Transcript: You're Making Me Read WHAT?!? Podcast

You're Making Me Read What?! - Empire Falls by Richard Russo

Transcript

[0:00] Music.

[0:09] Do you have somebody in your life who loves books? Somebody who not only loves books, but always wants to share what she's reading with you, thinking that you're just going to love her latest selection.
And inevitably, you just can't stand that the book that she recommended.
That is us. We both read a lot. Well, I don't even read, I listen.
But we very rarely agree on what constitutes a good read.
I enjoy books that build up new worlds, inviting magic and mystery into our lives.
Science fiction and fantasy rule.
I listen to a variety, but it's all grounded in reality. You can keep your elves in space operas.
Welcome to our podcast. You're making me read what?
Your hosts on this monthly podcast are myself, Jessica, and my colleague, Christine.
We're librarians who get a thrill out of a great book but usually can't stand what the other person is reading.
We've each selected some of our all-time favorite books, and each month we alternate between the lists with the goal of persuading the other to enjoy a read she would have never picked up on her own.
I feel like you're falling back to last month.
Even a book that isn't entirely your style might have some redeeming qualities to it, right?

[1:16] I guess we'll see. Do you want to do the spoiler alert? Yeah.
Okay. It's not... Well, I should tell them what we read. We read Empire Falls by Richard Rousseau, and it is a chunk of a book.
Okay, wait. I can validate that. I have the print copy right in front of me.
I'm going to say it's 800 or so pages.
SONIA DARA That is drastic overestimation. KATE SONIA DARA Is it?
SONIA DARA 483. KATE SONIA DARA It's twice. Oh, Martin, up twice.
SONIA DARA How long was the audio for it?
KATE SONIA DARA I don't remember. It was a lot of… SONIA DARA It was a chunk.
KATE SONIA DARA Yeah, for sure. SONIA DARA Yeah, I mean, this was a big book.
I don't think it's the biggest one we've ever read, though. Memoirs of Cleopatra, maybe that one was extra.
KATE SONIA DARA All right. But we're going to talk about the whole darn thing, all 483 pages of it.
So we're going to include the ending in any magical twist, but there are no magical twists because this is reality, sister.
And if you haven't read Empire Falls yet and you'd like to read it before you hear us talk about it, stop now and join us after you have read or listened to it.

[2:19] So, I desperately want to insinuate that there are magical twists.
I just, like, maybe... Where would they be?
Well, I have already thought about this, actually.
So maybe there's a river, the Knox River, right?
And one of the characters in here dammed up part of it so that the garbage that people threw over a bridge wouldn't stink up his front yard and property.
So what I have envisioned is that over time, a trash monster has developed and eventually rampages around the town. Alternatively, if that's just too much for you – No, I like it, but go ahead.
Okay. I have a pen. I'm going to jot this moment down. Alternatively, if the trash monster scenario is not everyone's cup of tea, still river theme.
Sure. And, you know, the spirit of the river is really unhappy.
They dumped dye into it over the years from these factories.
People are abusing it.
And so at the bottom of a low point in the river, you find a gap between the worlds.
And people who are good and just and don't mess up Mother Nature can slip away and do a whole other world full of wonderful things and environmentally friendly people.
That's a different book. You liked The Magic Trash Monster better?
Sure, because that's actually reality. That's accurate.
I guess if I were pressed, I would have to say that there are no.

[3:46] Documented. Correct. Magical twists and turns in this book. Correct.
Sadly. It is. And in fact, I was thinking about the aspect.
So it's about small town life. Small town life. Small town life in middle Maine in probably the 80s.
And there are funny things in it like long distance telephone calls, which I feel like I'm going to have to explain to you, but we'll get there when we get there.
If you hold your hand up with your pinky and your thumb out, and you put it to your mouth and your ear, once upon a time- That was a phone. That was a phone call.
That's how you symbolize you're making a phone call. And if you shook your hand, then you were far out and on the beach.
Right on. So small-time Maine, and it follows the life of Miles Roby, who is sort of an unwilling grill operator. He got stuck there. It was never his dream, but he's making the best of it and he's unwillingly divorcing his wife. And he adores his daughter and his brother has started working with him and they've never had a great relationship. And so he's sort of hapless and stuff happens to him and he's a little bit of a victim, although I don't think he has a victim mentality so much. He's a good guy.

