Everybody's Fool, by Richard Russo

My wife says this is the best book she's ever read.

Russo is certainly one of my very favorite writers. He has the Mohawk River region distilled in his several works located there, and this one is the best of that lot, for sure.

It's too good and complicated of a story to spoil; go and read it, if you've read the novels that precede it. If you haven't, go read them first. Or don't. This book will stand on its own feet just fine, but you're missing something.

Here's his bibliography on Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Russo#Works

The books that are related to Everybody's Fool, in chronological order, are:

1. Mohawk
2. The Risk Pool
3. Nobody's Fool
4. Empire Falls

But, do yourself a favor and read them all. "Living Treasure" is a cliche unworthy to describe Russo, but he is, a living treasure.

T. C. Boyle reviews Everybody's Fool

Triburbia, by Karl Taro Greenfeld

This novel was written before The Subprimes. 

This is the rare book that I didn't finish. I got maybe 50 pages in, and just lost interest. Maybe it develops into something and I may have missed that, but so far I'm reading the problems of people wealthier than I have ever been even near to. Perhaps this is simple envy, but they just don't seem like actual problems to me.

Damon Runyon, by Jimmy Breslin

Damon Runyon was a journalist, poet, author, and playwright. He wrote of the Roaring Twenties, and brought Broadway and New York City and its characters of that era to life. Jimmy Breslin, a colorful and popular journalist and writer of the later twentieth century writes the life of his predecessor.

Runyon grew up in Pueblo, Colorado, and was apparently drinking like an alcoholic and smoking like a chimney before he was a teenager. His drinking became so bad that eventually he quit, and in later life wrote of his appreciation for AA, although his own sobriety predated the birth of that program by about 20 years.

In writing about Runyon's career, Breslin talks of graft and corruption in a very casual manner. His attitude seems to be that this stuff is everywhere, and pretty much always has been, and that we shouldn't be surprised by it. His own analysis of history would be one of theft and greed.

An interesting bit from the middle of the book (pp185-186) describes "[New York City's] drug panic of 1919." This was also the time when influenza was killing thousands all over the world, including in that city. Louis Harris, "a doctor who was chief of the city's Bureau of Preventable Diseases...found that groups of doctors and nurses were shoving aone another to enter houses where the sick inside had cash..." Harris said " 'The socialization of the medical and nursing professions to place them under government control should no longer be deferred."  Harris's opinion was not too welcome. " 'When he went to medical school, he failed stethoscope,' Esdail (Doc) Cohen of the New York World said."

"...on April 8, 1919, the first federal drug agents in the nation raided six physicians and four druggists who were prescribing opium, cocaine and heroin to people purportedly in need of hop as medicine. That weekend...two thousand addicts walked into Bellevue Hospital...and begged for help. By Monday, the hospital opened a drug treatment center, alarming doctors, who saw it as another attempt to establish socialized medicine..."

From page 187:

"...the state planned to open a long-term treatment center at Mount Lebanon Shaker Village... 'These people should get treatment all right,' a Bellevue doctor announced. 'They should get treated to jail.' "
"Dr. Royal Copeland, the New York City health commissioner, reported, 'Over 95 percent of all drug addicts have shown, by their acts, a non-appreciation of the service, and have repeatedly attempted to be discharged before the end of their treatment. It is, therefore, recommended that the Department of Health discontinue any sort of drug treatment program.' "

Runyon observed this through the point of view of Arnold Rothstein, a gangster. "[Rothstein] decided to provide an orderly distribution of drugs by a professional criminal, himself. He told Frank Costello, 'There can't be much wrong with them. Nobody cares.' "

From page 188:

"Rothstein was the nation's first major underworld distributor of drugs. The first federal drug agent in New York, Max Roder, always said the biggest name he had on his list as a dealer was Arnold Rothstein. 'Every time you mentioned his name in the office, five people on his payroll went to the phone to call him up.' "

Runyon's life was colorful, to say the least. He saw the first half of the twentieth century in all its iniquity and glory, and wrote about sports, gangsters, and his beloved Broadway.

A String of Beads, by Thomas Perry

This is a well-plotted book, the latest (I think) in a series about Jane Whitefield, a woman who is an expert in helping people disappear.

Whitefield grew up (so the story goes) in the Tonawanda Seneca clan in Western New York State.

I will read more of these, most likely. I've read better prose, and Perry employs a great deal of exposition, but the characters were interesting, and to an expatriate New Yorker, so was the setting.

Kirkus Reviews review

Elsewhere, by Richard Russo

This is a memoir, and Russo mentions early on that it will be mostly about his mother, and that is quite true. Nevertheless, being an Upstate New York expatriate myself, I found reading about Gloversville and Russo's relationship with the area and its people irresistible.

In fourth grade or thereabouts, we learned some basic area history, and we were taught about the "glove cities" of Fonda, Johnstown, and Gloversville. I don't believe that we were taught quite everything that Russo relates in his book: the horrible working conditions, the disregard for the employees' safety, the environmental destruction, and the overseas flight that the corporations took to avoid the inconvenience of providing a living wage and complying with legal requirements to destroy neither their employees' health nor the quality of the Mohawk River's water.

Russo's account of his life with his mother comprises most of this book. She was a profoundly disturbed individual, but at the same time committed to her son, and determined that he should be a success. His love for her is quite obvious in these pages.

Here's a much better review than I will write.

Bone Rattler, by Eliot Pattison

A Mystery of Colonial America. Counterpoint. 2008. 460 pages. ISBN-10: 1593761856 ISBN-13: 978-1593761851

When we heard that the author of the many Inspector Shan mysteries had written a new novel set in the American Colonies in 1758, we were eager to find out what that would be like, and were not disappointed.

Duncan McCallum is a prisoner aboard a convict ship bound for the New World. He is a Scot, unfriendly to the British king, whose life and family have been destroyed for his treason to the Empire. During the voyage, there are some strange and actually surreal events that set the stage for what transpires when he lands in New York, indentured to Lord Ramsey as a teacher for his children.

Ramsey's children include an elder daughter named Sarah, who seems afflicted with some great sadness from a past about which no one will speak. As events unfold in the New York wilderness, her story and character are revealed to be quite fascinating.

Native American lore and culture play an important role in the plot of this complex mystery. As we move deeper into the fabric of the story, the Iroquois characters increase in number, depth, and function. It is hard to read this without thinking of Pattison's obvious love and respect for the ancient culture of Tibet reflected in the Inspector Shan series. The parallels between China's invasion and destruction of Tibet and that of the British and French invasion of America and destruction of its native culture and people are unavoidable.

Pattison explores the spirituality of the natives of America in the face of the European invasion, and lays upon that the tapestry of England's exploitation and domination of Scotland and its culture and people. Scots allied with Indians against the English oppressors in this story make the point clear if not obvious. The history of our world is one of domination, disrespect for indigenous culture, and the trampling of religion and tradition in the name of whatever power has the upper hand.

With all this history and moralization included in the text, one might think this would be a dull read, but Pattison's masterful writing and plot delivery keeps us involved in this excellent mystery and more or less painlessly feeds us a great deal of factual information about the Colonial period and the deeds of those who founded what became the United States of America.