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TIME: Almanac 1990
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1990 Time Magazine Compact Almanac, The (1991)(Time).iso
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090489
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09048900.035
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1990-09-22
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BOOKS, Page 66Fugitive
AFFLICTION
by Russell Banks
Harper & Row; 355 pages; $18.95
Russell Banks' 1985 novel, Continental Drift, linked the fate
of a blue-collar New Englander with the tragedy of Haitian boat
people. In case the reader missed the serious point, Banks began
his story with an "Invocation" and ended with a war cry, "Go, my
book, and help destroy the world as it is."
Minimalists trying to imitate the pin-drop prose of the late
Raymond Carver would consider Banks' style uncool. But judging from
the author's output, cool seems like a social disease. His
structures lack grace but carry the weight of his passion and
concern.
Affliction is about a dismal town in New Hampshire and its
effects on one of the inhabitants, Wade Whitehouse, part-time well
digger, snow-plow operator, police officer and school-crossing
guard. He has lived in a trailer ever since his wife left him for
a man with better prospects. Smoldering with resentments, he lets
routine things slip his mind. "Sometimes you just forget who you
are. Especially when you're sick of who you are," he tells his
brother Rolfe.
At least that is what Rolfe tells us. He is the narrator of
the novel, which includes a fatal deer-hunting accident and Wade's
role in two murders, one the bludgeoning death of his father. Rolfe
is a teacher who is up on modern literary devices. Ambiguity and
a tendency to make the teller as important as the tale are
conspicuous elements of his account. Rolfe's self-consciousness can
be intrusive, though not nearly so much as his need to be the
village explainer. Seemingly unsatisfied with his powers of
observation and ability to convey male emotions, he reaches for
generalizations from sociology and psychology.
Wade is also abstracted. He becomes a fugitive whom Rolfe
imagines to be "the gray-faced man who shoves circles of frozen
dough into an oven at the Mr. Pizza at the mall and lives in a
town-house apartment at the edge of town until his mailman
recognizes him from the picture at the post office." Rolfe's
message that despair breeds violence is forcefully delivered. Too
bad that he keeps getting in the way of an even stronger story.