If you escaped a meaningless life in a
dying town in upstate New York, you might hate Richard Russo's latest
novel, “Everybody's Fool”. Still, you'd have to laugh. That's how
good a writer Russo is.
In this version of small town America
the characters from “Nobody's Fool”--are ten years older,
the men even more feckless, the women still grimly capable, still
despairing (several of them in and out of the madhouse at Utica, and no wonder.)
Like the Greeks at Ilium everyone is
subject to the random torments of the Gods (these days, 'luck'.) Sully, the unhero of 'Nobody's Fool' (played by
Paul Newman in the movie version) has become rich through no virtue
of his own, while the venal building contractor, Carl Roebuck (played
by Bruce Willis) is now poor.
Otherwise they are the same as they
were. Sully remains a loiterer in life, hanging around, no use to to
his family, no longer appealing to his lover. He's dying, and
suffering (fleeting) regrets for the damage he has more-or-less
unintentionally done, in his unintentional life.
Roebuck is also the same, an
incompetent contractor, a chiseler and cheat, but now his wife has
left him, taking all his money. He has remained behind in Bath, a
city with an inferiority complex. The mayor, a former
academic (by definition, incompetent) has hired Carl to restore an abandoned spa, the relict of a previous era of hubris
when Bath tried to copy Schuyler Springs, a sparkling place where tourists take the
waters, watch horse racing, eat rugula, and do
whatever the just must do in heaven.
It is somehow reassuring to find Sully
and Roebuck still at it, although, as in real life, the heroes of one
story are the subplot of another.
This story belongs to Police Chief
Douglas Raymer, a laughingstock who ran for office on the misprinted, slogan “We're not happy until you're not happy.” He
is grieving the death of his wife Becka. In her haste to leave him
last year she slipped on a throw rug and tumbled downstairs 'like a
slinky'. He found her folded up on the bottom step, neck
broken—together with a note urging him to forgive her and to
'be happy for us'.
He's possibly the only person in town
who doesn't know which 'us' she meant.
He has a clue. An electronic garage
door opener was found in her car—an opener for somebody else's
garage. The problem for adulterers, in Bath as elsewhere, is not so
much time and opportunity, as discovery. Small town neighbors are
likely to recognize your car, note that it's parked on the wrong
street, and draw the correct conclusion. Solution: borrow your
lover's garage door opener. Dash inside when nobody's looking.
But can the Chief of Police go around
town trying the opener on everybody's garage? Not very dignified,
maybe not even legal. And what good would it do? The right garage
might not even be in Bath. The Chief's assistant, a typical Russo
female, more intelligent, sympathetic and devious than any male,
suggests Schuyler Springs. Alternatively, she says, the same opener
might work on a dozen garages. Becka's dead. Let her go. Get rid of
the opener.
It's a dilemma, and dilemmas were never
Chief Raymer's strong point, even before he got so depressed and
confused. Did things get worse when he fainted at the funeral of the
local Judge, falling into the grave, losing the opener under casket? Not really.
Did they get better when he persuaded
Sully and Carl to dig up the grave to find it? Of course not, things
always go from bad to worse in Bath.
There's lots more. There's an ex-con
with a list of people who need to be paid back—including BITCH
(ex-wife), MAMA BITCH (former mother-in-law) NIGGER COP (the elegant
Jerome Bond, or as he puts it, 'Bond... Jerome Bond') SULLY himself,
and OLD WOMAN (a former teacher, ten years dead, who haunts the men
in the story, asking them to think.)
There's Sully's friend 'Rub'--a man
barely within the definition of human, yet filled with longing
and devotion, and his counterpart, Sully's dog (also named 'Rub') the world's most disgusting canine.
There's murder and mayhem.
Any reader who has made the hard slog
from Bath to Schuyler Springs might spend most of the book as
confused as Chief Raymer. It's not so much that you can't go home
again, it's more a question of 'Why would you?'
Except ... it's so funny.
