Russell Banks



Russell Banks (born March 28, 1940) is an American poet and writer of fiction.

Life
Russell Banks was born in Newton, Massachusetts on March 28, 1940. He attended the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He lives in upstate New York, and has been named a New York State Author. He is also Artist-in-Residence at the University of Maryland. He is married to the poet Chase Twichell. Banks is an American novelist best known for his “detailed accounts of domestic strife and the daily struggles of ordinary often-marginalized characters”. His stories usually revolve around his own childhood experiences, the often reflect “moral themes and personal relationships”.

Banks is a member of the International Parliament of Writers and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. His work has been translated into twenty languages and has received numerous international prizes and awards. He has written fiction, and more recently, non-fiction, with Dreaming up America. His main works include the novels Continental Drift, Rule of the Bone, Cloudsplitter, The Sweet Hereafter, and Affliction. The latter two novels were each made into feature films in 1997 (see Affliction and The Sweet Hereafter).

Writing
Many of Banks's works reflect his working-class upbringing. His stories often show people facing tragedy and downturns in everyday life, expressing sadness and self-doubt, but also showing resilience and strength in the face of their difficulties. Banks has also written short stories, some of which appear in the collection The Angel on the Roof, as well as poetry. He has written a movie adaptation of Jack Kerouac's On the Road for producer Francis Ford Coppola, which was slated for production in 2006. It is not known if Banks's screenplay will be used in the final version. Banks's novel The Darling is going to be made into a feature film directed by Martin Scorsese, with Cate Blanchett in the main role. Banks was the 1985 recipient of the John Dos Passos Prize for fiction. Cloudsplitter was purported to have been a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in fiction that eventually went to Michael Cunningham's The Hours. He was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1996.

"Black Man and White Woman in Dark Green Rowboat"
Russell Banks wrote a short story collection called the Trailerpark, the short story “Black Man and White Woman in Dark Green Rowboat,” was one of the few stories Banks wrote for this collection. The story “Black Man and White Woman in Dark Green Rowboat,” is about a struggling interracial couple. It begins with setting the “August heat wave,” scenery (p.67) elaborating on how hot it was at the trailer park and a short description of each of the random people who live at the trailer park and what they are doing to start off their day. The reader is then introduced to the main characters of the story, the black man and the white women. The focus of the story is then directed towards what the couple is doing. The man plans to go to the lake to fish and the woman to sunbath. It follows them onto the lake in the dark green rowboat, while they are on the lake, and on their way home. During their time on the lake the woman starts to talk about how she told her mother about the pregnancy and how her mother reacted. She informs the man that she will need to be back before three-thirty so she is able to make it to her scheduled appointment to abort the baby. The narrator never states that the woman is pregnant nor that she is getting an abortion but with the context clues the reader is able to conclude these assumptions. The man rows the woman back to the trailer park they both get off the boat the man collecting his fishing tools, the woman her towel, magazine and bottle of tanning lotion and go their separate ways.

Critics
Many have admired Russell Bank’s form of realistic writing. His writing often times compliments and or explores the modern American ways. Reviewers have condoned him on the portrayal of the working-class struggling to overcome some of the issues they are faced with such as destructive relationships, poverty, drug abuse, and spiritual confusion. Banks has been acclaimed for his strong-spirited characters and narrators. Scholars have variously compared Banks's fiction to the works of Raymond Carver, Richard Ford, and Andre Dubus. Christine Benvenuto has commented that, “Banks writes with an intensely focused empathy and a compassionate sense of humor that help to keep readers, if not his characters, afloat through the misadventures and outright tragedies of his books.”

Publications

 * 1974 Snow (poetry)
 * 1975 Searching for Survivors (short story collection)
 * 1975 Family Life (novel)
 * 1978 The New World (short story collection)
 * 1978 Hamilton Stark (novel)
 * 1980 The Book of Jamaica (novel)
 * 1981 Trailerpark (short story collection)
 * 1983 The Relation of My Imprisonment (novel)
 * 1985 Continental Drift (novel)
 * 1986 Success Stories (short story collection)
 * 1989 Affliction (novel)
 * 1991 The Sweet Hereafter (novel)
 * 1995 Rule of the Bone (novel)
 * 1998 Cloudsplitter (novel)
 * 1998 Invisible Stranger (nonfiction)
 * 2000 The Angel on the Roof (short story collection)
 * 2004 The Darling (novel)
 * 2008 The Reserve (novel)
 * 2008 Dreaming Up America (nonfiction)
 * 2011 Lost Memory of Skin (novel)

Literary links

 * http://www.albany.edu/writers-inst/webpages4/archives/banksr.html
 * Russell Banks reads his short story "The Moor" on This American Life
 * Russell Banks Papers at the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin
 * Essay on Banks' short stories

Interviews

 * Author interview in Guernica Magazine (Guernicamag.com)
 * Interview March, 2008
 * Interview with Russell Banks when "The Darling" was published
 * Interview with Russell Banks when "The Darling" was published