"Trajectory," by Richard Russo

A new book by Richard Russo is always cause for excitement. What a wonderful writer he is! I was not surprised to hear from a writer friend who has spent time with Russo that he is as kind and approachable a person as his fiction would lead us to believe. I know, I know, one should not confuse the writer and the writing, but when such decency and understanding of human nature comes through so clearly in the writing, the reader feels that the writer must be a good person. I have so enjoyed and appreciated Russo’s novels, such as “Empire Falls,” “That Old Cape Magic,” and “Everybody’s Fool,” as well as his memoir, “Elsewhere.” The new book, the one that I have just read, is “Trajectory” (Knopf, 2017), a collection of four stories. This fiction is, as always with Russo’s work, engaging, compelling, deeply grounded in his knowledge of humanity, and gently humorous, sometimes even outright comedic; see, for example, his hilarious and scarily on-point campus novel, “Straight Man.” And speaking of campus fiction, of added interest to me is that two of the stories in this current collection are about characters who are academics; both are in confusing situations. Actually all of Russo’s characters face confusing situations, and the stories are basically about how they face them, how they muddle through, caught between the past and the future, uncertain but somehow at least somewhat positive despite it all. The young female professor in “Horseman” is dealing with a student’s plagiarism, a topic that all of us in academe have to deal with. She is torn about the plagiarist and the plagiarism; at the same time we learn of the complexities of her marriage, her child with serious problems, and her relationships with other academics in her past and present. “Voice” is the story of a sort-of-retired professor who has become fixated on a disabled, brilliantly creative female student, but in a less predictable, less blameworthy, more complicated and interesting way than this might sound. In the main part of the story, he is on a tour in Venice with his brother, with whom he has a strained relationship, which becomes more strained during the course of the story. “Intervention” features illness, family history, and family relationships (often difficult). The story I liked least of the four was “Milton and Marcus,” about a screenwriter and his current and past history with movie people; however, a story I like least in a Russo collection is still a wonderful story; it is all relative. I highly recommend this book, as I do all of Russo’s books. If you haven’t discovered this terrific writer yet, please do find and read one of his novels or short story collections. P.S. In my last post (5/28/17), I spoke of author Elizabeth Strout’s work being strikingly “humane”; I could say the same of Richard Russo’s work. Reading these two books one after the other has reminded me once again of what riches contemporary fiction has to offer, if one looks in the right places.