Book Fever
By Marcia Loy

Book Fever takes the pulse of Richard Russo

Richard Russo writes with such sympathy and attention to the rhythms of small-town life that he invests inarticulate lives with genuine passion…[He] has succeeded in creating characters with the emotional weight of people we’ve known in real life.

—The New York Times

Last week I mentioned four of the five top books I read in 2006. The fifth one is by Richard Russo. I’ve been smitten with Russo since I read Empire Falls. He lives in Maine but writes mostly about upstate New York. His first novel was Mohawk, followed by Nobody’s Fool. His characters are flawed but likeable; some are downright lovable. All of the books mentioned in this week’s column are in the library.

Empire Falls, 2001. A wonderful book about Miles Roby, his daughter Tick and his estranged wife Janine. Miles has worked at the Empire Grill for years. As the San Francisco Chronicle suggests, “Empire Falls makes you wish you’d stayed in that small town you grew up in.” This novel won Russo a Pulitzer Prize.

Excerpt from the Prologue: Compared to the Whiting mansion in town, the house Charles Beaumont Whiting built a decade after his return to Maine was modest. By every other standard of Empire Falls, where most single-family homes cost well under seventy-five thousand dollars, his was palatial, with five bedrooms, five full baths, and a detached artist’s studio. C.B. Whiting had spent several formative years in old Mexico, and the house he built, appearances be damned, was a mission-style adobe. A damn-fool house to build in central Maine, people said, though they didn’t say it to him.

Straight Man, 1997. A hilarious look at the world of academia as told by English professor Hank Devereaux at a third-tier college in Pennsylvania. Funny and profound from start to finish, it is my fifth favorite book of 2006.

First paragraph: Truth be told, I’m not an easy man. I can be an entertaining one, though it’s been my experience that most people don’t want to be entertained. They want to be comforted. And, of course, my idea of entertaining might not be yours. I’m in complete agreement with all those people who say, regarding movies, “I just want to be entertained.” This populist position is much derided by my academic colleagues as simpleminded and unsophisticated, evidence of questionable analytical and critical acuity. But I agree with the premise, and I too just want to be entertained. That I am almost never entertained by what entertains other people who just want to be entertained doesn’t make us philosophically incompatible. It just means we shouldn’t go to movies together. 

The Risk Pool, 1986. This novel set in Mohawk, New York, relates the story of Ned Hall, a young boy. His mother is bitter and resentful at her husband. His father is unreliable and has such a bad driving record he’s at the bottom of the auto insurance risk pool. Ned tries to grow up in spite of these terrible role models. 

First paragraph: My father, unlike so many of the men he served with, knew just what he wanted to do when the war was over. He wanted to drink and whore and play the horses. “He’ll get tired of it,” my mother said confidently. She tried to keep up with him during those frantic months after the men came home, but she couldn’t, because nobody had been shooting at her for the last three years and when she woke up in the morning it wasn’t with a sense of surprise. For a while it was fun, the late nights, the dry martinis, the photo finishes at the track, but then she was suddenly pregnant with me and she decided it was time the war was over for real.

Next: San Miguel readers’ favorite books. The following week I’ll discuss more of my favorite books. Coming in January: Classic British Mysteries. Happy reading.

Marcia Loy is a member of the steering committee of the Authors’ Sala and a volunteer at the Biblioteca Pública.

Word Watch
By Bill Gallacher

hubo (vb) Hubo is the past tense of hay, and both of these oddities come from the verb haber. And just as hay means there is or there are, so hubo means there was or there were. Hubo finds itself included here because of the peculiarly Mexican expression: ¿Que hubo le? There is no point in trying to analyze these words. Suffice it to say that: ¿Que hubo le? simply means: How's it going? Although the expression is common enough, it is not always easy to pick out when spoken, as the words tend to be run together and can come out sounding like: KEEB- oh-lay?

intervenir (vb) An intervener may or may not be welcome, depending on the circumstances, but in English usage the idea of interfering or mediating will usually be implicit. Not so in Spanish. Although intervenir will work for to intervene, the most common meaning is simply to participate, with no connotation of aggresive activism, welcome or otherwise.

jubilado (adj) Not full of joy, as might be expected, but retired. If joyous is required, the word is jubiloso, and I suppose San Miguel de Allende can be fairly said to be full of jubilados jubilosos. I remember the first time I was asked if I was jubilado, only later realizing the true import of the word. Quite a shock! Almost as startling as being offered the senior’s coffee rate in McDonald’s (which happened shortly thereafter).