The Pull of the Past
RICHARD RUSSO RIFFS ON HUMOR, IDENTITY, AND HAPPINESS
ON MY
BOOKSHELF
CLORIS
LEACHMAN
The Collected Poetry
by EDNA
ST. VINCENT
MILLAY
“She’s a lifelong
favorite of mine.
I picked up her
poems recently, as
I often do, and again
she made me weep—
and smile.”
Q&A
Q: Jack Griffin, the 55-year-old narrator of your novel That
OldCapeMagic(Knopf ), can’t find the right spot in which
to spread his father’s ashes. At one point he frets that “a strong gust might
come up and he’d be wearing his father.” Was that image deliberate?
A: My editor felt that line should be more literal, but I wanted Grif to be wearing
his father, not his father’s ashes. That is Griffin’s metaphor for the inevitability
that as he gets older—as we all get older—the laws of genetics will be obeyed.
Q: Griffin fears he is becoming his father. Do you fear you’re becoming yours?
A: When I get out of bed now at age 60, I’ve caught myself making the same
sounds my father used to! My lower back feels just like his must have.
Q: Was there a catalyst for this book?
A: Within the past 18 months, both my daughters got married, which may explain why a wedding anchors each of the book’s two parts. For a year before that,
I was hip-deep in preparations. These things don’t come off overnight anymore.
Q: When will a Richard Russo novel feature a middle-aged male who is happy?
A: The happier a fictional character is, the less conflicted he is—and the less
conflict, the less story. Contentment is the stuff of good living, not good fiction.
Q: Do you have any idea how funny you are?
A: I didn’t write anything funny for the first two years [of my career]. Then one
day I wrote the scene of Dallas Younger looking for his teeth [Mohawk, 1986],
and it came alive on the page. I recall thinking, “Oh, I get it—maybe I’m a comic
novelist?” All writers have revelations about their identity, and mine was that it’s
okay to make people laugh. That’s as close to “truth” as I’ll ever get. —Allan Fallow
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