Writer's on the Record
Photo Credit: Ileana Florescu

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Writers on the Record with Victoria Lautman

Russell Banks / February 10, 2008 / The Reserve

The setting for Russell Banks’ eleventh novel, The Reserve, is a private Adirondack “camp” for wealthy sophisticates circa 1936, and a noir atmosphere permeates the story. There’s passion, adultery and murder, not to mention the economic struggles, social hierarchy and political upheavals that rocked the world during that tumultuous time. Banks—the revered author of such award-winners as Continental Drift, Cloudsplitter, and Affliction—loosely based his main character on socialist American artist Rockwell Kent, while other historical references (the Hindenburg, the Spanish Civil War, early lobotomies) make appearances in this roller-coaster of a book. Russell Banks discusses the arc of his long career in this illuminating interview.Listen Now

Victoria Lautman Interviews...