[5:10] He's just kind of washed away in the current, right? Absolutely.
If we continue the river metaphor, but without a gap in the world or a trash monster, he just did not have a lot of, I don't know, I want to say backbone, but that's not it.
Because he would stand up for himself when he needed to.
He just kind of let life smack him around. Absolutely. Yes. And flexible to a fault, maybe.
And I think almost like content to a fault, where he just wouldn't stop to poke stuff.
He would never stir anything up.

[5:50] And I think it's an interesting discussion of revenge, because there's a lot of bad things that happen in here. So this is what I like about Richard Rousseau's writing.
This is the second book that I've made you read by him. The other one was Straight Man.
And this one was written right after Straight Man. And it won the Pulitzer for fiction.
And – Did it really? It did. Oh, God. Wow. And Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward bought the rights to it and made an HBO movie and, it was fabulous.
And the funny thing about that – so Paul Newman – Is from the cookies, right?

[6:26] Well, okay. Oh, my God, I'm so old. Paul Newman was like the most beautiful man who ever existed for most of life. And then he developed a salad dressing company called Newman's Own.
I mean, sure. I'm not going to debate that because I don't have any facts to debate you with. I am aware of him from the cookies. Okay. I have to leave this behind because otherwise I'm going to fall apart. But he is the most beautiful man in the whole history of the world, and so he always got cast in these love roles and he just had this devilish smile and was very appealing. And he always wanted to be the jerk, but because he was too good-looking, he would never get those – Did he get to play the dad?
Yes. He bought the rights so that he could play Max Robey, who was a despicable, gross person. And he had...
Oh, I actually kind of like the dad. Absolutely. That's the thing that I love about Richard Russo is that even the people who are the most... Like, he's a total degenerate.
But he called himself sempty. He couldn't say the full word.
Seventy. I am 70 now. He's like, nah, I'm sempty. Sempty.

[7:38] Yeah. That was endearing. And he didn't mind when things stayed in his beard, like egg yolk.
That's for later. Don't be mad about him for snacks. That's ecologically conscious.
And he had no problem stealing from his sons.
I mean, he had no problem hijacking a priest, a senile priest, and taking him down to Key West.
Yeah, that's true. There were some things about – he had no problem having affairs on his wife and leaving for months at a time.
Yeah. I mean, he made the best of life. No conscience. And that's why – that's who Paul Newman wanted to play.
So I just find that adorable. Yeah, that's pretty nice.

[8:15] So was it a movie or a miniseries? Because I thought it was long.
I had watched it, but when I was trying to look up stuff about this, it seemed long. It was long.
And I can't remember. I think it was way back in the days of videocassettes, and I think it was two.
So I don't know if it was a miniseries. I don't know how it came out.
But it was an HBO special in some concept. That's a lot of tape.
Agreed. That's a lot of tape. So, Richard Russo typically does small town New York.
So this is a little bit of a departure because he goes up a little further north.
But it's always working class folks who are doing the best they can do and the situation isn't necessarily very kind to them.
What I love about his writing is that he is very sympathetic to his characters.
And so even the ones that are just, you just want to shake them, have redeeming qualities and you go, oh, that's why they're such a jerk, because X, Y, or Z happened to them.
Yeah. Mm-hmm.

