From Bath to Schuyler Springs

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.