Car thieving early start in writing career

Three months after receiving his driver’s license, Russell Banks stole an Oldsmobile and… Three months after receiving his driver’s license, Russell Banks stole an Oldsmobile and drove it across the country. His accomplice, a devout Christian, then confessed their sin to a priest.

Shortly thereafter, the two were turned over to the police. By the priest.

Though he admitted to having a “turbulent and scattered, sometimes violent and unfocused childhood,” Banks, now a renowned writer, has found a way past his more rebellious days. Last Monday evening, he spoke in Pittsburgh for the second time in 15 years as a part of the Drue Heinz lecture series.

Now 64 years old, Banks is known for novels including “Cloudsplitter” and his most recent work, “The Darling.” In addition to writing an endless list of novels, Banks has also seen two of his stories converted into film: “Sweet Hereafter” in 1997, and “Affliction” in 1998.

“One of the great advantages of being a fiction writer is that you don’t have to be an expert,” Banks said to the crowd at Carnegie Music Hall, as he spoke about his novel “Cloudsplitter.” Talking about the novel, which focuses on John Brown and is narrated by his son, Owen, Banks described his research as a way of engulfing himself in the time period.

“We see history through a lens, looking backward through the events of today,” he said.

Banks began with a description of his past, which he described as “not an auspicious start.”

“My view of myself as a writer has been generated and shaped by the life and work of Hemingway — especially the life,” he said.

Reading Ernest Hemingway, William Faulkner and other writers sparked Bank’s passion for writing as a teen-ager. He described his own fiction as “inescapably descended from [Hemingway’s].”

During his teen-age years and his 20s, Banks found himself in Florida, hoping to defend Fidel Castro. He then married a model and was informed of his impending fatherhood. He was divorced soon after.

Banks admitted to his audience that his life consisted of writing everyday, fishing, hunting, drinking, and “worshipping at the altar of an absent god,” after Hemingway committed suicide in 1961.

After Hemingway’s death, Banks hitchhiked back to Florida, the home of the deceased writer. There, he continued drinking and gambling until, he said, he finally “realized I was too late; I was chasing a ghost.”

Banks continued his travels through the country. He went to Mexico, where he was mugged at gunpoint, and then to Los Angeles. Finally, he decided to return to New Hampshire, where he worked as a plumber with his father and married for the second time.

Though Banks said that “the image of Hemingway no longer left [him] enthralled,” he told the audience of his trip to Cuba last year. There, he toured Hemingway’s home, where he found himself particularly awestruck by one thing: On the bathroom wall, Banks found a day-by-day chart of Hemingway’s weight and number of words written.

“This told me more about Hemingway than any biography,” he said. “He was counting the days until he was sentenced.”

Banks described his short stories as being heavily influenced by Hemingway and his trek to understand his idol, whom he never got the chance to meet. But he credits his stylistic maturity mostly to Faulkner.

Banks taught creative writing at Princeton, but he ended his teaching career in 1997, and he is now involved with the Cities of Asylum, a network of writers set up by the International Parliament of writers. It was formed to find a haven for writers who are persecuted in their own countries.

Banks addressed the audience in a question-and-answer session after reading his short story “Black Man and White Woman in Green Rowboat.” When asked whether he thought there had been a turning point in his life, he told the man who had asked the question that it was when he found himself through writing.

“I was more intelligent, honest and attentive to the world when I was writing,” he said.