[9:18] I don't know. I don't know. Maybe you don't do that. I do that. No.
So, like I said, I've got the print book here. And at least at the time this version was published, he lived with his family in Maine.
Right.
And I don't remember when we talked about the original book, Straight Man, because that was years ago now. If he like originally lived in New York and that's why he wrote based in New York and then when he moved he shifted his kind of locational perspective.
Maybe.
But that's interesting. I think a lot of people, like the genres that I like to read, people are purposefully like We lived in a castle on top of a mountain covered in snow that you could only land by Pegasus, right? So you're not usually going to...
That was so easy for you. They're always ready. Trash monster stories.
They're ready to go. So many of the authors that I kind of religiously read maybe don't pull as much of their place settings from their actual lives.
And many of the ones that you've selected, him included, they do that, right?
You're pulling from the natural world around you and the experiences that you've had.

[10:20] I didn't like dislike this book. I'm not even trying to be mean on this one because like Straight Man was okay too.
It was difficult for me to get through because it was so depressing. It was just so sad.
So the whole point of this book is this little microcosm of a small time or a small –, See, I got you saying it now too. I can't even remember what the real state is.
I thought it was going to be small town now. So you're living in the small time town life, time of town.
And even from the start, right, so this book is set up mostly in the present day for them but with flashbacks interspersed.
And it starts with flashbacks and it ends with, almost ends with a flashback.
And the way that they set up this book to start is around like a town forefather, C.B.
Whiting. Whiting. Whitting. And...

[11:16] He just made me sad. So he's this guy, he's seen his dad and his grandpa get sucked into these marriages where they're desperately unhappy.
Wait, wait. You have to say it right, Jessica. You can't. It's said too many times to ignore it, that their goal in life was to kill their wives with a shovel.
That was one of them. His name was Horace.

[11:37] I don't think both of them wanted to kill with a shovel. I think both of them.
I must have blocked that out.
Yeah. Either they are desperately unhappy with their spouse, or they are so desperately unhappy that they are fantasizing about offing them.
And so this guy you start off with, and he's like, you know, I'm going to go backpack through Europe.
My dad's a little free with the money. I'm going to go live in Mexico for however amount of time.
I'm going to write poetry. I'm going to live my life on the beach.
I have enough money. I'm good.
I'll just hang. And then the minute his dad is like pulling the purse strings, he's like, well, I guess I guess I got to go back and fulfill my destiny to be sadly married in a town that I hate that is dying.", And go get myself a shovel so I can get rid of my wife and, you know, it was just a lot.
So I am delighted that you brought this up because one of the things as I was re-listening to this, this book makes me ridiculously happy.
And so I was thinking to myself – so the thing that's so interesting to me is you You and I have very, very similar values, and we have very similar ethics and outlook on life and all that kind of stuff.

[12:49] But when it comes to books, like I thunk back to what was it, the T.J.
Klune book, The House in the Cerulean Sea, which I thought was unbelievably depressing, and I found it so sad.
I was so emotionally drained and sad, and you found it uplifting.
And this book has incredibly sad elements to it and horrific elements, truly horrific elements to it.
And yet, there's something about his writing that just speaks to me in a way that shows me the resilience of mankind, humankind, and the ability to see the good even when it's, trying to hide itself.
And so for whatever reason, that makes me so happy.
So talk about, like, do you have any retort to my observation that you found the house in Cerulean Sea uplifting and I thought it was super depressing and then we switched on this one?
I mean, I really want to talk about T.J. Klune books now. Can I do that?
No. No. I've read several of them recently. There's an amazing one that is a take on Pinocchio, but it's switched between the people and the robots. It's so good.
I don't...
Oh, okay, we gotta talk about this other book that is not the book that I actually want to talk about.
Correct. So I don't...

[14:14] I read most of this. I will say I skimmed some of it. Sure. It's very long.
I ran out of time, and that was bad on me. And I started reading this early this time.
I started on five days ago, which is really long for me.
That is very long. And so there are some places where I was like, mm-hmm, mm-hmm, yep, mm-hmm, we're still talking about the river, got it. Nobody likes that house.

