Russell Banks, an award-winning fiction writer who rooted such novels as B次元官网网址淎fflictionB次元官网网址� and B次元官网网址淭he Sweet HereafterB次元官网网址� in the wintry, rural communities of his native Northeast and imagined the dreams and downfalls of everyone from modern blue-collar workers to the radical abolitionist John Brown, has died. He was 82.

Banks, a professor emeritus at Princeton University, died Saturday in upstate New York, his editor, Dan Halpern, told The Associated Press. Banks was being treated for cancer, Halpern said.

Joyce Carol Oates, who referred to Banks on Twitter as a great American writer and B次元官网网址渂eloved friend of so many,B次元官网网址� said he died peacefully in his home.

B次元官网网址淚 loved Russell & loved his tremendous talent & magnanimous heart,B次元官网网址� Oates said. B次元官网网址淏次元官网网址機loudsplitter,B次元官网网址橞次元官网网址� (was) his masterpiece, but all his work is exceptional.B次元官网网址�

Born in Newton, Massachusetts, and raised in Massachusetts and New Hampshire, Banks was a self-styled heir to such 19th century writers as Nathaniel Hawthorne and Walt Whitman, aspiring to high art and a deep grasp of the countryB次元官网网址檚 spirit. He was a plumberB次元官网网址檚 son who wrote often about working class families and those who died trying to break out, caught up in a B次元官网网址渒ind of madnessB次元官网网址� that the past can be erased, and those like himself who got away and survived and asked B次元官网网址淲hy me, Lord?B次元官网网址�

Banks lived part of the year in Florida, and for a time had a home in Jamaica, but he was essentially a man of the North, with an old PuritanB次元官网网址檚 sense of consequences. Snow fell often in his fiction, whether on the upstate New York community torn by a bus crash in B次元官网网址淭he Sweet HereafterB次元官网网址� or on the desperate, divorced New Hampshire policeman undone by his paranoid fantasies in B次元官网网址淎ffliction.B次元官网网址�

In BanksB次元官网网址� critical breakthrough B次元官网网址淐ontinental Drift,B次元官网网址� published in 1985, oil burner repairman Bob Dubois flees from his native New Hampshire and goes into business with his wealthy brother in Florida, only to learn his brotherB次元官网网址檚 life was as hollow as his own.

B次元官网网址淗is brotherB次元官网网址檚 strut and brag were empty from the start, and in a deep, barely conscious way, Bob knew that all along and forgave him his strut and brag simply because he knew they were empty. But he had never believed it would come to this, to nothing,B次元官网网址� Banks wrote.

B次元官网网址淐loudsplitterB次元官网网址� was his most ambitious novel, a 750-page narrative on John Brown and his improbable quest to rid the country of slavery.

The story long precedes BanksB次元官网网址� lifetime, but the inspiration was literally close to home. Banks lived near BrownB次元官网网址檚 burial ground in North Elba, New York, and he would pass by often enough that Brown B次元官网网址渂ecame a kind of ghostly presence,B次元官网网址� the author told the AP in 1998.

B次元官网网址淐loudsplitterB次元官网网址� reads like a prequel to BanksB次元官网网址� contemporary works, a summoning of Hawthorne and other early influences. As remembered by son Owen Brown, John Brown was a haunted man of the Old World whose resolve to free the slaves and punish the enslavers made his face burn like a revivalist preacherB次元官网网址檚.

B次元官网网址淚 was a boy; I was frightened by my fatherB次元官网网址檚 face,B次元官网网址� BanksB次元官网网址� narrator explains. B次元官网网址淚 remember father looking straight into our eyes, burning us with his gaze, as he told us to hear him now. He had determined that he would henceforth put his sins of pride and vanity behind him. And he would go out from here and wage war on slavery. The time has come, he declared, and he wished to join the time in full cry.B次元官网网址�

Banks was a Pulitzer finalist for B次元官网网址淐loudsplitterB次元官网网址� in 1999 and had been one 13 years earlier for B次元官网网址淐ontinental Drift.B次元官网网址� His other honors included the Anisfeld-Book Award for B次元官网网址淐loudsplitterB次元官网网址� and membership in the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

Two of his books were adapted into acclaimed film releases in the late 1990s: B次元官网网址淭he Sweet Hereafter,B次元官网网址� directed by Atom Egoyan and starring Ian Holm, and director Paul SchraderB次元官网网址檚 B次元官网网址淎ffliction,B次元官网网址� which brought James Coburn an Academy Award for best supporting actor.

More recent works by Banks included the story collection B次元官网网址淎 Permanent Member of the FamilyB次元官网网址� and the 2021 novel B次元官网网址淔oregone,B次元官网网址� in which an American filmmaker who fled to Canada during the Vietnam War looks back on his impulsive youth B次元官网网址� a background Banks understood from the inside.

His books often told of absent and otherwise failing fathers and BanksB次元官网网址� own father, Earl Banks, was an alcoholic whom the author says beat him as a child and left him with a permanently damaged left eye.

Russell was meant for other worlds, smart enough to have the nickname B次元官网网址淭eacherB次元官网网址� in high school and become the first of his family to attend college, receiving a full scholarship from Colgate University.

He was an idealist in search of ideals, among countless young people of the 1960s to adopt Jack KerouacB次元官网网址檚 B次元官网网址淥n the RoadB次元官网网址� as a kind of Bible. He dropped out of Colgate and drove South with dreams of joining Fidel CastroB次元官网网址檚 revolutionary army in Cuba, a quest which ended in St. Petersburg, Florida.

He was married twice by his early 20s (and eventually had four children), endured more than a few bar fights, wrote poetry bad enough that he later wished he had burned it, worked for a time with his father as a plumber back in New Hampshire and resumed his education at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

He was in his mid-30s, and nearing the end of his second marriage, when he published his first story collection, B次元官网网址淪earching for Survivors,B次元官网网址� and first novel, B次元官网网址淔amily Life.B次元官网网址�

By the start of the 1990s, when he turned 50, he was an established author and had settled into a lasting marriage with his fourth wife, the poet Chase Twichell.

B次元官网网址淥ver the years, I think that IB次元官网网址檝e been able to make my anger coherent to myself, and thatB次元官网网址檚 allowed me to become more lucid as a human being, as a writer, as B次元官网网址� I hope B次元官网网址� a husband, father, and friend,B次元官网网址� he told Ploughshares for an interview that appeared in the magazineB次元官网网址檚 Winter 1993-94 issue. B次元官网网址淚tB次元官网网址檚 very hard to be a decent human being if youB次元官网网址檙e controlled by anger that you canB次元官网网址檛 understand. When you begin to acquire that understanding, you begin to become useful to other people.B次元官网网址�

Hillel Italie, The Associated Press

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