Interviews
On Tuesday, March 10th, the barnesandnoble.com Live Events Auditorium welcomed critically acclaimed author Russell Banks, who discussed his new book, CLOUDSPLITTER.
Moderator: Welcome, Russell Banks. Thank you so much for joining us tonight. Before we get started, do you have any opening comments for the audience?
Russell Banks: No, I am just delighted to be here and eager to hear questions and comments on the book. One spends six years writing a book in solitude, and this gives me a chance to come out of my cave like a blinking bear and hear back from readers about something that they read. I suppose it is a way to find out whether I am alone in the world.
Bill from New York, NY: What was your inspiration in writing a historical novel on the abolitionist John Brown? What drew you to this particular story in history?
Russell Banks: I was drawn first to the image of John Brown, the iconic figure of Brown. In the 1960s at college at Chapel Hill, North Carolina, I was politically active in the civil rights movement, and Brown's face was often seen on the walls of dormitory rooms and SNCC offices. Also he was connected via my literary studies to the writers who at that time, and even today, mean the most to me, such as Emerson and Thoreau and the other New England Transcendantalists. Then the '60s faded, and in some ways Brown faded also from my mind, until 1987, when my wife and I bought a summer house, which later became our year-round house in the Adironacks of New York, and I discovered shortly after that John Brown was buried down the road from my house. Buried alongside him were 11 of the men who were either killed at Harpers Ferry or executed afterward for their aid to his cause. There was a farm next to the gravesite where Brown lived with his family for many years in the 1840s and 1850s. So he became a ghostly but very real presence in my daily life. By this time, he had become an icon for the extreme right, the antiabortion and militia groups and other radical right-wing figures in American politics. This signified to me that he was someone who could reveal important and usual insights into the American psyche. As for deciding to write a historical novel for the first time, this decision was prompted by my belief that it is easier to see clearer into one's own time from a point just outside it. In the past, I have written from points just outside my culture geographically, and now it seemed the time to view it form a point outside in the temporal way.
Pam from Indianapolis, IN: Do you read a lot of historical fiction? What type of research did you do for this book? Are you a fan of Pynchon's or, say, T. C. Boyle's historical fiction?
Russell Banks: I do not read a lot of fiction that is described as historical fiction, but in my mind almost everything is historical, even science fiction, which is historical fiction set in the future. The only thing that is not historical, I suppose, would have to be set in the immediate present. As soon as one reads it, it is in the past. As Faulkner said, "The past is not even past yet." As for research, I did a great deal of it. I spent one and a half years doing nothing but research before I began to write the narrative and continued to research on a "need to know" basis. E. L. Doctorow, when asked how much research he did on his books, said, "Just enough." That's the trick for a fiction writer, to know when enough is enough. To know when you are no longer researching as a fiction writer, a storyteller, but rather as a historian or biographer. A fiction writer has to stop research at the point where he becomes a biographer or historian.
Tami from Ann Arbor, MI: After working on this novel for the past several years, do you think John Brown was a madman or a martyr?
Russell Banks: Good question, because you did not say "madman or sane man." Most white Americans regard him as a madman because he was a martyr in the interest of black slaves. Most African Americans today regard him as a hero for the same reason. This suggests that not only are there two conflicting views of John Brown, madman versus hero, but two views of American history. Two versions of American history. My own personal view of Brown's mental state was that he was not psychotic in any clinically defined way. That is, he was not paranoid schizophrenic or delusional, though he may have been manic-depressive to some degree. But when we ask the question, Was he mad, we are asking whether or not his actions were comprehensible to us. Would we be capable of doing the same thing without being mad? It's strange and sad that our answer as Americans so often depends on the color of our skin.
San D from New Jersey: In your work you seem to be searching for the perfect "narrator," in terms of capturing realism. Since reality encompasses many voices simultaneously, is it possible to encompass that "reality"?
Russell Banks: For me the most reliable way to capture the elusiveness of reality is paradoxically through an unreliable narrator. Thus, I have relied upon unreliable narrators in most of my books, most particularly the four most recent books, AFFLICTION, THE SWEET HEREAFTER, RULE OF THE BONE, and now CLOUDSPLITTER.
Gary Taylor from York, PA: Hi, Mr. Banks. Thanks for spending time with us. When you begin working on a new novel, what is the process you follow and why? Is it different for each work? Do you create an outline, use index cards, write a treatment, or just dive right in with Chapter 1?