[14:33] Yeah. Yeah. People stuff, people stuff, people stuff, go. But majoritatively, got it.
There were interesting characters in this book, right?
So the daughter, Tick, 16-ish, somewhere in there, so personified like this aspect of teenagerdom that I was like, oh, yeah, I see that.
And his daughter was her age when he wrote this.
So duh. Yes, of course it was. And the stories that she told before you got towards the end of the book were fine.
They were like, okay, yes, it's hard being a teenager. And the relationship between the daughter, Tick, and the ex-wife, Janine, was interesting.
She had recently lost a lot of weight. She had started to exercise, which is then when she decided she was gonna have an affair and then divorce her husband to marry this guy she had an affair with, and then it doesn't work out.
But the mom loses all this weight because she's just not happy in her body, and she wants to feel good about herself, and then the daughter stops eating.
And I could certainly see the reality in that type of situation.
I didn't like it because that's a really hard place to be in.

[15:49] And I guess I see your point that there were certainly storylines and aspects in here where you could see like when you got to the end of the story, which I did not like, by the way. Oh, it was awful. I did not like the ending.
No, that part, I know we're not going to, we're doing spoilers things, but I did not like the end. Oh, okay. The very, very end.
Not a good ending, but you've got all these little storylines and some of them are really interesting like the dad and it was okay that he never had a culmination of his journey.

[16:20] But if I think about The House on the Cerulean Sea, it had a beginning, and then it had a climax, and then you had an ending.
And the ending was one where you should be able to read it and see, okay, I see the arc, I see the progression.
They get a good ending because they are good people and they did good things.
And I like that. I like that it was hard and it was grim, and then you got there.
They persevered and they won there. Yeah. Yeah.
So at the end of this one, towards the end, small caution alert just in case people are uncomfortable.
There is gun violence in this book. One of the teens in Tick's class who has been incredibly abused by his parents comes in and- And his schoolmates.
Yes. Comes in and shoots several of his classmates and a teacher.

[17:15] And her dad leave and they go to Martha's Vineyard to kind of recuperate, that's awful.
It's also unfortunately reality in our nation.
The part that I had a really hard time with with this was you get to the end of the book, and you've got another flashback and then you get to the end and the dad, Miles, has been only communicating with his brother.
They're in this little house that their friends own and they're recuperating and he has this like epiphany, mental journey where he's talking kind of with the guy that his mom had an affair with that was actually the guy that you read from the beginning of the story that was the forefather of this town.
And he decides it's time to go back to Empire Falls.
And okay, I guess.

[18:08] Why? Like, throughout the beginning and middle of this book, he's unhappy, he's kind of stuck, he's floating along, he's doing whatever life gives him, and then they have this opportunity to start fresh in some place that they both love, and instead they decide to go back.
And then the end of the book is kind of an insert where the lady that kept him there all these years dies because the river floods up, and then she and a cat are floating along the river. I just couldn't.
I just couldn't. That was not an ending that I was like, oh, wow, I feel really good about all their journeys.
So that is very interesting to me, because to me, one of the things that Miles, the main character, recognizes very late in the book, I mean, he's not a quick learner, this one.
He has to be hit over the head with a skillet to get stuff. There was one piece in here that was kind of interesting, where somebody had said at one point that Miles and his – it was either Miles and his brother and his dad or Miles his wife and his daughter, they all had this very distinct personality segment, and then.

[19:12] All together they were like a full person.
And I don't remember which one of the two it was, but I was like, that's unfortunate.
But I think it's true. It is true, yes. And so they feed off each other, not necessarily in a good way, which I think is true in family dynamics.
And so the way that I read that portion that you described was that really late in the game, Miles realized that Martha's Vineyard wasn't the place he loved, it was the place his mom loved.
And so there was nothing to love there. And Empire Falls actually, now that he had switched workplaces and now owned his own workplace, he was the big boss of him and wasn't under Mrs. Whiting's thumb anymore.
To me it was, I'm now choosing to go back. I don't have to go back because the people that I love and that are important to me are there.
So to me it was like a happy – not a happy realization, but a like, oh, wow, I had more than I thought realization.
I can get halfway there on that. Fair enough. No, I can. Like, yes, there are reasons to go back.

