks that the characters in Bridge of Sighs are nevertheless "convincingly alive" (as arguably they are not in Peyton Place), but I can't quite agree. Lucy Lynch is a plausible enough creation (although I don't completely believe in his utter passivity and his attachment to the dreary Thomaston), but the other characters are too neatly arranged into palpable dualisms: the saintly Sarah and the whorish Karen, both of whom might be vying for Lucy's affection; the gregarious and optimistic Lou, Sr., who dotes on Lucy, and the impatient, disabused Tessa, who tries to make her son face reality; the shiftless but lovable Gabriel Mock, a black man who befriends Lucy and the industrious if stern Miss Rosa, whom Sarah meets near the end of the novel (that these are the portraits Russo is able to make of African-American characters seems especially unfortunate, although both characters are forced to speak in a thoroughly unconvincing rendition of Black English). These flaws notwithstanding, by far the least convincing character in the book is Bobby Marconi, or at least the version of Bobby that becomes "Robert Noonan," a world-renowned artist who managed to leave Thomaston and then find his calling as an artistic genius--a calling for which there is no hint whatsoever in the depiction of Bobby Marconi.

    I do agree with Menand that it is a strength of Russo's writing that he is able to convincingly portray a sense of place, to use a town like Thomaston to illustrate "the postwar metamorphosis of places like Thomaston. . .from self-sufficient centers of minor industry into faceless, interchangeable nodes in the giant exurban sprawl." As Menand suggests, Russo is able to do this by taking towns like Thomaston seriously in all their specificity, focusing on things like "what happens when a new A. & P. comes to town--it puts the milkman out of work and the corner grocery store out of business." If nothing else, one leaves Bridge of Sighs with a strong impression of the reality of Thomaston, and towns like it. This is a not insignificant achievement, and to the extent critics base their esteem for Russo on it they are to some extent justified, although most reviewers focus on setting as simply a sociological given rather than on how Russo engages with setting aesthetically-how he makes it aesthetically credible.

    That Old Cape Magic also strongly evokes setting, although in this case it couldn't really be farther removed, metaphorically, at least, from the socially marginalized setting of Bridge of Sighs. This novel is framed by two trips to Cape Cod, and much of the rest is concerned with the protagonist's memories of family trips there. Although the protagonist's family was in a sense rooted in the "Mid-fucking-west," as his parents called it, those roots were not planted voluntarily--his parents were academics who were exiled there by the exigencies of the job market--and place in this novel is simply the scene of family drama rather than, as in Bridge of Sighs, a source of those forces that shape the family drama. The Griffins wanted out of Indiana, son Jack has only professional reasons for living first in Los Angeles (he is a screenwriter) and then in Connecticut (where he goes to teach screenwriting), and Cape Cod was significant to Jack' parents only because it represented the place in the social hierarchy they believed they should occupy. The Griffins couldn't even bring themselves to buy a house in their college town, preferring to rent out the houses of colleagues on sabbatical.

    The Griffins eventually divorce, and most of That Old Cape Magic alternates between episodes in which Jack either reminisces about his parents and their eventual fates or attempts to deal with his still-living mother (while carrying around his recently deceased father's ashes in the trunk of his car) and episodes that essentially chronicle the process of his own marriage's failure. Where Bridge of Sighs is a soap opera of the small-town working class, That Old Cape Magic is a soap opera of the cosmopolitan middle class. If you think the psychological "turmoil" of a late-middle-aged screenwriter turned academic is the stuff of great drama, you may appreciate the novel, but if you'd rather that a novel have some aesthetic interest beyond the tedious recounting of curdled affluence, you will likely find it, as I did, quite a snooze (although of mercifully short duration, as Russo novels go).

    The portrayal of the parents as academics with monstrous egos is presumably an instance of the "humor" of which so many reviewers of Russo's fiction take note, but it seems to me more vicious than funny, although I guess there's still a little entertainment value in the viciousness. Another example of Russo's humor must be a scene late in the book in which a man in a wheelchair finds himself upside down in a tree. This didn't seem cruel so much as an obvious attempt to inject "comedy" into a novel that otherwise doesn't have much. Some reviewers in emphasizing Russo's "humanity" speak of his "optimism," and I guess in ending more or less happily (the protagonist and his wife are cautiously reunited) That Old Cape Magic is optimistic, or "deep-hearted," but it really only reinforces the soap opera, although in this case not very effectively. Here the happy ending doesn't seem so much earned or unearned as also merely perfunctory. Since I didn't really understand what the problem with the protagonist's marriage was in the first place (something to do with his preoccupation with the past, I think), their reunion at the end seemed equally unaccountable.

