Authors: Russell Banks
Affliction (44 page)
R
USSEL
B
ANKS
is the author of thirteen works of fiction, inlcuding
Cloudsplitter
,
Rule of the Bone
,
The Sweet Hereafter
, and
continental Drift.
He lives in upstate New York.
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“Be thankful, even astonished that it existsâ¦. Banks has now become⦠the most important living white male American on the official literary map, a writer we, as readers and writers, can actually learn from, whose books help and urge us to change.”
âVillage Voice Literary Supplement
“With
Affliction
, Mr. Banks has come as close as anybody has any right to expect to following up one masterpiece with another.”
âAtlanta Journal and Constitution
“Russell Banks writes with barely contained heat. It's a style, sometimes plainspoken, sometimes stirring, that, paradoxically seems to issue from some high, cold Olympian perspective while generating enormous emotional powerâ¦. Part thriller, part psychological study, part indictment of the American way of violence,
Affliction
succeeds on every count. Wade White-house looms large among the creations of recent American fiction.”
âNewsday
“In the fullness and power with which it answers that question [âWhat happened to his life?']
Affliction
achieves its brilliance.”
âWall Street Journal
“
Affliction
⦠offers a three-dimensional view of an ancient machismo gone off the deep end. If you're going to write hard-edged realism, it helps to have the heart and nerve to make it human.”
âBoston Sunday Globe
“Banks's idiom is now vigorous and gritty, perfectly suited to the life of his characters and place⦠with
Affliction
especially he joins that group of small-town realistsâwriters like William Kennedy, Andre Dubus, Larry Woiwodeâwho have worked to sustain what may in time be seen as our dominant tradition. Like them, Banks unfolds the sufferings of ordinary life, of those who must worry, who can't be happy.”
âThe New Republic
Success Stories
Continental Drift
The Relation of My Imprisonment
Trailerpark
The Book of Jamaica
The New World
Hamilton Stark
Family Life
Searching for Survivors
Grateful acknowledgment is made for permission to quote from “The Love of Cod and Affliction,” from
Simone Weil: Collected Essays 1934-1943
, translated by Richard Rees and published by the Oxford University Press, 1962.
AFFLICTION
. Copyright © 1989 by Russell Banks. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
First HarperPerennial edition published 1990.
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOC CARD NUMBER
89-45075
ISBN
0-06-016142-6
ISBN
0-06-092007-6 (pbk.)
EPub Edition © AUGUST 2011 ISBN: 978-0-06-212314-5
05 06 07 08
/RRD 29 28 27 26 25 24 23
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