A Word on Words; 2215; Richard Russo

i know we're down word program delving into the world of books and their authors this week richard russo talks about and nobody's fool for a word and words mr johnson chairman of the freedom forum's first amendment center at vanderbilt university welcoming you once again to our own words i guess is richard russo welcome thank you our i'll show you with our audience early author of mohawk now you are there and nobody's really an anti hero and most of most of my heroes are either i tell you it's very difficult for me to understand how so it could become a focal point of allowing you have taken this human being off the streets literally off the streets the main worry get any case getting so hopelessly

having to digest and you have created a world forum that they held me through five hundred odd pages and thats thats the term too is they are not everyone at the imam ali is on air the world is very important for that i think that that's as solly probably couldn't exist in any other world but to have the kind of world that debt that i've created for him yes i use it i find him a very insightful and intelligent in some ways very conniving sugar either he is he is in a way though it i had a i had a sense in writing this book that i was writing a book that was an elegy in some way that we're sensing a passing there was something about soul a there was it was a kind of american man a kind of american male who's been doing a kind of work that probably isn't going to be around in the same

way i mean the my father's generation for instance my father didn't do a lot of hard manual labor of the sort that so he doesn't know the song an odd job man yet tough tough demanding physical physical work digs it did curia those concrete blocks alone activists knows i'm from point a point b and sometimes is unemployed frequently as a driver trying trying to scare up work that he doesn't really want a thriving oregon even lower exactly know what exactly what it is now he has he has awful end for women in and i'm surprised they haven't up for him well it's always relationship to women i think is is is interesting because he's sixty

years old when the novel when the novel opens and it the novel makes clear that that he was attractive to women when he was younger but that was because when he was in high school he was a football player in a rough and tumble are sort of guy who'd who didn't care much for authority and and and would attract will attract women i suppose girls and and in that way as a sixty year old man i think that that part of the charm that he has for a young woman like toby roebuck is the fact that in the back of his own event of his own mind he doesn't believe he has any chance with her on this one point in the novel where it says of him that that sally sully believes that he would know how to treat a woman like toby now it's sixty that does not just don't have yeah there is that there is that there was that same where he in love i guess are out in front

oh called obese house it comes out to bring them when i write right and arresting them even in that you all that rolling peer down the cleavage and what would not our anti hero as far as we know he didn't speak yeah well i read the barometer it we don't know what is so we peaked or not a rod is the barometer and rub rub not only peace he is transfixed the owner loses he'll be her honesty is immobile to the point that when toby robot sub red leaves there when the breasts are gone there he is still looking at the spot in the area are doing that did that did that the displaced and in the end and in that face in the face of that it's difficult to know whether sully i gave a sidelong glances are or are not because because robbins is so absolutely yes mobilized by the sight of what it was the promised land that that it's

just sad and so we we suspect is probably more discreet and done but but rob is the barometer there in it i get this image early on love solely on the roadside hitchhiking and people coming along and oh like him and i have seen so i passed him by katie and how many times i would not stop here well unless a lesser women that lived here when you see them alongside the road with your family and all but with a car pulls off on yet polls are finally in it contains a condolence all it contains so is his family and he doesn't recognize a car that got out of state plates he is he hasn't seen his son in a long time has been much longer since he's seen his son in law

and the back of the car is piled high with the paraphernalia that any family brings with them when they're going someplace or thanksgiving the back windows are is all piled up and so only notice is the head of a young woman's kind of sticking out of the car and kind of waving to him and his first reaction when he sees his daughter in law though he doesn't recognize his daughter in law although his first reaction is is i think the truest reaction which is guilt what possibly have i done here that could account for this woman who looks vaguely familiar to me i have i treated her badly and some other some time recently where the more distant past in another life then it said the fact that he can't call to mind who she is his son's wife really has in there and he says in a good mood or let your grandfather which is of course the kind of subtle clue that selling eat

