American writer Russell Banks died on Saturday at the age of 82 from cancer. His work has focused on portraying the most humble and marginalized in 20th century America.
It was another great American novelist, Joyce Carol Oates, also a painter of a society sick with its violence and its inequalities, who was one of the first to pay tribute to him, announcing on Twitter that his friend Russell Banks had “passed away peacefully at his home in upstate New York.”
“I loved Russell and I adored his immense talent and his generous heart. ‘Cloud Slayer’ (was) his masterpiece, but all his work is exceptional,” wrote the author, who taught the writing like Russell Banks at Princeton University in New Jersey.
Portrait of the working classes
From “Affliction” (1989), a dark psychological portrait of a policeman adapted for the cinema by Paul Schrader in 1997, to “Des belles matins” (1991), a story with several voices of a town in the State of New York traumatized by a school bus accident, his novels were steeped in the life of the working classes, from which he came.
Novelist, short-story writer and poet, Russell Banks loved to tell the hardships of the working class through characters who struggle with poverty, drug addiction, class and racial issues.
“As a writer, I’m lucky. But as an American citizen, I’m pessimistic,” he said in an interview with Le Monde in 2016. “The middle class has become impoverished, Americans no longer believe that their children will live better than them, or even as well,” he added, showing his support for Hillary Clinton against Donald Trump.
>> Review the interview with Russell Banks at 12:45 in 2013
Among his best-known books were “Cloud Slayer” (1998), a historical novel about American abolitionist John Brown, or “American Darling”, a saga-like portrait of an American from the left-wing bourgeoisie who exile in Liberia. His latest novel, “Oh, Canada”, an end-of-life story, was released last year.
Traveler
Born March 28, 1940 in Newton, Massachusetts (northeast), Russell Banks grew up in a modest environment. His plumber father left home when he was twelve years old. The father figure is often present in his books, as in “Cloud Slayer”.
After his studies, he left to discover the world, in particular Jamaica, a trip from which he would draw a book (“The Book of Jamaica”) and then earn his living as a plumber. His life as an author will begin when he tries his luck at a writing workshop in Vermont. Another American writer, Neslon Algren, took him under his wing. His first novel, “Family Life”, appeared in 1975.
Political commitment
Politically active, Banks had taken a stand against American military intervention in Iraq and against the Patriot Act. He had also chaired the International Parliament of Writers created by Salman Rushdie and founded the organization Cities of Refuge North America, a network of places of asylum for exiled or threatened writers.
Russell Banks had also written an adaptation of Jack Kerouac’s book “On the road” for the cinema. He liked to say that literature was not the only form of storytelling.
“If I was 20 today, I’m not sure I would become a novelist. It’s very archaic! I think I would be a director for the Internet because it’s the dominant form of storytelling,” added- he.
ats/rad