Books: The Risk Pool By Richard Russo (1988)

 

Ned, watchful and introspective, is a child when he begins his narration, living with his mother, while his unreliable father Sam is more or less out of the picture –and when is in the picture, it’s rather an ugly one. But Ned, as any boy would, is still curious about his father. Of course, Sam Hall is known to everyone in Mohawk and everyone would agree that Sam is not the best man to be a parent. Yet, when his mother becomes ill, Ned is forced to move in with his hard drinking, rule breaking, addicted to gambling parent. While Sam can be loveable at times, Ned is forced to become part of his father's seedy nocturnal world, which entails touring the town's bars and pool halls, all while struggling to win Sam's affections while avoiding his sins.

Much like John Irving (and many other writers of this type of fiction), Russo adds many autobiographical elements to his tale of Ned Hall, who we follow through four periods of his life, focusing specifically on Hall's relationship with his loutish and, in his best friend's words, "rockheaded" father. Wikipedia: “Many elements of The Risk Pool were based on the author's own experience growing up in Gloversville, NY, a town similar to Russo's fictional Mohawk. Like Mohawk, Gloversville's economy revolves around the leather industry, and both towns suffered economic decline in the second half of the twentieth century.” So yes, Russo breaks no new ground here, as there are a million of these books on the market.

While it’s funny that Ned tries to escape his small town of Mohawk, only to be drawn back by circumstances, homesickness, and his failure at maintaining his own existence –which really can be laid at both his parents’ doorstep, you also feel a bit sad for him. I mean, yes, we all have known people who somehow have been successful despite the roadblocks that have been thrown their way, but there is also many who fall into the endless cycle of repeating the past. I believe this happens more than the latter. And Ned, whose mother went from a failed marriage to (implied) relationship with a priest (which ended in a nervous breakdown), to a father who seemly refused to grow up and accept reasonability (but forced this onto Drew Littler, the son of women Sam Hall was seeing on and off over the decades) has not grown up himself.  

Russo’s own relationship with his father was mirrored here in The Risk Pool (while sounding like a 1950’s noir title, is used here a metaphor; borrowed from a form of risk management mostly practiced by insurance companies). As he noted in a 1993 San Francisco Chronicle interview, his father "lived a life of studied bad habits," leaving his wife and ignoring his son until he was "old enough to follow him into the OTB and then into the bar and then into the pool hall.”

What makes these novels work is that while towns like Mohawk, quickly falling into abyss but only marginally trying to save it, and thus will always remain conservative in its values, they still have pockets of surrealism existing in its nooks and crannies, bits of weirdness and bizarreness (something Stephen King is able to tap into) to them that I’ve always been attracted to.

The Risk Pool was Russo’s second novel, and the story (eventually you realize there really is no real story here) sometimes paces slower that a limping 89-year-old man crossing a busy street. But, while he does go overboard describing things in such great detail (which is the antithesis of recent writers I’ve been reading -see Richard Stark and Gregory MacDonald), there is still a charm to the book. I will admit there was some thought to just tossing it aside, if only because I have so much other stuff to read, but then there are not a lot of writers of Russo’s caliber around anymore, so I carried on. Besides, I still have two more of his books on my shelf, the Pulitzer Prize winning novel Empire Falls and That Old Cape Magic, and I don’t want one book to stop me in my tracks. 

Books: Everybody's Fool By Richard Russo (2016)

“The irresistible Sully, who in the intervening years has come by some unexpected good fortune, is staring down a VA cardiologist’s estimate that he has only a year or two left, and it’s hard work trying to keep this news from the most important people in his life: Ruth, the married woman he carried on with for years and the ultra-hapless Rub Squeers, who worries that he and Sully aren’t still best friends. The there is Sully’s son and grandson, for whom he was mostly an absentee figure (and now a regretful one). We also enjoy the company of Doug Raymer, the chief of police who’s obsessing primarily over the identity of the man his wife might’ve been about to run off with, before dying in a freak accident. Bath’s mayor, the former academic Gus Moynihan, whose wife problems are, if anything, even more pressing; and then there’s Carl Roebuck, whose lifelong run of failing upward might now come to ruin. And finally, there’s Charice Bond—a light at the end of the tunnel that is Chief Raymer’s office—as well as her brother, Jerome, who might well be the train barreling into the station.”