it at that point and there is really i think we have a very small investors soundbite of roar of laughter with it for good reason you have a real flair for subtle humor and sometimes not so subtle yet it sits in the backseat he says why they call you actor is grandson and he finds out here to wacker has has it's not a book is slippery whacker has in his right next it is a car seat as it has a great big hardback copy of dr seuss and he slams it out in an even so is broken about nine months earlier and is hobbling along that forcing forcing sell at screamed several words that he had no intention of and then and then a bolting from the car because of course it seemed so on they don't know even that he's that he has that has injured his knee so they don't know anything more about him and his life and he knows about them and there's and under these circumstances

what the disaster could fall from the roof little farther will spark or bagel over a long time here in the us about that so what i think is is is the sort of man who because he is fundamentally decent and i think he is a fundamentally decent it loses all i could hear was in there too of well i can take you to read it to him i think he's a fundamentally decent man who seems less the symphony is sometimes because number one he's not always paying attention as as he should be odd and number two a lot of his he's got he's got a fair number of a love of defenses that that that he manages to

build up around relationships i think one of the reasons that people are drawn to sell him like sally despite i think their bare bare better judgment at times we like him i think if we like selling we like him anyway you know a lot is that there is that that sense about him that we know he will not always behave well and he will embarrass and humiliate his friends at times he can be cruel he's cruel to rub he had bought it but i think that that's a part of the reason that we like him rather guiltily is that's ali possesses a kind of of independence that we all yearn for with about half of ourselves those of us who are happily married and have and have wonderful families and children probably all have from time to time think about what it would be like to have a freer hand it's always guilt of course are exactly exact opposite that i can i can as a family man write about write about

so it with a certain sense of distance in and humor my own life is very different from cell is solely on the other hand i think he is his guilt is deeply tied to the independence that you try so hard to preserve he has worked systematically over a lifetime to end up along which is what ms beryl and ruth both know about him is that if he's not careful he's going to end up alone or as is only part of what the real realize about him is that he is this is a very sturdy decision that he's made you get that from his aero twenty years hear right at the end she even though most affection almost real quality arm one of the ways in which nobody's fool i told they're not solid right and she is one of a few people who don't really know his name yeah i think that that that nobody's fool is in a lot of respects kind of it's a love story i think one of the lines that that i like the most a says the law doesn't balance between sully and his eighty year old

landlady and it's subversive to in a way because this is a book that i think talks about the ways in which we love people and we moved away to the ways in which we have no choice about who we love whoa ruthless majority are glowing solid and she's married to zach in us and thrusting when vince puts a long silences even to even twenty years here and he didn't make any bones of us is no answer and as well a casual and no no mayor copeland as a fact of life it's been a it's been it's been going on and he's willing to share showing it so of course would be willing to share the blame with zach for that it is exactly so stupid it would allow the debt what he says right now there are thirty i said i like so like so it i do not my car and was not a bum on the you hear like a medic i

like oh god i think he's so but of course you're right i mean such an as yet but he says the research and sell a year here and there here and i'm at work and that of wages the i mean it's it's a voice isn't the word i mean i can't like no no no i mean he's this does there's very little thats thats that is likeable about carl roebuck except i think and if you read if you read around in my work at least there's there's always there are always characters in in my novels who you feel to some degree or other ear to a lesser degree or greater degree of guilt for liking people i think you feel safer like a cellular and delilah for like example the thing that i like about the thing that i like about carl roebuck i suppose is this is his charm which has absolutely nothing to do with

our carl is a idol winner way the women yell as he's a real planner he's a he's a terrible philander and he but he has he has a quality of charm about him that makes us uncomfortable i think we would like to think of literature we like to think of writing we like to think of it as a moral act of course it's not where it's already it can be at times but it's not something it's not something you do for its moral import what you try to do is suggest something about the way we are whether or not we like and i think the thing about karl is that like like other people that we feel shame to like in literature long john silver we're it would deliver to talk about virtual you've got long john silver on the one hand those in those men those good man who defend the ford on the other hand i mean which one of them do which ones we're doing do we remember we remember juan chancellor of course for all of his wonderful turn those guys in the fort you couldn't you could name and you couldn't find the names in the book of money here well i'll tell you what i will

