Classics Club #12: Richard Russo’s Empire Falls

It was a huge mistake to begin this book during my Florida vacation because this is one of those novels that absorb you to the point where you can’t do anything else but read it. I dragged out reading the last 100 pages because I didn’t want the book to end.  Richard Russo’s Empire Falls is an amazing, amazing novel that everybody needs to read right now. As I keep saying, Americans should keep writing realist novels because they do it better than anybody in the world and should stop trying to squeeze out post-modernist works of literature because they suck beyond belief at it.

Empire Falls is a dying little town in Maine. The industries that kept the town alive and bustling for decades are all gone, and the town’s inhabitants are leading miserable, blighted existences that are as pointless as they are hopeless. Miles Roby, the novel’s protagonist, has always wanted to leave Empire Falls. At the age of 42, however, he still finds himself prevented from escaping by an incomprehensible apathy that dominates every aspect of his existence. Miles has no interest or passion for anything. He moves listlessly through life and can’t find anything to spur him to activity.

Miles is only one of many male inhabitants of Empire Falls who lead such a stunted life. Among female protagonists, there is at least a couple who try to change their lives. The other characters soon beat their desire for change out of them, however. The most powerful force preventing the protagonists from finding energy to leave is their deep immersion into the patriarchal order. The parents of these middle-aged people feel entitled to abuse, humiliate and belittle them in public, all the while invading every inch of personal space they have. There is not a glimmer of realization among the characters that in year 2000 it is ridiculous to remain so enslaved by one’s parents.

What makes the inhabitants of Empire Falls so hopeless and zombified is their incapacity to inscribe themselves into a rapidly changing reality of the globalized world. The way of life where you graduated high school and went to work at the same factory where your father and grandfather had worked their entire lives is gone. Nowadays, you have to be mobile, comfortable with technology, culturally sophisticated, intellectually agile, and prepared to switch jobs, careers, and states easily. You should also be prepared to shed the way of life where you belonged to your clan and allowed it to make all of your decisions for you and learn to be an individual. Otherwise, you are destined to lead the drab, impotent existence of a Miles Roby.

The novel’s title is very significant. Of course, Empire Falls is the name of the town where the novel is set. However, we can also interpret it as referring to the fall of the great American Empire that is happening right now. Whether the US will lose its hegemony in the world and turn into a place inhabited by helpless and indifferent Miles Robys depends on how the country will deal with this profound global transformation. Russo is a lot less hopeful in this respect than I am. I see a lot of evidence that the country will be able to weather this profound transformation and come out renewed. The Empire Falls is a lot less pessimistic. In any case, the novel is a new American classic that, in my opinion, places its author next to Theodore Dreiser and Sinclair Lewis in the pantheon of the great writers this country produced. The novel’s very existence is contributing to my optimism for the future of the US. An empire that produces great literature of this kind is not ready to fall.