Richard Russo, �Empire Falls�
[ED NOTE: A long, whiskey-fueled entry follows, complete with a poor, poor, pitiful me section, along with a rallying cry for you. Do me a favor and read it when you have time to pay attention. This is not an entry to merely skim.]
Back in 2003, I read Russo�s Nobody�s Fool, a quirky tale about a group of eccentrics populating a small town in the northeast who congregated primarily at a small diner. Though that novel doesn�t have much in the way of a solid plotline, the book was so well written that it made my #2 slot for best books read that year, and 2003 was a year that I read 171 books.
Then I read Russo�s first novel Mohawk in 2004, which concentrated on a group of small town eccentrics from the northeast who spent most of their time socializing in a diner. Like I said, this was his first novel, and it kind of showed, making this a far inferior book to the one I read previously. Think in terms of Evil Dead vs. Evil Dead 2, which are essentially the same movie, though the second one is done with a surer hand.
So this year I skipped ahead to his fourth novel with Empire Falls, which concentrates on a group of eccentrics living in the northeast who spend the majority of their days at a small diner.
Sigh.
Despite the similarities with the other two books, I was enjoying the process of absorbing these people�s stories and quirks, and Russo�s writing is just getting better and better. Still, I couldn�t help but notice I was much more enthralled with Nobody�s Fool, yet Empire won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 2002. Did the Pulitzer review board simply not read Nobody�s Fool back in 1994, I wondered, or was that simply a banner year for novels? Or conversely, was 2002 a crappy one?
As I delved farther into the story, I realized the difference. Empire Falls moves past the charming idiosyncrasies of the blue-collar masses similar to Steinbeck�s paisanos from Tortilla Flat into darker, more depressing territory. That�s new ground for Russo. Did it work?
Yeah, considering the funk it put me into, I�d say it did.
The main focus is on Miles Roby, who works hard at a (surprise!) diner � the same diner he�s worked at for 20 years. He�s smart enough and a hard enough worker to start a business of his own, but stays at his dead-end job out of a sense of loyalty to his deceased mother, feelings of responsibility to his daughter, and a fear of change or risk. Meanwhile, most of the other residents are trying to figure out how to make Miles realize his potential.
I�ve said it before, but I�ve had a half-dozen new people sign up for this blog recently so I�ll repeat it. I was thrown out of high school at the beginning of my sophomore year. My guidance counselor�s parting words were something to the effect of �You will never succeed in an educational or professional environment with your attitude.�
Yeah, I know � who cares what a guidance counselor has to say, right? But in a way, I think I believed her, and I wasn�t about to change my attitude. So for a while, I played in a punk band, rode around on my skateboard a lot, chased girls and generally enjoyed not having to deal with authority figures on a daily basis.
But I also moved out of the house when I was seventeen and it didn�t take long to use up my savings. I prepared to enter the job market. There were a few problems with that, however: I had no skills and my attitude hadn�t changed, which ruled out the professional job market. I took a job washing dishes in a restaurant.
I�m getting somewhere with this. Just be patient.
Very patient.
I was already used to people judging me on my appearance and my hair color, and I fought their preconceived stereotypes by trying to shatter their low expectations. Hell, when I first got the job at the Italian eatery, I have a clear memory of filing out the paperwork when I got hired. The general manager attempted to spell out �restaurant,� because he figured I wouldn�t know how to spell such a complicated three-syllable word. I quickly moved from washing dishes to becoming their head chef and went on to win their employee of the year award.
But I still knew I was working there because I didn�t know how to do anything else.
The food service job and I parted company six years later. I went back to the school environment and succeeded there as well. I graduated, with honors, and then continued to work my retail job at a used bookstore because even though I had qualifications for bigger things, I didn�t know how to pursue other avenues of employment. Though I knew that I had skills, I felt safe doing unskilled labor, because I was good at it. In addition, I think I was scared to attempt to do so because of that prophecy laid out by that guidance counselor so many years before.
