Before he died last year, Russell Banks left behind stories of people he met in Adirondack Mountains taverns. Three of those tales are intertwined in “American Spirits,” his final work of fiction. He is pictured in a Jan. 25, 2008 photograph taken at his home in Saratoga Springs.
The late author Russell Banks is photographed with his wife, poet Chase Twichell, at their home in Saratoga Springs on March 29, 2011. “Everyone knew Russell was a great writer, but he was also a great person,” Twichell said recently. “I’d prefer not to be a widow, but there it is.”
The cover of “American Spirits,” by Russell Banks. His final collection of stories, the book will be published posthumously by Alfred A. Knopf on March 5.
Author Russell Banks on Jan. 25, 2008, at his home in Saratoga Springs.
Paul Grondahl, William Kennedy, TV producer Thomas Bernardo and Russell Banks after a NYS Writers Institute event at the University at Albany in December 2021.
Russell Banks, right, and Colum McCann offer a toast for William Kennedy at his 90th birthday party on Jan. 16, 2018 at Cafe Capriccio in Albany.
Russell Banks in conversation with longtime friend William Kennedy at a NYS Writers Institute event in December 2021 at the University at Albany.
Russell Banks participates on a panel about declining civility in a NYS Writers Institute symposium on “Telling the Truth” in September 2017.
SARATOGA SPRINGS — Russell Banks loved to watch football and basketball games on the weekends at townie bars near his summer and fall retreat in Keene, in the heart of the Adirondack High Peaks.
He drank beer and enjoyed the games with townsfolk at the tavern and carried home the stories shared by locals who warmed barstools alongside him.
When he got home, after relaying the tales to his wife, Banks sat at a desk in his writer’s studio, a converted sugar shack where sap had once been boiled down into maple syrup, and scrawled notes on paper or typed anecdotes into a computer.
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“He kept files of those stories he heard in the bars over the years, and always wanted to use them for something,” said his wife, the poet Chase Twichell. “The best ones made it into ‘American Spirits.’ ”
Banks’ final book of fiction is comprised of three interconnected stories set in the fictional town of Sam Dent, a thinly veiled Keene he used in earlier novels. The stories are weighted with menace, gun violence, drug trafficking and dark themes. “American Spirits” will be published posthumously on March 5 by Alfred A. Knopf.
Banks died at 82 on Jan. 8, 2023 at his home in Saratoga Springs after being diagnosed six months earlier with two smoking-related forms of cancer.
“Russell was working on those three stories to the very end,” said his longtime editor Daniel Halpern, executive editor at Knopf. “He was someone who had to write, even when he was sick.”
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Versions of two of the stories previously appeared in the literary journals Salmagundi and Conjunctions.
“That will be his last published book,” said Twichell, to whom Banks dedicated “American Spirits.” He was the acclaimed author of 20 books of fiction and four of non-fiction, twice a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for the novels “Continental Drift” and “Cloudsplitter.”
Twichell recently filled 33 document boxes with her late husband’s papers and will ship them to the University of Texas at Austin’s Harry Ransom Center, which acquired the Russell Banks Papers. They will join 110 boxes already inventoried there.
“He had stopped writing novels and was working on long stories that were novella-length, a form that interested him,” Twichell said. He left a partial draft of a fourth story that he decided was not working and abandoned.
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“He was absolutely adamant that nothing unfinished should ever see the light of day,” Twichell said. Unpublished fragments of fiction will be available to researchers at the Ransom Center but will not be considered for future publication.
I spoke with Twichell Sunday after finishing an advance digital copy of “American Spirits.” It blew me away. I could hear his singular voice on every page. Russell at his best.
The stories are grim and inexpressibly sad, and each end with violent deaths. His fiction stands in stark contrast to the friendly and easygoing man I encountered across three decades, during interviews in Keene and Saratoga and on social occasions.
“He had a bright and upbeat side, but he had been terribly damaged by a brutal childhood. He never quite got out from under that,” Twichell said. “It became an engine that drove his work. He used to say the reason he could be happy all the time was because he was such a pessimist.”
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“American Spirits” is laced with Banks’ muscular prose and working-class characters who drink too much and struggle to stay afloat. The stories are overlaid with the wreckage of the opioid epidemic, political tribalism, race and class divides and tensions between Adirondackers and wealthy weekenders — “flatlanders.”
Halpern said Banks thought of “American Spirits” as a kind of homage to a book he greatly admired, Sherwood Anderson’s “Winesburg, Ohio.” It is a collection of loosely interconnected stories that focus on the troubled inhabitants of a small Midwestern town — based on Anderson’s memories of growing up in Clyde, Ohio.
Banks met Twichell, 73, author of eight books of poetry, at the University of Alabama where she taught creative writing. He arrived as a visiting author. A romance ensued. They married in 1989. It was her first marriage, his fourth, and he had four children. They had none together. She bought the Keene house shortly before they met and plans to use it as a writers’ retreat, East Hill, for a few writers by invitation only beginning in the summer.
Until the final months of his life, Banks maintained a daily writing practice. He got to his desk in the morning in the sugar shack at Keene or basement study in Saratoga and stayed at the keyboard until he finished three pages.
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He and Halpern developed a comfortable style working on several novels together. “He was so competent as a writer that I’d just ask questions. If he agreed, he’d fix it quickly. If he didn’t, he wouldn’t,” Halpern said. “There was no ego involved. It was only in service of the text.”
Halpern, 78, fled New York City during the coronavirus pandemic and spent long stretches staying with Banks and Twichell in both homes. The two men, both accomplished cooks, discussed recipes and cooked dinner together each night, including “an amazing venison dish” from a deer a friend shot in Keene.
“I’ll see a recipe and start forwarding it to Russell before I remember he’s eating in a different place now,” Halpern said.
The book’s title is a play on the brand of cigarettes Banks smoked, American Spirit.
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“His big compromise was pesticide-free cigarettes,” Twichell said. “He said it was easy to give up smoking because he did it all the time.”
Banks started smoking at 12, when his abusive father, a plumber, deserted the family and left them in perilous financial straits in Barnstead, N.H. Banks got a job as a paperboy to help support his mother, brother and sister.
“He’d go to the diner and smoke cigarettes with the men, pick up his papers and try to act like the man of the house,” Twichell said.
“He could fit in anywhere, among locals at the bar or in intellectual circles,” Halpern said. “I don’t think I ever met anybody who didn’t like Russell.”
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“Everyone knew Russell was a great writer, but he was also a great person,” Twichell said. “I’d prefer not to be a widow, but there it is.”
Paul Grondahl is the Opalka Endowed Director of the New York State Writers Institute at the University at Albany and a former Times Union reporter. He can be reached at grondahlpaul@gmail.com
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