Life and art : essays
Edition
First hardcover edition.
Publication Information
New York : Alfred A. Knopf, 2025.
Physical Description
189 pages ; 22 cm
Summary
Life and Art--these are the twin subjects considered in Richard Russo's twelve masterful new essays--how they inform each other and how the stories we tell ourselves about both shape our understanding of the world around us. In "The Lives of Others," he reflects on the implacable fact that writers use people, insisting that what matters, in the end, is how and for what purpose. How do you bridge the gap between what you know and what you don't, and sometimes can't, know? Why tell a story in the first place? What we don't understand, Russo opines, is in fact the very thing that beckons to us. In "Stiff Neck," he writes of the exasperating fault lines exposed within his own family as his wife's sister and her husband--proudly unvaccinated--develop COVID. In "Triage," he details with heartbreaking vividness the terror of seeing his seven-year-old grandson in critical condition. And in "Ghosts," he revisits Gloversville, the town that gave rise to the now-legendary fictional town of North Bath, and confronts the specter of its richly populated past and its ghostly present.
Notes
"A Borzoi Book"--Title page verso.
Contents
- Part I: Life. Stiff neck ; Triage ; Meaning ; Beans ; Marriage story ; What we really want from stories ; Ghosts
- Part II: Art. The lives of others ; The future ; Words and their arrangement ; From Lucky Jim to Luck Hank ; Is it really different?