Banksy

In 1919 Sherwood Anderson wrote Winesburg, Ohio, wherein a collection of related short stories painted a portrait of a small town and its inhabitants. The stories on their surface were simple and ranged in tone from mysterious to quaint to alarming. There was a Biblical simplicity and urgency to that book, an interesting psychological depth, and I revisit it every decade or so.

About three-quarters of a century later, Russell Banks did the same for a Vermont trailer park and its denizens. The stories are realistic in style and often devoted to moral lessons around the activities of the people renting these temporary shelters in a beautiful but often brutal landscape.

I bought my copy used at Rhino Books in Nashville. Someone had scrawled on the frontispiece the words "Realist fiction--like Country and Western music, it's all about the TRUTH." Seems appropriate! At any rate, I had a fine talk with the proprietor of Rhino about the state of bookselling in Bmore and about how much I liked his little venture, and about my own experiences during most of a decade in book retail back in my 20s. Russell Banks might have enjoyed our conversation, and it could fit right into a book like Trailerpark.

I've written about Mr. Banks before.