Wisely Entertaining

Funny how you learn things about the human heart in the world of Richard Russo

Richard Russo is one of those writers who, when I see he has a new book out, I simply buy it, no questions asked. I first discovered Russo thirty years ago when he published Nobody’s Fool, and worked backward to his first two novels Mohawk (1986), and The Risk Pool (1988, all part of the terrific Vintage Contemporaries series published by the legendary editor Gary Fiskejon). All three are set in downscale upstate New York towns, and all three feature charming rogue fathers who loom large over their sensory-soaking sons. Nobody’s Fool was made into a terrific 1994 film starring Paul Newman as Donald—aptly nicknamed “Sully”—Sullivan, who inhabited the role so vividly that Russo himself noted that the actor shares “joint custody” of the character with him. (Go watch it—now—so you can see Newman’s work with the fabulous Jessica Tandy in the final film of her storied career.)

In the years that followed, Russo widened his canvas to include the world of academia, and his 1997 novel Straight Man is the funniest send-up of the professoriate I’ve ever read—yes, I’m including Kingsley Amis’s 1954 novel Lucky Jim and Jane Smiley’s 1995 classic Moo on that list—as confirmed by a laugh-out-loud second reading a few years ago. Russo’s 2001 novel Empire Falls won the Pulitzer Prize and was made into a 2005 HBO series, again starring Newman in a cast that included Philip Seymour Hoffman and Helen Hunt. Russo is not just a novelist; he’s a brand that delivers.

All this said, I will confess to a twinge of unease when I clicked the “confirm your order” button for his latest novel, Somebody’s Fool, on Amazon.com. Somebody’s Fool follows Everybody’s Fool (2016) the sequel to Nobody’s Fool; the three books have now been retroactively packaged as the “North Bath Trilogy,” in honor of the town where the three books are set. Everybody’s Fool is centered on Sully’s son Peter, a failed academic who ends up back in his hometown wrestling with the legacy of his father, and Somebody’s Fool follows Peter’s fraught relationship with his sons, one of whom ends up on his doorstep. The new book is set circa 2010, and Sully has been dead for a decade, which hardly stops him from inhabiting its pages with as much force as he did when he was alive. As does a cast of characters for whom you think “Oh yeah, Ms. Beryl! And Rub! Poor, hapless, Rub!” as you re-encounter them as friends you haven’t seen for years but with whom you can pick up effortlessly.

I say I was uneasy because my fear was that Russo was maybe going back to the well one too many times. He’s now 74 years old, and could be forgiven for a little recycling. Certainly, he’s one of those people who sticks to what he knows; notwithstanding forays to Venice, Cape Cod, and an interesting essay on seeing Bruce Springsteen in Bulgaria (I’m honored to share space with him between covers in the 2019 anthology Long Walk Home), he’s sort of like a mystery writer who serves up satisfying comfort food—nothing too fancy—on familiar terrain. He also reminds me of Richard Ford; as in Ford books like The Sportswriter (1986) and Independence Day (1995), you tend to spend a few closely observed days in the lives of the protagonist; Somebody’s Fool unfolds over the space of a weekend. Russo’s specialty is character, and spending time with him offers lessons in the foibles of the human heart, among them our unwillingness to express our heart’s desires to those most eager to receive them.

But here’s the thing about Somebody’s Fool, which I was initially reluctant to write about because it can be hard to review titles that are part of a series: it shows us an artist continuing to grow in craft and power in the autumn of his life. This includes modest, assured, and effective efforts to grapple with race relations, and a real—which is to say not literary fiction—plot in the form of a murder mystery. Actually, the murder mystery doesn’t add up to all that much; it’s another crime, involving Peter’s son, that’s far more gripping. In any event, the novel features a chillingly believable corrupt cop whose feral intelligence is scary in its effortlessly believable ability to manipulate other characters. Russo’s ability to conjure such people is both unnerving and reassuring: he channels evil he seems to know intimately in the name not only of entertainment but more importantly in a quest for decency that’s all the more satisfying for being elusive. You feel yourself in good hands with Russo, not only because he’s a storyteller who knows what he’s doing, but also because he gives you reason for hope that you can quiet your own demons and connect with others trying to do the same. Writing like this is a gift, and an object lesson on how art can be a life-affirming force. And how to have a few laughs while learning something useful.