The Bard of the Blue Collar Keeps the Falls Flowing

‘Under the Falls’By Richard RussoKnopf, 256 pages“Nobody lives the way they want,” declares a character in Richard Russo’s 1986 debut novel “Mohawk.” Forty years later, with his 11th novel about to be published, this can be read as an artistic mission statement for Mr. Russo.“Mohawk and Mr. Russo’s sophomore effort 1988’s “The Risk Pool” were each highly readable 400-plus page dramedies that took sharp swerves into pathos and violence.Each is set in what we might as well call “Russo’s Corner, New York,” an upstate small town with a vibrant past that has fallen on hard times. Both novels are filled with flawed but decent characters tangled up in webs of unspoken feelings and unfulfilled love, whether romantic or familial, and unrealized dreams that have gone sour.Mr. Russo hit the big-time with his third novel “Nobody’s Fool,” later turned into a wonderful 1994 Robert Benton film, starring Paul Newman and Bruce Willis. Though his most enduring work may well be 2001’s “Empire Falls,” which bested A-listers Colson Whitehead and Jonathan Franzen for the Pulitzer Prize.Mr. Russo’s setting shifted from New York to Maine in “Empire Falls,” but many of the personal and social tensions are the same: Divorced dad Miles Robey pines for the affections of a waitress who works in a diner he desperately wants to own and has to deal with his feckless father.The degree to which Miles — and so many of us — are beholden to powers beyond our control and can’t live the lives we really want is illustrated by the town river that flows through the entire narrative of Empire Falls: Beautifully, then menacingly.Richard Russo’s latest novel also revolves around a body of water — and even has “Falls” in the title. Yet, “Under the Falls” opens inside a limousine. Has blue-collar bard Richard Russo, who just turned 77 years old, finally gone Hollywood on us? Not quite.“Rock star” Tyler Sinclair is telling bandmates about the shabby “rust belt” town of Stone Mountain he left behind when he was 18 years old. “The mills shut down. Jobs went overseas,” Sinclair explains. “Those who had the wherewithal fled.”Given the name of his band, though — who are also called Stone Mountain – it’s clear this place still looms large in Sinclair’s psyche. “Under the Falls” has many elements of Russo’s best work — past loves and present grudges, money woes and tested loyalties, simmering resentments brought to a sudden, violent boil.But the novel’s most important detail is revealed in its “Acknowledgments,” in which Russo explains that “Under the Falls” “began not as a novel but as a TV pilot script.” This goes a long way towards explaining some of the strengths of “Under the Falls” — a breezy, downright page-turning pace, as well as deficiencies, especially for longtime Russo devotees — interior dialogue that explains too much, a gruesome auto accident that moves the plot more than it does any of these characters.Tyler and Stone Mountain’s 2000s-era success, in a novel set after the COVID pandemic, also raises questions. A highly successful Fleetwood-Mac-ish rock band? From an era when The Strokes and My Chemical Romance reigned? A 17-year-old superfan who owns all of “Tyler’s records”? At times, “Under the Falls” reads like an early draft or condensed version of Russo’s hefty 2007 epic “Bridge of Sighs,” which was also about youthful trauma, a successful artist who leaves a small town, and the painful collision of the past and present.It’s worth adding that within Russo’s impressive oeuvre, “Bridge of Sighs” is not merely challenging and deeply underrated. It may well be Russo’s most impressive artistic achievement, even if the likes of Paul Newman, Ed Harris (who acted in a 2005 HBO adaptation of “Empire Falls”) or Bob Odenkirk (who graced a 2023 adaptation of Russo’s 1997 campus satire “Straight Man”) will never appear in a film adaptation of “Bridge of Sighs.”Once “Under the Falls” get moving, Mr. Russo’s familiar obsessions and skills emerge. Tyler, it turns out, may be responsible for a youthful friend’s devastating injury. And a high school fling may have resulted in a lot more than bittersweet memories.As “Under the Falls” approaches its conclusion, Tyler ends up confined in a church, and it’s a welcome opportunity to consider the broader role faith has played in Russo’s career.In “Empire Falls,” Miles may be under all kinds of stress, and “terrified of heights.” Yet he still makes time to help paint the local church steeple, where he once thought “God actually live(d).”In 2019’s “Chances Are,” three lifelong pals gather at Martha’s Vineyard to reminisce, and rant about what’s happened to America since the Vietnam War. One of the trio is obsessed with Thomas Merton, and working on a book called “The God Project.” In “Under the Falls,” Tyler emerges from this church to confess, repent, and confront past sins. Mr. Russo has, at times, accused of baroque or overly-intricate plotting, an all-too forgivable transgression in these days of “auto-fiction,” when the line between hyper-realistic and just really boring is all too thin. Some of the standard diversity critiques can also be leveled at Mr. Russo’s novels, which generally do tend to have more multi-dimensional male than female characters.Overall though, Richard Russo’s new novel not only marks the welcome return of a great storyteller. For 40 years now he has proven you don’t have to span the globe, or interrogate pernicious systems, to produce powerful, rich fiction.There’s still plenty of human frailty and folly flowing like a mighty river through the land. “Living is a lifelong process of messing things up,” Mr. Russo writes in “Under the Falls.” “You start when you’re young and you just keep at it, doing every damn thing wrong.”

The Bard of the Blue Collar Keeps the Falls Flowing

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