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Russell Banks (1940–2023)

Författare till The Sweet Hereafter

38+ verk 10,855 medlemmar 298 recensioner 38 favoritmärkta

Om författaren

The oldest of four children, Russell Banks spent his childhood and adolescence in New Hampshire and Eastern Massachusetts. His blue collar, working class background is strongly reflected in his writing. The first in his family to attend college, Banks studied at Colgate University and later visa mer graduated Phi Beta Kappa from the University of North Carolina, at Chapel Hill. While he was establishing himself as a writer, Banks spent time as a plumber, shoe salesman, and a window dresser. Banks's titles include Searching for Survivors, Family Life, Hamilton Stark, The New World, The Book of Jamaica, Trailerpark, The Relation of My Imprisonment, Continental Drift, Success Stories, Affliction, The Sweet Hereafter and Dreaming Up America. Banks has also written numerous poems, stories, and essays. Banks is the recipient of several awards and prizes. Among his accolades are the St. Lawrence Award for Short Fiction, the John Dos Passos Award, and the Literature Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. In 1986, Continental Drift was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. (Bowker Author Biography) visa färre

Verk av Russell Banks

The Sweet Hereafter (1991) 1,658 exemplar
Cloudsplitter (1998) 1,656 exemplar
Rule of the Bone (1995) 1,413 exemplar
Continental Drift (1985) 979 exemplar
Affliction (1989) 888 exemplar
The Darling (2004) 802 exemplar
Lost Memory of Skin (2011) 786 exemplar
The Reserve (2007) 667 exemplar
Trailerpark (1981) 246 exemplar
Foregone (2021) 134 exemplar
The Magic Kingdom (2022) 122 exemplar
Book of Jamaica (1980) 121 exemplar
Success Stories (1986) 121 exemplar

Associerade verk

San Luis bro : roman (1927) — Förord, vissa utgåvor4,732 exemplar
The Story and Its Writer: An Introduction to Short Fiction (1983) — Bidragsgivare — 1,130 exemplar
Röda lyktor (1956) — Förord, vissa utgåvor635 exemplar
Unholy Ghost: Writers on Depression (2001) — Bidragsgivare — 490 exemplar
Birthday Stories (2002) — Bidragsgivare — 454 exemplar
Writers on Writing: Collected Essays from the New York Times (2001) — Bidragsgivare — 444 exemplar
Sudden Fiction: American Short-Short Stories (1984) — Bidragsgivare — 362 exemplar
The Art of the Tale: An International Anthology of Short Stories (1986) — Bidragsgivare — 339 exemplar
Montreal Stories (2003) — Inledning, vissa utgåvor255 exemplar
The Best American Travel Writing 2001 (2001) — Bidragsgivare — 236 exemplar
Bad Trips (1991) — Bidragsgivare — 232 exemplar
Burn This Book: PEN Writers Speak Out on the Power of the Word (2009) — Bidragsgivare — 179 exemplar
The Best American Short Stories of the 80s (1990) — Bidragsgivare — 160 exemplar
The Best American Mystery Stories 2001 (2001) — Bidragsgivare — 144 exemplar
The Ecco Anthology of Contemporary American Short Fiction (2008) — Bidragsgivare — 122 exemplar
Beneath the Roses (2005) — Bidragsgivare — 102 exemplar
Prize Stories 2000: The O. Henry Awards (2000) — Bidragsgivare — 96 exemplar
The Best American Mystery Stories 2014 (2014) — Bidragsgivare — 91 exemplar
It Occurs to Me That I Am America: New Stories and Art (2018) — Bidragsgivare — 71 exemplar
The Best American Short Stories 1985 (1985) — Bidragsgivare — 61 exemplar
The Sweet Hereafter [1997 film] (1998) — Original book — 40 exemplar
Antaeus No. 75/76, Autumn 1994 - The Final Issue (1994) — Bidragsgivare — 32 exemplar
New Stories from the South 2002: The Year's Best (2002) — Bidragsgivare — 31 exemplar
The Best American Short Stories 1971 (1971) — Bidragsgivare — 21 exemplar
The Best American Short Stories 1975 (1975) — Bidragsgivare — 15 exemplar
New American Review #4 (1968) — Bidragsgivare — 14 exemplar
The Hurly Burly and Other Stories (2021) — Förord, vissa utgåvor; Redaktör, vissa utgåvor9 exemplar
Speed: Stories of Survival from Behind the Wheel (2002) — Bidragsgivare — 6 exemplar
Race Traitor 10 (1999) — Bidragsgivare — 4 exemplar
Fire Exit, 4 — Bidragsgivare — 1 exemplar
Christmas 1968: 14 poets — Bidragsgivare — 1 exemplar
Hearse #15 (1971) — Bidragsgivare — 1 exemplar

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Recensioner

A book that stops you in your tracks. Banks handles an amazing range of narrators with amazing deftness.

