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The sweet here and now >> Russell Banks takes a break by JULIET WATERS
Back then Banks was looking something like a reformed, cagey biker character straight out of Rule. These days, with his white hair, diamond stud and dark blue suit, he's looking more like a sophisticated secular preacher. Serene and about as centred as my cigarette burn. He seems nothing like John Brown, the legendary white terrorist and abolitionist whose raid on Harper's Ferry sparked the Civil War, and whose life is the subject of Banks' latest novel, Cloudsplitter. For one thing, you wouldn't find the ultra-puritanical Brown talking gregariously about sitting in the 11th row at the Academy Awards with Atom Egoyan (who adapted the Sweet Hereafter from Banks' novel). "It was like the biggest prom night of my life." Or hanging out with Madonna and Cher at the Vanity Fair party and getting locked into a conversation with Rita Moreno. "She's really smart. So I just found myself adoring her in a corner, trying to remember all those songs from West Side Story." Banks does, though, have a few mildly censorious comments about the whole affair. "It's a masturbatory exercise in Hollywood narcissism. I kept thinking if L.A. Confidential were called New York Confidential it wouldn't be here. If Titanic hadn't made a billion dollars they wouldn't be here either. They're just taking back the night from the independents." But after seven years of working on a book as dark as Cloudsplitter, a good dose of Hollywood glam is probably a necessary respite. So Banks is taking the first year off in a decade of novel writing to work on a few film projects. Last winter he spent time in Montreal and the Eastern Townships for the filming of Affliction (directed by Paul Schrader and a recent hit at Sundance). This year he'll be writing a screenplay adaptation of Continental Drift, and watching what 20th Century Fox does with the rights to Rule of the Bone (so far Carl Franklin is a likely bet to direct, although there's talk of Gus Van Sant). Cloudsplitter, however, is a book for which Banks claims he could never personally write the script. Certainly not at this point, when he's still trying to detach himself from the seven years he spent immersed in the character of Owen Brown (John Brown's son), who narrates the book as a 750-page suicide note. Written in a language that Owen refers to once as "elaborate plainness," Cloudsplitter is a political masterpiece dealing with the twin themes of racism and patriarchy. But it's a tough read emotionally, a sombre and violent tragedy with very rare, fleeting moments of happiness. It's about as polar opposite of narcissistic and masturbatory as art ever gets. These are characters who are excruciating to read about, let alone live with for seven years. And Banks ruefully admits that the experience has taken a lot out of him. "There was a long piece in the New Yorker this week about multiple personality disorder and I recognized all the symptoms," he laughs (neglecting to mention that there is also a long, extolling review of his novel). "I'm quite serious. I don't feel clinically disordered, but being a writer is something like that. It's living with or becoming another personality." And, for the brief here and now, Banks is happy for a year of just being himself. Cloudsplitter by Russell Banks, Knopf, hc, 758 pp. $34.95
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I believe Russell Banks when he says, "I swear I'm not staring at your breasts. I just can't take my eyes off that cigarette burn on your T-shirt. It's so perfect." There must be something kind of Zen about the little white dot of winter flesh peeking though the crossbones on the black Rule of the Bone T-shirt I scored from Banks last time he was here on a book tour two years ago.