    In his review of Bridge of Sighs, Stephen Metcalf remarks that Russo is "among the least 'meta” writers going,' but there are, surprisingly enough, some "meta" elements in both of these novels. In Bridge of Sighs, Lucy Lynch reports to us that he is writing a memoir about his younger days, so presumably that memoir is the source of much of his narrative, although not all of it, and at times the narration switches to third-person accounts of both Sarah and Bobby Marconi, describing events at which Lucy cannot be present. In That Old Cape Magic, Jack Griffin writes a long story based on one of his family's summer stays at the Cape, which is presented as a more or less truthful rendition of events, as if it isn't a story at all, even though it is eventually published in a literary magazine as fiction. Later in the novel, his mother tells him on her deathbed a version of her life with his father he has not heard before, a story he calls the "Morphine Narrative" and which he assumes is fiction, but can't be sure. In both novels, then, we are given reasons to doubt the accuracy and reliability of the narratives we are reading--Is Lucy's version of events what really happened, or is it unavoidably colored by his retrospective self-interest? Are the third-person sections devoted to Sarah and Bobby actually being written by Lucy as well, speculating about their actions? If the morphine narrative is correct, does that make the story of Griffin's past  as otherwise related through his possibly flawed perspective unreliable even beyond his already uncertain, filtered memories?

    Unfortunately, while the novels inherently raise these questions, potentially adding an intriguing complexity to the narrative method, a judicious reading of each suggests that these interpolated narratives and narrative devices are to be taken at face value, as, in Bridge of Sighs, the immediate motivation of Lucy's story, but no more than the occasion of Lucy's retrospection and thus of the beginning of the novel we are reading, and, in That Old Cape Magic, a facet of the protagonist's professional life and a feature of the age of pharmaceuticals. In both novels, "writing" is beside the point beyond the fact it gets the story underway or helps it keep moving along. The "meta" elements are supplements to character and plot, not opportunities to provide aesthetic depth through a beneficial thematic ambiguity--or rather they are such opportunities but this case squandered ones.

    In concluding her review of That Old Cape Magic, Elaine Showalter observes that, whatever the novel's virtues, they will manage "to keep most readers entertained until the movie comes out." I suspect that, as with  other works of "literary fiction" that could easily enough be transformed into movie scripts, the movie versions of both Bridge of Sighs and That Old Cape Magic would probably be better than the novels. Indeed, I'm not sure why they weren't written as film scripts rather than novels, since there's very little in them that depends on the novel as a form for their appeal. Indeed, one can imagine them as "quirky" indy films or even "quality" Lifetime movies without much if any diminution of effect. Why reviewers so revere Russo as a serious novelist is a mystery to me.

Comments

[Edward Champion]

Why is Russo so revered? Because he gets at the roots of human behavior better than most literary novelists. That's also why his books sell. Hardly a mystery. The Lifetime movie charge is more James Wood's territory rather than yours, Dan. Unless, of course you're playing deliberate contrarian.

To interpret Sarah and Karen as a representative dualism is to miss, with painful severity, the subtleties of what Russo is doing. (Keep in mind that the book is also written in the first person and is very much about capturing the past -- that meta element you observed.) And with all due respect, to read Russo in an effort to unravel soap opera elements is as misguided as James Wood making the charge that all of Richard Powers's novels contain a boy-meet-girl subplot. (Both you and Wood are too smart and KNOW better than to jump to such rash conclusions.) If you read STRAIGHT MAN without laughing once, then I'm afraid that you have no soul and I just don't trust your reading sensibilities. Sorry, but it's as simple as that. Not marketing forces, not mainstream; just great comic writing -- worthy in its own way as Sorrentino and Markson.

I do, however, agree with you (slightly) about Bobby -- the most problematic aspect of BRIDGE OF SIGHS. Yet how can you discount a novel that contains this AMERICAN PASTORAL "you fight your superficiality"-like passage?

"Odd, how our view of human destiny changes over the course of a lifetime. In youth we believe what the young believe, that life is all choice. We stand before a hundred doors, choose to enter one, where we're faced with a hundred more and then choose again. We choose not just what we'll do, but who we'll be. Perhaps the sound of all those doors swinging shut behind us each time we select this one or that one should trouble us, but it doesn't. Nor does the fact that the doors often are identical and even lead in some cases to the exact same place. Occasionally a door is locked, but no matter, since so many others remain available. The distinct possibility that choice itself may be an illusion is something we disregard, because we're curious to know what's behind that next door, the one we hope will lead us to the very heart of the mystery. Even in the face of mounting evidence to the contrary we remain confident that when we emerge, with all our choosing done, we'll have found not just our true destiny but also its meaning. The young see life this way, front to back, their eyes to the telescope that anxiously scans the infinite sky and its myriad possibilities. Religion, seducing us with free will while warning us of our responsibility, reinforces youth's need to see itself at the dramatic center, saying yes to this and no to that, against the backdrop of a great moral reckoning."

[Frances Madeson]

Ed of my heart,

Here comes your great moral reckoning.

Russo's books sell well because prior, upon and post pub-date, his publisher purchases double-paged ads in all the high-end publications (thereby inducing more or less positive reviews, or at least write-ups with some salvageable quotes, which is really all you need), posters are plastered in subway stations, and billboards are splashed on the sides of buses a la Sex in the City. They sell well because they have been chosen TO BE SOLD.

