‘Short’ stories remain rich, complex
Even when Pulitzer Prize-winning author Richard Russo writes short stories, he writes them long.
Starting in 1986 with his debut novel, “Mohawk,” Russo has specialized in dense, detail-filled novels about rough-hewn characters who live in the author’s native upstate New York.
Among his most popular are “Nobody’s Fool” (1993); its sequel, “Everybody’s Fool” (2016); and the award-winning “Empire Falls” (2001).
In his new “Trajectory: Stories,” Russo retains his taste for richness and complexity. In fact, over its 256 pages, “Trajectory” gathers four long short stories.
But the stories don’t read as padded vignettes or notes for future novels. Russo has fashioned tales compact enough to make an immediate impression (and read in a single sitting) but also rich enough to sustain interest.
All four stories feature
believabe characters, graceful plotting and pointed dialogue. The most emotionally resonant, though, is “Horseman” (selected for inclusion in “The Best American Short Stories 2007”). The story centers on Janet Moore, a demanding college professor who accuses a student of plagiarism.
Initially, Russo seems to relish placing the reader in Janet’s mind: “Had he cheated before, she wondered. Was cheating the habit of his short lifetime? Even if it wasn’t, that didn’t matter; he’d cheated now, in her class, and she’d caught him, only after ransacking four years’ worth of files to find the essay he’d stolen.”
But the author makes Janet’s lack of empathy — rather than the student’s guilt — the subject of the ■ story.
After recalling a moment of kindness by a seemingly imperious mentor, Janet resolves to take a compassionate approach with the offending student. “Just because you cheated doesn’t make you a cheater,” Janet wants to tell him. “Not if you stopped.”
Russo ends the story on a lovely, encouraging note.
“Intervention” is ostensibly concerned with the efforts of Ray, a Maine real-estate agent, to sell a dilapidated house. But page after page is devoted to characters and episodes beyond the central plot, including Ray’s friend Vinnie and a “long-forgotten” uncle, Jack.
Russo pauses for wonderful details, as when he describes the gloomy atmosphere of the house Ray is trying to sell (“its murk intensified by too much wood paneling and densely flowered wallpaper”) or the buffet at a shabby Chinese restaurant (“large stainlesssteel pans containing small mounds of humid food”).
Hovering in the background of the story, too, is a medical condition from which Ray is suffering.
In the end, Russo unexpectedly and elegantly unifies the strands, changing Ray’s attitude about the prospects for his health — the real theme of the story all along.
No matter the length, Russo’s writing should be cherished.