richard russo and i have a family man orphan who creates leave any political characters for whom he has a vicarious yearning i mean you want to be selling anyone because he's not very nice of you well there's in a long john silver and you know we were talking with the with bright lights yesterday in his concession here the sun festival of books and he said that one of his modus operandi is to keep very often writes books about the things that he fears the most of women and the the book that he was reading from was about the death of a child and then he also has i gather i don't know bread very well that seems to be very much a family man but but there is some probably operation at work among our peers are you could probably find one or two

things that tends to it tends to drive them and you have you have probably had you probably found something at work together tony blair died now remember that when i do it now on the iranian on a bill i'm not allowed one yeah i do i'll and i've not only that and i would like you have my cat i don't know what does for runs about is how how all those bright miracle be college teach then you're right so well and writing a book of this

magnitude hard work i would think readers see how smoothly it flows of characters while they're falling they'll have to be creative they want to be molded in it the story just do it like a strained it put the boat in and go and you go along now you're n n n n and i think i think no words to really vote in it they did for me but i would say for viewers that i know that in every page or convey the twentieth and talk a bit about the air ordeal and i had done a conference with a student of michael b just before i left and she's a talented talented young writers are solid twenty years old this is going to graduate from colby

later the sheer joy of it she'll be twenty one and that she was doing the final semester of work out for her portfolio and shia so this is your final semester of work she said three semesters of fiction writing before that she met some weird point decide to go on to an mfa program or writing program of some sort but when she came in and was talking with me about the fact here in this final semester which she wanted to write the best story of her colby career she's at the others in the portfolio which she really was stopped the heavy and and really wanted to write a longer story a more ambitious story a better story and at the end of the first three weeks of the semester she was absolutely no where she had she had written several pages they were coming together that the characters were coming to life the way that she wanted them to ensure that there was there was a tone of voice in the story that that we've heard all over the place in and she said but i just can't seem to figure out what it is and i tried and i tried to

explain to her the part of the difficulty was that she was trying to write the story whole she had an arm in the back of her mind the best stories she had ever written at colby and she was trying to see the whole and so when she was trying to write every day she was trying to write the story hall every day whereas in fact the only way to the only way to write and this is a twenty one year old trying to write a twenty five page short story the only way to write a novel is is to our bodies to finesse yourself i think it's somewhere other into not thinking about it as a novel but rather thinking about at any given day as the two pages that you're going to write that day and as an act of faith trying to drive you just and if you write two pages made it long enough you have a book it work and it's going to be you don't know but but you gotta have a book of some sort and if you if you take small bites you're much more likely to be a novelist then someone who is intimidated by the largeness of the project to five i mean if when i wrote the risk for this is this though this is the longest of my books but when i wrote the risk pool after my first novel

mohawk which was long complex and had a lot of point of view shifts and when i wrote the risk pool i i decided that what i was gonna do is write a simple father son story i was going to get in get out they could very simple nearly two hundred pages two hundred and fifteen i ended up with seven hundred page novel a manuscript that was much better i'm sure than that than that much spare thing that i had in mind to write that's because right now i'm going about it we think about that much except for the stuff that i was reading that visit the storage when you try to create for you so two three four five pages of the idea how you know when a terminal with going rogue or three a year as an hour i always i always feel that the best time to stop is somewhere along in in the middle of the scene where you know exactly what the next character is going to say i don't like to stop one in trouble i don't want to stop when i finished a scene for instance and i don't know what the next element of the plot going to be what's going to happen next where the story's going to go i don't like to stop there because what i'm left with for the

rest of that day if i finish working at noon then the rest of that day when i had to think about is the thing that's a problem for me that that i don't know how to solve and so no matter how well i've written that day our what i'm left with his defeat of the one thing i don't know so like oregon good until i know exactly what the next character is to say in the next character actor there's gonna say in about two or three things that than the first maybe a half page that i write that day something that that have been kind of chuckling to myself about you know for the last twelve hours or so just thinking about it and i don't go added that the pages not an enemy it's a it's a it's a friend that i've been kind of anxious to get back to you in one eye read both a particular one for all the who appear here i am wonder what i'm a typical story and wonder whether have a building caught up in the story to