Every so often (I'm sure there's an MBA somewhere with an algorithm dangling off his slide rule), the corporate publishers pick a medium-to-low testosterone guy like Russo (I believe I once referred to him as a “love-bug”) or JSF, more or less well-spoken but not at all intimidating writers, regular type married guys (very important: not gay!) with five o'clock shadows to prove it, (and sometimes nerdy gals with assertively designed glasses frames and funky-kicky leg-wear; think Bee Season) whose skills are well within reach of most readers with a general claim on literacy.

They're selected on a schedule and by demographic in order to fuel the casino of writing programs, writing manuals, workshops, the whole company store, outlets and franchises, kit and caboodle. They're recruited and groomed to give both the feckless young and the misguided AARPsters with a dollar and a dream a modicum of hope that they too could hit the literary jackpot. Russo's picture (in his monogrammed canvas director's chair) is Appendix A in the Master Business Plan right next to Warren Adler's (who BTW successfully works both sides of the street, teaching “novel-writing” at NYU in the fall and pulling down the summer workshop haul).

That a critic with your powers of discernment would fail to perceive the marketing big picture is frankly something of a shock. But because I care, I wanted to extend a hand and help you out of that leaky rain barrel before you go (and take others who would emulate you with you), like some gushing honeymooner or P.T. Barnumesque daredevil, completely over the water's edge. Yes, there's a sucker born every minute, but I'll be damned if I stand by and let his name be Ed Champion.

If Russo, who is Nobody's Fool, permits himself to be flashed like a pouch of shiny fool's gold on Miss Kitty's rough hewn bar, it's because he knows that a special someone slash anyone is required to serve as poster boy for the cause. And what is the cause? Selling all those picks and shovels, tents and camp stoves, to everyone rushing into the culture industry in them thar hills. It's the pick-axe sellers (the olde time incarnation of current day royalty collectors) who made the big money in 1849. (I can't believe I'm forced to relate this tidbit of history to someone from San Francisco!) I can easily picture Mr. Russo looking in the mirror and calculating whether or not to shave on a day a photographer is coming over and deciding, what the heck, the poster child might as well be me, for the benefit of him and his. Who's it hurting?

Caveat emptor and carpe diem. Capisch?

[Edward Champion]

Frances: I refuse to live in a black-and-white universe where a commercially viable title can't have any critical worth or an avant-garde title can't be bad. I'm very well aware of the marketing big picture. I don't see what any of it has to do with assessing a book's worth. I dig Richard Russo. I don't give a shit how many books he sells.

[Frances Madeson]

You can dig him all you want, even revere him. Just don't be trying to shovel (or peddle) him in anywhere near the same category of writer as Sorrentino and Markson, unless of course as David Markson wrote in Reader's Block:

"God id dead, everything is permitted."

[Frances Madeson]

Pardon and please supplant "is" for "id." Oh Lord, that's what I get for watching Alphaville last evening into the wee hours.

[John Williams]

I'm here to defend Russo (up to a point), but I have to address Frances' rant first. I don't think I've ever seen a "billboard" for a Richard Russo novel. Certainly, there were no billboards for his first or second novel. Russo BECAME popular because people LIKED his work. That is one way that the market can operate. You make it sound like Russo is Taylor Lautner.

Anyway, back to the point: Dan, I thought Bridge of Sighs and Cape Magic were entertaining, though disappointing relative to Russo's earlier work. I might chalk some of this up to his increased screenwriting, but that's another story. A critique of his reputation in general that largely ignores all the previous books seems unfair. The Risk Pool, Nobody's Fool, and Straight Man, in particular, are great -- I think the accumulated love for them is what led to so much over-praise for Empire Falls, which was very good, but perhaps not as good as those earlier books.

[Frances Madeson]

John,
I've never been to Vegas, but it doesn't take a cardsharp (or even a dullard) to understand that though readers also liked Mr. Sorrentino's and Mr. Markson's early books, those writers were never selected for the kind of mass appeal that is a consequence of, not a precursor for, the level of marketing investment that Mr. Russo and Candace Bushnell have received.

[John Williams]

Now it's Russo and Bushnell together? I have been to Vegas, a few times. But even if I hadn't, I'd know to cut my losses in this conversation.

[Shelley]

Frances: write a book of essays! Seriously!

Re the review:"sense of place" sounds good to me because of my work, but I have to confess I haven't read this author.

[Levi Stahl]

I think you're right about Russo--but only regarding these most recent two novels. That Old Cape Magic is entertaining, but slight. Bridge of Sighs is Russo's worst novel; I'm a big fan and I'd rate it almost a complete failure. Throughout, it feels like Russo is deforming his characters in service of his larger themes, forcing them to make decisions and have thoughts that simply don't ring true--and in the process destroying our willingness to believe in their existence at all.

Nobody's Fool, however, is brilliant, a funny, moving, serious, sad look at frustration and failure and personality and place. I find myself thinking of it frequently. His other earlier novels, too, are all very good and worthy of the reputation they established for him.