Russell Banks: It really varies from book to book, although there seems to be some general procedures that I follow. I do work with outlines, two outlines in fact, one general and somewhat vague and easily changed that describes the arc of the entire book. The other, much shorter, more exact, and less flexible, describes the next 30 or 40 pages, which is to say the next few scenes. I keep and make notes and even archives for my characters and use maps and diagrams to keep track of their whereabouts. I also travel to and spend time in every place that I write about, so that I can sniff the air and feel the soil, and watch the light of the place I am describing. Not in the interest of realism per se, but so that I myself can visualize what I am describing.
Anonymous from Cyberspace: Do you read reviews of your books, and if so, what effect do they have on you?
Russell Banks: I read most reviews out of curiosity and desire to know how the book has been received, naturally. A bad review can ruin several days work, so I try to avoid reading them -- not always successfully. A good review can likewise ruin several days work by making me think better of myself than I should, but like anyone I am weak and like praise. The fact is I have rarely learned anything useful about my writing from either good or bad reviews. Generally, reviewers work under a kind of pressure that readers, one's ideal readers, don't. And therefore, they tend to be superficial in their understanding and appreciation or even lack of appreciation of the book. I am much more concerned about how the book is read by readers than reviewers. Publishers, on the other hand, sometimes seem to care too much about the responses of reviewers and too little about the responses of readers.
Gordon Inkeles from Bayside, CA: Must one conquer fear in order to write?
Russell Banks: If one conquers the fear one no longer needs to write.
Marty from Westchester, NY: Why did you choose to tell Brown's tale through his son Owen Brown?
Russell Banks: It was important to me to humanize Brown, to understand him as a man with a family and a need to earn a living who got up in the morning and went to bed at night like the rest of us. To approach a mythic figure directly would make it difficult, if not impossible, for us to see him as a human being. It occurred to me that I could see him best in his human dimensions from a family member, and his third son, Owen, was the perfect witness. He was his father's lieutenant; he was present at every important pubic event in his father's life; he was at Harpers Ferry and was the only son to escape; he lived his life out afterward as a hermit, gave no interviews, wrote no memoirs, and thus was the man who lived to tell the tale and never told it.
San D from New Jersey: I like the pacing of CLOUDSPLITTER, and think by and large that it is dependent on Owen's use of language. How are you able to capture and replicate "language" in such a way that it is transposed in the reader's head?
Russell Banks: I wanted Owen to speak with a voice that we would listen to closely. I heard that voice in the letters and journals and diaries of mid-19th-century working-class American as I am sure you have in, for example, Ken Burns's Civil War documentary. Americans who had perhaps six years of formal education but who knew their Bible and probably Shakespeare and Ben Franklin and half a dozen other writings. Mid-19th-century American vernacular English is to me the most sublime form of English. I am not talking about the literary English of that period but the spoken and written English that was reserved for private communication. That was the voice I was reaching for with Owen's voice. It is a voice that makes you listen seriously. I read it in the private documents of the time, and I have heard it spoken by elderly workingmen from my town in upstate New York, who went to work in the woods as boys early in the century and learned to tell stories from older men who were boys in the mid-19th century, It was the voice of such men that I kept in my ears when I was setting down Owen's voice.
Fred from Fredericksburg, VA: What made you call this book CLOUDSPLITTER? It is such a fantastic and striking title. I was wondering if there were any other possible titles that you were tossing around, and what made you choose this one? Thanks.
Russell Banks: No, it was the title that I had from the beginning. It is the translation of the Iroquois name for the mountain that faces John Brown's farm in North Elba, New York. The Iroquois word is Tahawas. It seemed an appropriate word for John Brown himself and surely for the raid on Harpers Ferry, but it also is the name of the place that John Brown most loved looking on. Ironically perhaps, Cloudsplitter or Tahawas is now called Mt. Marcy -- named after an obscure and barely competent governor of New York in the 1890s.
Moderator: Thank you so much for joining us this evening, Mr. Banks. It has truly been a pleasure. We wish you the best of luck with CLOUDSPLITTER, and we of course look forward to having you join us again with your next book! Any closing comments for the audience?
Russell Banks: No, but just to thank the audience for their excellent questions. Thank you!