think about at times what was going on in the office that it has a place in this book where you talk about the errors of judgment also is barton calls or i think there may be five errors of judgment right now it i couldn't wait to get from one to the other to find out what they were going to tell me there that they're viable but then i thought how'd he do this he gives five errors in judgment on so it's partly says carter and judgment and i thought where was in the stream of writing what he said because it's it's it's clever and is addressed and that's one place i came out of the thing for a minute just on why do you do it this way and they don't remember but i'd be interested in that in that it's it's almost an

illusion the narrative yes this is the passage that that you're referring to i recall arm and it was farm there's a fair amount of exposition in there and witches the more exposition there is the more likely that the dream is is going to be broken long enough for that for the reader to kind of set the book cover second let's say next now maybe the way i would've done that or not the way i anticipate that the author was going to do particularly if your living yet yeah and out what i recall was a that was a very difficult scene to write was because because their work there were four important characters involved in it and it was a pivotal act that was going out at the time it was very complex and so i am you know the writer's difficulties are often have become expert on x exponentially greater according to the number of seen a number of characters in the scene in a number of things going on in it i'm i'm even as i

tell you about his son i'm remembering a scene and forget the palaces novel in which i think they're eight characters are you know very well in the bubble reputation and i as well my favorite scenes in that novel in which there they're all sitting at a table and you know each of these characters very well so as an author you've created eight characters here that the reader knows very well they all have an inner life of their own and they all have an agenda and at one point the character one character at one end of the table asked somebody to pass the salt and as is as is typical in and one of kathy's now more than half the people all the way up until the table aren't speaking to each other for one reason or another like so their friends and their enemies and so what would normally happen at the table is that that the salt shaker instead of just going up one side of the table tax you know from one side it's a lot of the other because uncle bishop isn't

speaking to miriam as an ideology of bell zach talking solely those people who have made temporary alliances or that's an extraordinarily difficult scene to write because of the number of characters the number of agendas the number of conflicts and because we know the characters so well you can't really afford to drop any of them you can afford to forget for a moment a crew sitting next to home and and what these characters individual agendas are and as i recall in my own seen the one that you're talking about there was a similar difficulty there because time in a lot of characters that time had really slow down there's a moment when sully was going to just fix bloated carl roebuck and and you had to understand why it was very complex and and and at one point did it it became almost expires at arenas in the region in the reasoning the motivation so he spent five years in judgment that day and it takes you about five pages i am to explore all of that off so that that moment when the bomb goes off the lazy or you know i think i think that that

low markov of a writer who have great self confident i would worry that the risk of telling the reader and now and it was scared that there and i'm not sure i have the security to take it through having a maidan a re write say whoa hello this is true two errors in judgment right well already right on site editor at their hotel maid here you know who was a freedom fighter the judgment was one read feiler's judgment there at risk today yeah well that's that's the safety net that writers have of course is the fact that there is that editor out there for treasure editor if if the narrative is biting down i have and haven't aged too is a very good reader and i like i know i can i can trust his judgment and consequently when my own feeling is that if you're

going if you're going to air you probably ought to air on the on the side of excess and entrust if you've made an error in judgment if the others made nevermind sell these errors in judgment of a van if you're aging is a good reader if your editors a good reader i will say to you look this is funny but you really are straining here you're pushing you pushing too far one of this one plays really ought to trim back i've been told that is the title nobody's fool your title yes yes it really says he really says a solid and is no one in a lot of player and blue as as in the fact that he belongs to no one he is he's not fooled number one although he'd be a solution and he is and he does not want to sully recess at the end of the novel read it in the novel at that that iraq it doesn't belong to richard russo author of nobody's fool at that are gassed on a word on where your

horses ben johnson give our program was produced in the studios of wbez in nashville