[20:19] There are also reasons not to go back and to start fresh. And even though a portion of that Martha's Vineyard was his mom's, a portion was his and his daughter's, too, who would vacation there every summer. Yeah, that's true.
And really close to the end, he's finally having a conversation with his ex-wife.
And you're, like, two pages away from the end of the book at this point.
And throughout the whole book, right, she's been – she had an affair, she's leaving him, her relationship with her daughter is shattered.
And at the end, you know, he's coming back, I'm gonna be my man, whatever.
She's like, well, you know Walt the Silver Fox guy. He's back in his own house. I've gained all the way back, right?
Don't tell me anything about it. He was like.

[21:05] Right and the insinuations they're just gonna move back in and everything's gonna be back the way it was. I hate that, so, okay, so that was that's interesting that that was your take on it too because um.

[21:15] He says the part I loved about that exchange was he says After she says I gained all the weight back. Don't say anything about it He says, oh, I lost a bunch of weight.
And he lost the weight because out of, you know, worry and concern and, you know, it was not a healthy way to lose the weight. And she, because she's so self-absorbed, says, oh, you're just doing that to make me feel worse.
Like, he can't just do something. It has to be to – and that's how Janine was throughout the whole book.
So I loved that that stayed the same. She just didn't learn anything.
No, she didn't. But he's going to go back. But we don't know that.
I mean, it's strongly implied. Yes, but we don't know. We don't.
Yeah. Oh, and maybe part of it is the individual overlay that we put on things, right?
So if this is a small-time book, small-time book, right, with a big story and lots of big personalities, I don't personally want to live there.
This is not... I don't want to live in a small town.
And maybe that's because I have never done that. I have always lived in larger cities or suburban areas, like metropolitans.
The idea of having the option to not go back to a place where you have felt trapped for your entire life and then at the very end of the story going, okay, yeah, I have enough options now.
Right. Right. Yeah. I get that.

[22:36] I was struck all over again with the writing. Writing was great.
I love the writing. And just a couple – I want to read a couple of the things that just poked me.
Few social situations were improved by Max Roby's participation, but this was one of them.
He was talking to the silver fox and he did not want to talk to him because he was – Walt was always just trying to, you know, one-up him.
Of course he was. He was trying to show that I stole your wife.
Let's arm wrestle. Let's arm wrestle. And then at the end of the book, he breaks his arm and, you know, it's kind of funny.
And then this just spoke to me in the same way that Straight Man did because Straight, Man to me was all about the dysfunction of the workplace.
And the quote was, contemplation is like sitting on a committee that seldom made recommendations and was ignored when it did, a committee that lacked even the authority to disband.
And it's just the futility of life and you're just going to sit there and, you know, think about all this stuff that you have absolutely no control over and then nothing happens.
And you can never leave.
This is like that play where the underworld is other people.

[23:51] This is a family-friendly podcast. His writing is absolutely great.
I'm not going to argue with that. He's got great use of phrasing, and he's got a wonderful vocabulary, and his timing was really great.
Yeah. I just, it made me sad.
Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So in addition to Max, the dad, who was...
Very amusing. Yes In the first I don't know quarter of the book and not even that much, There is a character who's only minimally in the book because it's in the flashbacks for CB Whiting and it's his dad or his grandpa.

