NEW YORK (AP) 鈥 Russell Banks, an award-winning fiction writer who rooted such novels as 鈥淎ffliction鈥 and 鈥淭he Sweet Hereafter鈥 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 John Brown in 鈥淐loudsplitter," has died. He was 82.
Banks, a professor emeritus at Princeton University, died Saturday in upstate New York, his editor, Dan Halpern, told The Associated Press. Banks was being treated for cancer, Halpern said.
Joyce Carol Oates, a former Princeton colleague who referred to Banks on Twitter as a great American writer and 鈥渂eloved friend of so many," said he died peacefully in his home.
鈥淚 loved Russell & loved his tremendous talent & magnanimous heart,鈥 Oates wrote. 鈥'Cloudsplitter'鈥 (was) his masterpiece, but all his work is exceptional.鈥
Born in Newton, Massachusetts, and raised in Massachusetts and New Hampshire, Banks was a self-styled heir to such 19th century writers as Nathaniel Hawthorne and Walt Whitman, aspiring to high art and a deep grasp of the country鈥檚 spirit. He was a plumber鈥檚 son who wrote often about working class families 鈥 whether those who died trying to break out, caught up in a 鈥渒ind of madness鈥 that the past can be erased, or those like himself who got away and survived and asked 鈥淲hy me, Lord?鈥
Banks lived part of the year in Florida, and for a time had a home in Jamaica, but he was essentially a man of the North, with an old Puritan鈥檚 sense of consequences. Snow fell often in his fiction, from the upstate New York community torn by a bus crash in 鈥淭he Sweet Hereafter鈥 to the desperate, divorced New Hampshire policeman undone by his paranoid fantasies in 鈥淎ffliction.鈥
In Banks鈥 critical breakthrough 鈥淐ontinental Drift,鈥 published in 1985, oil burner repairman Bob Dubois flees from his native New Hampshire and goes into business with his wealthy brother in Florida, only to learn his brother鈥檚 life was as hollow as his own.
鈥淗is brother鈥檚 strut and brag were empty from the start, and in a deep, barely conscious way, Bob knew that all along and forgave him his strut and brag simply because he knew they were empty. But he had never believed it would come to this, to nothing,鈥 Banks wrote.
鈥淐loudsplitter鈥 was his most ambitious novel, a 750-page narrative on John Brown and his improbable quest to rid the country of slavery. The story long precedes Banks鈥 lifetime, but the inspiration was literally close to home. Banks lived near Brown鈥檚 burial ground in North Elba, New York, and he would pass by often enough that Brown 鈥渂ecame a kind of ghostly presence,鈥 the author told the AP in 1998.
鈥淐loudsplitter鈥 reads like a prequel to Banks鈥 contemporary works, a summoning of Hawthorne and other early influences. As remembered by son Owen Brown, John Brown was a haunted man of the Old World whose resolve to free the slaves and punish the enslavers made his face burn like a revivalist preacher鈥檚.
鈥淚 was a boy; I was frightened by my father鈥檚 face,鈥 Banks鈥 narrator explains. 鈥淚 remember father looking straight into our eyes, burning us with his gaze, as he told us to hear him now. He had determined that he would henceforth put his sins of pride and vanity behind him. And he would go out from here and wage war on slavery. The time has come, he declared, and he wished to join the time in full cry.鈥
Banks was a Pulitzer finalist for 鈥淐loudsplitter鈥 in 1999 and had been one 13 years earlier for 鈥淐ontinental Drift.鈥 His other honors included the Anisfeld-Book Award for 鈥淐loudsplitter鈥 and membership in the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
Two of his books were adapted into acclaimed film releases in the late 1990s: 鈥淭he Sweet Hereafter,鈥 directed by Atom Egoyan and starring Ian Holm, and director Paul Schrader鈥檚 鈥淎ffliction,鈥 which brought James Coburn an Academy Award for best supporting actor.
More recent works by Banks included the story collection 鈥淎 Permanent Member of the Family鈥 and the 2021 novel 鈥淔oregone,鈥 in which an American filmmaker who moved to Canada during the Vietnam War looks back on his impulsive youth 鈥 a background Banks understood from the inside.
His books often told of absent and otherwise failing fathers and Banks鈥 own father, Earl Banks, was an alcoholic whom the author says beat him as a child and left him with a permanently damaged left eye. Russell was meant for other worlds, smart enough to have the nickname 鈥淭eacher鈥 in high school and become the first of his family to attend college, receiving a full scholarship from Colgate University.
He was an idealist in search of ideals, among countless young people of the 1960s to adopt Jack Kerouac鈥檚 鈥淥n the Road鈥 as a kind of Bible. He dropped out of Colgate and drove South with dreams of joining Fidel Castro鈥檚 revolutionary army in Cuba, a quest which ended in St. Petersburg, Florida.
He was married twice by his early 20s (and eventually had four children), endured more than a few bar fights, wrote poetry bad enough that he later wished he had burned it, worked for a time with his father as a plumber back in New Hampshire and resumed his education at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
He was in his mid-30s, and nearing the end of his second marriage, when he published his first story collection, 鈥淪earching for Survivors,鈥 and first novel, 鈥淔amily Life.鈥 By the start of the 1990s, when he turned 50, he was an established author and had settled into a lasting marriage with his fourth wife, the poet Chase Twichell.
鈥淥ver the years, I think that I鈥檝e been able to make my anger coherent to myself, and that鈥檚 allowed me to become more lucid as a human being, as a writer, as 鈥 I hope 鈥 a husband, father, and friend,鈥 he told Ploughshares for an interview that appeared in the magazine鈥檚 Winter 1993-94 issue. 鈥淚t鈥檚 very hard to be a decent human being if you鈥檙e controlled by anger that you can鈥檛 understand. When you begin to acquire that understanding, you begin to become useful to other people.鈥
