Award Winning Author Russell Banks Has Died

Known for his novels exploring the wintry, agrarian lands of the Northeast including Sweet Hereafter and Affliction, arsenic good arsenic his award-winning enactment Cloudsplitter, which followed the beingness of abolitionist John Brown, writer Russell Banks was considered by galore to travel successful the footsteps of different American authors specified arsenic Nathaniel Hawthorne and Walt Whitman.

Banks died this play successful upstate New York astatine the property of 82.

Born successful Massachusetts and spending astir of his puerility determination and successful New Hampshire, Banks grew up with a begetter who worked arsenic a plumber. He recovered inspiration successful the satellite astir him and successful the lives of those who worked bluish collar jobs to enactment themselves. Cloudsplitter is considered by galore his top work, some successful extent and scope; the publication and its look astatine the beingness of 1 of America’s astir well-known abolitionists, clocks successful astatine 750 pages. It earned him the grant of being a Pulitzer finalist, his 2nd clip receiving specified distinction. His publication Continental Drift was a finalist 13 years before.

In the 1990s, 2 of Banks’s books were adapted into film. The first, The Sweet Hereafter was directed by Atom Egoyan and starred Ian Holm. The second, Affliction, was directed by Paul Schrader and earned histrion James Coburn an Academy Award for champion supporting actor.

Banks continued to write, publishing what would beryllium his last enactment successful 2021. Foregone follows a young filmmaker who moves from America to Canada during the Vietnam War and who reflects connected his ain youth. Many of the story’s details reflected Banks’s ain life, and successful his youth, helium grew up watching and experiencing the challenges of his father’s intoxicant use.

Anger and vexation are 2 themes which look successful Banks’s work, and helium spoke astir however moving to recognize these pieces of himself and his past helped him to go a amended person.

“It’s precise hard to beryllium a decent quality being if you’re controlled by choler that you can’t understand,” he said successful an interrogation with Ploughshares successful the mid-1990s. “When you statesman to get that understanding, you statesman to go utile to different people.”

Banks is survived by his woman and 4 children.

Find much quality and stories of involvement from the publication satellite in Breaking successful Books.