[24:27] Horace and for us Horace has just mighty flatulence. Yes, so I loved That they included fart jokes. Sure in this Pulitzer winning book And then, in fact, one of them was him laying on his side and his flatulence was so incredible it lifted his entire body off of his bed and set it back down gently.
Like that was – so I got that in the beginning and then I just like kept going sad town and there was no – there were no more fart jokes.
So – Yeah.
So there's a little something for everyone. One of the other things that I didn't get the first time or two even that I listened to the book was that Grace, the mom, is sort of universally regarded as this really wonderful woman that everybody looks up to. She's nice.
She's pious. She's – well, so you're making a face, but everyone in the book talks about Grace Robey as being beautiful and, you know, she has her stuff together, all this kind of stuff.
But she is terrible to her younger son. And so I find that to be a really – like, and Miles idolizes his mom.

[25:38] And that is the chasm between Miles and his brother David because David had a very different experience with their mom.
And so I think it's just – I love those kinds of, you know, he doesn't hammer you over the head with it, but you realize, oh, yeah, you can live in the same family and have a radically different experience.
Absolutely. And her life changed in a way that she didn't anticipate.
She thought she was going to run away with her lover and have this new life, and then she found out she was pregnant with her second child, and that was not happening.
And so she held it against him. Yeah.
Well, but the real reason, I think the real reason that is even more interesting is that he didn't – he was going to leave his daughter behind, and she could not be with somebody who would leave their child behind.
And again, that makes you think, oh, she's this pious, wonderful person, but then she basically leaves her child behind emotionally to care for his child.
So it was a very tangled, interesting – like, I like that kind of –.

[26:44] It's not all black or all white, but people are very complicated.
And you still like them to some degree, but you, you know, they make you cringe.
Humanity is exactly what it is. It's messy. It sure is.
I will give this book a solid – I read it.
Wow. There's an endorsement. an endorsement.
Probably not do it again, but I acknowledge that he is an excellent writer, even if the content was not what I was looking for.
Fair enough. I think that's a solid. Yeah. So how are you going to punish me?
I'm actually not. What?
I, it's not the season of giving yet for my household, but it is the spooky season for me. Oh, true. And I like that time of year. So I'm giving you a gift in my book.
Yeah? You're welcome in advance.
So we're going to read The Maid by Nita, N-I-T-A.
Nita. Nina. Prose, P-R-O-S-E.
And this is not a science fiction book, and it is not a fantasy book, and it is not a romance book, so I bet you're thinking... SONIA DARA, HOST, SHOW NINE. Then what is it?
SONIA DARA, HOST, SHOW NINE. How did this land in my book stack?
SONIA DARA, HOST, SHOW NINE.
Correct. SONIA DARA, HOST, SHOW NINE. I thought the cover was adorable.
SONIA DARA, HOST, SHOW NINE. Okay.

[27:57] SONIA DARA, HOST, SHOW NINE. I saw it on one of our library shelves, and I thought, that's interesting looking.
But we all got it anyway. So bright carmine red and in the middle of the current version that I read, which is hardback, there is a keyhole cutout. And through the keyhole, you can see the graphic image of what looks like a traditional maid's outfit running with one fit lifted up. So it's like a bottle mystery. You know, like, oh gosh, I'm not even remembering now, like everyone's stuck in the same room or you're stuck in a train and nobody can leave.
It's a mystery like that where all the components are enclosed and you have to figure it out.
And our protagonist in this book is a delightful young lady who thinks a little differently than maybe the majority of her colleagues or friends.
She just wired a little differently. And she loves her job. She loves the structure.
She loves the cleanliness. She loves the orderliness.
She was real mad when she found a dead person in one of her rooms because that's not clean.
Sure. Yeah. And that messed up her day. But then she gets tagged as a suspect because she is just a little bit different.
It's delightful. I hope you enjoy it. It sounds like I will.
And I think I already agree with her that one dead person in your room can totally ruin your whole day.

[29:14] Agreed. Oh, my God. We agreed. Whoa.
Okay. We got to end this podcast. We got to stop right now. Done. Done.
Thank you for joining us on You're Making Me Read What? There are millions more where that came from.
And don't forget you can always grab these books and lots more at your local library.
So join us next month when we will be discussing The Maid by Nita Prose.
Thank you and keep on reading.

[29:35] Music.