The New Canon is a regular feature, contributed by Ted Gioia, focusing on great works of fiction published since 1985. These books represent the finest literature of the current era, and are gaining recognition as the new classics of our time. In this installment of The New Canon, Gioia looks at Empire Falls by Richard Russo.
Despite its Gibbon-esque title, Empire Falls operates on a small scale with few imperial pretensions. Decline and fall are certainly part of the story, but the collapse here is centered on a small Maine town where the victims are the local workers, who have seen industries shut down and jobs disappear. In the township of Empire Falls, people get by on nostalgic recollections of yesteryear supplemented by unrealistic hopes for the future.
Stories of struggling inter-generational family businesses rarely get readers jazzed up — they much prefer a love story or a mystery — although authors as diverse as Thomas Mann (Buddenbrooks) and Philip Roth (American Pastoral) have built grand fictions on this foundation. Empire Falls, which won the Pulitzer Prize in 2002, is not out of place when mentioned alongside these classics, and like these other novels works its wonders on the most intimate levels, in spaces where no accounting debits or credits can capture the closing balance. Richard Russo uncovers the hidden personal stories — both among the Whiting family who “own” the town, and the citizens who rely on the wealthy locals for their own livelihood — and shows that the individual mishaps and calamities of the high and low are often far different from what we first suspect, if no less tragic.
Russo’s tale takes on the structure of an unfolding series of interlocking secrets. The concealed elements of the plot are all the more insidious given the apparent transparency of everything happening in the township of Empire Falls. Nothing is harder to come by in a small town than privacy. Everyone knows that Miles Roby’s wife Janine is divorcing him, and has taken up with Walt Comeau, the vain owner of a fitness club. Everybody knows that Miles’s daughter Tick broke up with her boyfriend, the son of a mean-spirited local cop. All parties are aware that Miles’s brother David is a recovered alcoholic and that you can’t trust their father Max, who would rob the collection plate at church if it stayed in his hands for more than a second.
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