Richard Russo’s Everybody’s Fool is set a little over ten years after the events of Nobody’s Fool (though twenty-three years have passed since the book was released), and like all sequels (and the first one Russo has done), you might begin to wonder if it’s as good as the original. Being this is only the third Russo novel I’ve read, and having recently finished the first book featuring the characters of Bath, New York, I found I enjoyed the book just the same. Russo’s wry look at human nature and their inevitable foibles it causes makes for a fun read. The writers ear for working class folks is strong and, much like Charles Dickens or John Irving or even Stephen King, you get a sense that these are real people, that they talk, eat, sleep, and move from one good fortune to tragedy much like everyone else does.  

There is a sense of forbidding death that clings to the book, also, from a lot of characters who’ve shuttled off this mortal coil to the town of Bath, which continues its slow collapse into death, to people like Sully who is facing mortality but unsure if he wants to leave or stay. 

The one striking aspect of Everybody’s Fool is that Sully is really not the main character of this story –he takes on somewhat of a supporting role here. And for some this might throw out the question of why Russo decided to return to them and not create different characters with the same story. But I know writers, and I can guess that this is where his muse took him.

Books: Nobody's Fool By Richard Russo (1993)

When Richard Russo’s Nobody’s Fool came out 23 years ago, I think I did want to read it, but 1993 is a long way in the past. I’m unsure what I was reading back then, though probably a lot of fantasy. Then in 1994 a movie was released, based on the novel, starring the legendary Paul Newman. Unfortunately I’ve never seen the film. I would offer excuses, if I could manifest them, but fear everyone would see through my lies. 

However, I did read Russo’s 1997 Straight Man, which I found brilliantly hilarious and thought that would be the beginning of a long relationship with the author.  And while working at Borders, I grabbed the ARC copy of Empire Falls, the 2001 novel by the author (this is the one of many things I miss about not being in the retail book business anymore, for one of the best perks was free books). I, of course, never read it. But I held onto it, and I think I still have that ARC somewhere in my book collection that is shoved in boxes in the garage. 

So let’s move up to 2016. I discovered that Russo was releasing a new book in May, and it turned out to be a sequel to Nobody’s Fool (called Everybody’s Fool). So, despite having many other books to read, I got a used edition at Iliad’s in North Hollywood and finally, twenty-three years after it was published, read the book. 

Donald "Sully" Sullivan is a worn yet spry hustler living in the peaceful, snowy northern New York state village of North Bath. He free-lances in the construction business, usually with his dim-witted friend Rub by his side. He is often at odds with Carl Roebuck, a local contractor, suing him at every opportunity for unpaid wages and disability. Sully's one-legged lawyer Wirf is inept, and his lawsuits are repeatedly dismissed. As a way to irritate him, Sully flirts with Carl's wife Toby (Griffith) openly at every opportunity (which she enjoys). He is a regular at the Iron Horse Saloon, where he often has drinks and plays cards with Wirf, Carl, Rub, and the town sheriff. Sully is a tenant in the home of the elderly Miss Beryl, whose banker son Clive strongly urges her to kick him out and sell the house. Family complications of his own develop for Sully with a visit from Peter, his estranged son who is a jobless professor at odds with his wife. While he and Sully reconstruct their relationship, Sully begins a new one with young grandson Will. Peter’s sudden everyday presence does not sit well with Rub, but Sully tells him that although Peter is his son, Rub is still his best friend. Meanwhile, Clive is on the verge of a lucrative deal to build an amusement park in North Bath. However the deal seems too good to be true. 

While the themes of quirky small town America life, filled with eccentric characters of all stripes, are well-worn tropes in fiction, Russo delivers a fairly original character of Nobody’s Fool Sully. He’s a well-developed, almost real-life person who clearly has succeed in failing at everything he does, but does not seem to be really bothered by it. He has a smart mouth, which tends to get him trouble a lot, but overall, his appealing nature makes the reader fall in love with him, instead of wondering why anyone would be friends with him, especially Rub.

The book has many storylines that eventually dovetail nicely, but there were many of them that went on too long and seemed to be filler (I was amused at the running joke with the snow blower, however).  But what made the book work are the carefully realized characters having real, very believable conversations. It’s a treat, sometimes, when an author can travel over well-worn premise and still deliver something worth reading.