Nothing about grief is simple. For people, families, or communities. Banks writes it all here.
 
Flaggad
Zonderpaard | 34 andra recensioner | Feb 20, 2024 |
Ecriture très dense sans pratiquement de dialogues, ce livre est étonnant par son histoire "inventée" mais que l'on suppose tirée de faits réels, du moins pour la partie terrains rachetés par le géant Disney. J'avoue avoir hâté quelque peu la lecture des dernières pages en lisant en "diagonale" ce qu'écrivait le personnage principal et unique qui s'en registrait sur un magnétophone pour raconter sa vie, ses vérités et sans doute se faire pardonner enfin par la dernière personne vivante de sa famille. Dernier roman de Russel Banks, ce n'est pas celui que je préfère, mais il n'en demeure pas moins pour moi un grand écrivain.… (mer)
 
Flaggad
pangee | 7 andra recensioner | Jan 19, 2024 |
This book is comprised of three dark short stories/novellas written by the late Russell Banks. He passed away in 2023; a loss to American literature. The stories all take place in Sam Dent, a once bustling, now forgotten, decaying town in upstate New York.

My reaction after reading the first story was “Wow…Just wow.” What a great writer. Banks captures well the struggles of people who feel marginalized, the culture that has made a cult hero out of a con man former entertainer and president of the United States and the hate and vitriol that characterizes our current social/political climate as well as the devastating effects of that vitriol.

While the title American Spirits refers to the brand of cigarettes smoked by some of the characters, it of course is a metaphor for so much more. While reading about the sometimes horrors of everyday life may not be for everyone, I think I may have already found my favorite book of 2024.

Thanks to #netgalley and @aaknopf for the ARC.
… (mer)
 
Flaggad
vkmarco | 1 annan recension | Jan 17, 2024 |
Thornton Wilder gave us Grover’s Corners, New Hampshire and Russell Banks gives us Sam Dent, New York. Both communities are small, rural, and isolated. Considering the three stories in Banks’ AMERICAN SPIRITS in the light of Wilder’s OUR TOWN, however, one can’t help but speculate on how the passage of time has warped our vision of America. On one hand, we have stories that focus on the comfortable quotidian, while on the other the stories force us to ponder the darkness that seems to pervade the scene today.

Sam Dent is a community founded on optimistic land speculation following the revolutionary war, but the Banks’ stories seem to suggest that the American experiment may be floundering and clearly facing existential threats.

Hostility leading to tragedy underlies each story. In “Nowhere Man” a man sells a piece of property to a survivalist who has plans to turn it into a training camp for right wing activists. It is not surprising that guns and toxic masculinity ensue with predictable tragic consequences. “Homeschooling” seems to be based on actual events recently reported in the news. A lesbian couple have adopted four at risk African American children. The women’s strangeness and stories told by their children raise the suspicions of the neighbors who intervene resulting in yet another tragedy. The back porch gossip in the Wilder play is now replaced by social media. The final novella (“Kidnapped”) is a dark story with a tangled plot involving drug deals, guns, revenge, kidnapping, and murder. This one is a little less believable than the other two, mainly because the characters seem to be untethered to reality. I think making some of the main characters descendants of the original founders of the village is revealing, however, as it suggests just how far off the rails we may have come.

Banks’ vision of America seems dark and pessimistic, yet his talent for storytelling clearly is on display in all three novellas. Despite their unrelenting darkness, these are suspenseful and compelling stories of 21st century America worthy of the late Russell Banks.
… (mer)
1 rösta
Flaggad
ozzer | 1 annan recension | Dec 2, 2023 |

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Statistik

Verk
38
Även av
45
Medlemmar
10,855
Popularitet
#2,183
Betyg
3.8
Recensioner
298
ISBN
374
Språk
12
Favoritmärkt
38

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