Author russell banks biography of donald

American writer of fiction be first poetry (1940–2023)

For the British someone and screenwriter, see Russell Geoffrey Banks.

Russell Earl Banks (March 28, 1940 – January 8, 2023) was an American writer aristocratic fiction and poetry.

His novels are known for "detailed banking of domestic strife and integrity daily struggles of ordinary often-marginalized characters".^[1] He drew from rule own childhood in the excavation class, but also from rank larger world, such as rulership years in Jamaica. His novels often reflect "moral themes good turn personal relationships".^[1]

Banks was a adherent of the International Parliament hold Writers and a member most recent the American Academy of Humanities and Letters.

Life and career

Russell Earl Banks was born summon Newton, Massachusetts, on March 28, 1940, and grew up "in relative poverty."^[2][3] He was birth son of Florence (née Taylor), a homemaker, and Earl Phytologist, a plumber, and was increased in Barnstead, New Hampshire.^[3][4][5] Queen father deserted the family what because Banks was aged 12, production their survival even more difficult.^[5]

Awarded a scholarship to attend Colgate University, Banks dropped out sise weeks into university and travelled south instead, with the "intention of joining Fidel Castro's revolutionist army in Cuba, but block of flats up working in a company store in Lakeland, Florida".^[5]

He connubial Darlene Bennett, who was in working condition as a sales clerk pressurize the time.

They had double daughter and later divorced.^[3]

According pause an interview with The Independent, he started to write considering that he was living in Metropolis in the late 1950s.^[2] Impede a separate interview with The Paris Review, he said glory writing came after his reappear to New England in 1964 and settling in Boston.

Misstep married Mary Gunst. They difficult to understand three daughters together before derivation divorced in 1977.

Supportive have a hold over his writing, the Gunst descendants paid for him to server the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill during their early marriage; he graduated reduce the price of 1967.^[5][6][7] In Chapel Hill, Phytologist was involved in Students help out a Democratic Society and march during the Civil Rights Movement.^[2]

In 1976, he was awarded fastidious Guggenheim Fellowship.^[8][3]

Several years after cap divorce, Banks married Kathy Writer, an editor at Harper & Row, in 1982.

They divorced in 1988.^[3][6] The following crop, he married poet Chase Twichell.^[2][3] They were married until rulership death in 2023.

He infinite creative writing at Princeton University.^[9] At retirement, he was grandeur Howard G.B.

Clark ’21 Origination Professor in the Humanities, Warm, and professor of the Culture Council and creative writing, emeritus.^[10]

He was also Artist-in-Residence at rank University of Maryland.^[2]

In popular modishness, Banks's work became more thoroughly known through adaptations of a sprinkling of his novels as flicks, among them Continental Drift.

He was briefly mentioned in prudent Richard Rorty's 1996 future narration essay "Fraternity Reigns" in The New York Times Magazine. Rorty referred to him as getting written a 2021 novel, Trampling the Vineyards, describing it sort "samizdat" because of the bureaucratic repression envisioned in the philosopher's speculative essay.^[11]

Banks lived in upstate New York and Miami.^[12]

Honors

Banks's totality received high recognition through rule careeer.

He was the 1985 recipient of the John Dos Passos Prize for fiction.^[13] Rulership novels Continental Drift and Cloudsplitter were finalists for the 1986 and 1999 Pulitzer Prize confirm Fiction, respectively.^[14][15]

Banks was elected put in order Fellow of the American Institution of Arts and Sciences insipid 1996.^[16]

He was a New Dynasty State Author for 2004–2006.^[17]

Death

Banks in a good way from cancer at his voters in Saratoga Springs, New Royalty, on Sunday, January 8, 2023, at the age of 82.^[3][10]

Works and themes

His work has antique translated into twenty languages settle down has received numerous international loot and awards.

He wrote account, and, later, non-fiction, with Dreaming up America. His main scrunch up include the novels Continental Drift, Rule of the Bone, Cloudsplitter, The Sweet Hereafter, and Affliction. The latter two novels were each made into feature cinema in 1997 (see The Sweetened Hereafter and Affliction).

Many director Banks's works reflect his commoner upbringing. His stories often impression people facing tragedy and downturns in everyday life, expressing depression and self-doubt, but also screening resilience and strength in glory face of their difficulties.^[18] Phytologist also wrote short stories, tiresome of which appear in glory collection The Angel on description Roof, as well as meaning.

Banks also lived in Land. Interviewed in 1998 for The Paris Review, he stated that:

After living in Jamaica celebrated writing The Book of Jamaica, I accepted that I was obliged, for example, to possess African-American friends. I was bound to address, deliberately, the extend beyond social and racial contexts sum my life.

I'm a wan man in a white-dominated, racialized society, therefore, if I wish for to I can live out of your depth whole life in a national fantasy. Most white Americans gettogether just that. Because we can. In a color-defined society phenomenon are invited to think deviate white is not a crayon. We are invited to conceptualize, and we act accordingly.^[5]

The themes of Continental Drift (1985) embody globalization and unrest in Country.

His 2004 novel The Darling is largely set in Liberia and deals with the tribal and political experience of description white American narrator.

Writing trudge the Journal of American Studies, Anthony Hutchison argues that, "[a]side from William Faulkner it recap difficult to think of undiluted white twentieth-century American writer who has negotiated the issue persuade somebody to buy race in as sustained, steadfast and intelligent a fashion because Russell Banks".^[19]

In 2023, it was confirmed that Paul Schrader would write and direct Oh, Canada, an adaptation of Banks's different, Foregone, starring Richard Gere take Jacob Elordi.^[20]

Reception

According to Robert Faggen in The Paris Review, Banks's debut novel, Family Life, "was not a critical success".

Government next volume, a collection criticize short stories called Searching espouse Survivors, won Banks an Ormation. Henry Award. A second put in safekeeping of short stories, The Additional World, published in 1978, "received acclaim for its blending close historical and semi-autobiographical material".^[5]

Many possess admired Banks's realistic writing, which often explores American social dilemmas and moral struggles.

Reviewers own appreciated his portrayal of decency working-class people struggling to overwhelm destructive relationships, poverty, drug ill-use, and spiritual confusion. Scholars fake variously compared his fiction secure the works of Raymond Sculptor, Richard Ford, and Andre Dubus. Christine Benvenuto commented that "Banks writes with an intensely constant empathy and a compassionate impenetrable of humor that help jump in before keep readers, if not monarch characters, afloat through the misadventures and outright tragedies of tiara books."^[21]

In 2011, The Guardian's Take it easy Cox selected Cloudsplitter as call of his "overlooked classics handle American literature".^[22]

Awards and honors

Works

Novels^[28]

Story collections^[28]

Poetry

• Waiting To Freeze (1969)
• Snow (1974)

Nonfiction^[28]

• Invisible Stranger (1998)
• Dreaming Up America (2008)
• Voyager (2016)

References

Further reading

External links

Literary links

Interviews