Now I find myself here in Hawaii. The majority of the reasoning behind the move was to force myself out of my area of comfort and into a different employment market. Through all these years of working menial jobs, I�ve known for a long time that what I wanted to do was write for a living. It�s something I enjoy. But, like Miles Roby from this novel I�m supposedly reviewing, I find it easier to continue doing something I don�t particularly like because it pays the bills, rather than take a chance to pursue something that I really want. What I�m doing, in essence, is playing it safe.
Considering my birthday is in 11 days, I suppose this means I�m having a mid-life crisis. How clich�. If anybody sees me tooling around in a muscle car sporting a ponytail, I insist that you beat me around the face and neck with sticks.
Between late November and late February I put all plans to the side, concentrating only on making sure I had enough to pay rent and bills. I didn�t have any choice. Between rent, credit card bills and student loan payments, I needed to make nearly a thousand dollars a month. That�s without considering money for food. Or cigarettes. Or whiskey.
So I put the shoulder to the wheel, at one point working four jobs while taking classes. I dropped out of school and my pieces to the Honolulu Weekly dried up, mostly because I was working myself to death and was too tired to do much of anything else. Which means I stopped doing what I wanted because of monetary pressures. I played it safe, concentrating on the unskilled labor, even though it made me unhappy.
That�s a lousy trait to have. I saw it in the hero of this novel. Then I realized it fit me as well.
If you noticed the start and finish time for this novel, you saw that I finished the last page near the end of February. That it took this long for me to get around to reviewing it just proves my point about giving up things I enjoy in order to survive.
I think I need to show a little more gumption. When I finished the novel, I made a promise to myself to write more because that�s what I want to do.
Since then I had three out of four pieces published in the Weekly for the March slate, and the new one came out today.* By next week, I've promised myself to write two more for the paper, along with four actual book reviews for Maximum RockNRoll (and reviews for this site as well). I�ve also been accepted into the Graduate Program at the University of Hawaii. If I have to lose even more sleep, then so be it. If I have to starve a little more, then fine. But I�m not letting my writing output fall by the wayside again, simply because I have bills to pay.
This is where the rallying cry I mentioned at the beginning comes into play. Getting paid to write is what I want to do with my life � and I have no idea how to go about it. So here is what I�m asking from you, patient, patient reader. I�m rather blessed by the intelligence and resourcefulness of readers of this site. Most of you I know personally, others I�ve read what you wrote and feel that I know you personally. We could start a smart club.
So, fellow members of the smart club � I don�t have any idea of how to go about making my wishes a reality. This is where you come in.
If you have experience with publishing, give me suggestions. For the most part my field is for journalism, obviously, but for those of you who read my book � I�d like some feedback. I�m thinking that there�s no reason to not shop it around to publishers or agents, but have no idea how to do so and I think it�s flawed.
I�ve had nothing but positive feedback from people about the book since it came out, but remember that I respond best to negative feedback. I�m glad you liked it, but what can make it better? I�ll give you an example: What stands out for most is the interaction between the Red Hot Punk Rock Goddess and myself, but if you look closely, she�s only in about seven of the 19 chapters. I think her part needs to be introduced earlier, as well as expanded.
For those who don�t have my book, I think it�s obvious that I like fiction, but I have no experience with it. I�d like you to click this link, which has my first and only foray into fiction writing (even though it�s based on factual events), and tell me what you think, and more important, what�s wrong with it, because I�d like to continue.
So that�s it people. I�m not fishing for complements. I�m asking for help. Make my comment section explode.
*As I said, I finished this book and had these feelings over a month ago, and have been working toward the goals I outlined. Today, I got an e-mail from my editor at the Weekly who said, �Thanks so much for sending me articles....keep them coming. We really like your work and your choices for places. We weren't too happy with the inundation of club reviews that we were having to deal with for a few months there---we like your stuff much better. As a matter of fact, our new editor was going to nix the Night Shift column until I started using more of your stuff---now he's happy. Thanks.�
That�s a step toward what I wanted. I feel much better now.
