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Nostalgia, Class and Rurality in Empire Falls
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 27 April 2011
Abstract
In American society, rural spaces – particularly those of the working class – are seen as stagnant holdovers from a temporal past that “modern” society has evolved beyond. As a result, working-class rurality and those living within these places are viewed as static, ignorant, insular and so on: whatever places do not conform to the appearance of “modern” progress and development simply must be regressed, on both socioeconomic and cultural levels. While scholars in some disciplines are attempting to redress this misconception, other disciplines (like literary studies) largely align with the mainstream perspective that rurality represents a regressed past to our evolved present. However, despite the critical lack of attention to rurality as a viable space in the present, we can see in various fictional works that working-class rural spaces can effectively show us the interrelationship of rural spaces with “modern” society and culture in the present, the continuing relevance and deep history alike of said spaces, and the potential of these fictional working-class rural places to confront America's norms of progress and development within and without their fictional borders. Richard Russo's fiction illustrates the potential to bring out this critical working-class rural voice. Russo's fictional treatments afford the reader an opportunity to witness the ever-changing complexity (not the temporal and cultural regression) of working-class rurality. In turn, Russo's fictional working-class rural spaces offer a counterperspective to the mainstream (defined here as middle-class and (sub)urban) notions of progress that otherwise dismiss these perspectives. In his book Empire Falls, Russo uses nostalgia to assert this counterperspective. This nostalgia not only reaffirms the postwar and early twenty-first-century working-class rural identity of Empire Falls, but it also offers a critique of dominant conceptions of progress and development that continue into our present.
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References
1 See scholars like Matt Wray (particularly Not Quite White: White Trash and the Boundaries of Whiteness (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2006)) and, most recently, Patrick J. Carr and Maria J. Kefalas, Hollowing out the Middle: The Rural Brain Drain and What It Means for America (Boston: Beacon Press, 2009).
2 William Conlogue, Working the Garden: American Writers and the Industrialization of Agriculture (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2001), 6.
3 Critics see Russo concentrating on his “natural subject”: the rural working-class similar to his childhood upstate New York community. Jay Parisi, ed., American Writers: A Collection of Literary Biographies (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons), 2000. Russo, and his interviewers, also often evoke his background in interviews (see “Richard Russo's Small-Town America,” National Public Radio, 1 Oct. 2007Google Scholar, available at www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=14806290).
4 “Richard Russo's Small-Town America.”
5 Representations of rurality and the small town are considered nostalgic because they are no longer actually experienced in postmodern society. For an example discussing the filmic image in particular, see the collection Representing the Rural. Rural sociologists point out that this view of rurality is apparent across discursive forms, including literature. See Hugh Campbell, Michael Mayerfeld Bell and Margaret Finney, eds., Country Boys: Masculinity and Rural Life (University Park: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2006).
6 See Paul Grainge, Monochrome Memories: Nostalgia and Style in Retro America (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2002), for one example.
7 For the postwar period, see articles like Gerald Johnson, W., “Denizens of the Rural Slums,” New Republic, 23 May 1960Google Scholar, or the more idealized approach in “Escape to the Country,” Life, 25 (27 Sept. 1948). For the present, one need only look at popular renditions of working-class rurality (“rednecks,” “white trash,” “hillbillies”) to recognize their regressed status in American society.
8 Some exceptions can be found: William Conlogue and Tom Lutz (Tom Lutz, Cosmopolitan Vistas: American Regionalism and Literary Value (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2004)) in literary studies, and Anthony Harkins (Anthony Harkins, Hillbilly: A Cultural History of an American Icon (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004)) in history.
9 McDermott, Sinead, “Memory, Nostalgia, and Gender in A Thousand Acres,” Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, 28, 1 (2002), 389–407CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 395.
10 Douglas Reichert Powell, Critical Regionalism: Connecting Politics and Culture in the American Landscape (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2007), 19.
11 Richard Russo, Empire Falls (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2001), 19.
12 D'Haen's critique is of an earlier Russon novel. D'Haen, Theo, “The Return of History and the Minorization of New York: T. Coraghessan Boyle and Richard Russo,” Revue français d'études américaines, 42 (1994), 393–403CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
13 Richard Russo, Nobody's Fool (New York: Vintage Books, 1994).
14 Empire Falls, 19.
15 Empire Falls, 297.
16 Empire Falls, 297.
17 My use of the term “exceptionalism” is in line with literary critics that discuss this term as a confluence of larger ideology and personal trait. For example, Laura Hapke discusses exceptionalism in America: “it remains Americans' ideology of ‘exceptionalism’ that class boundaries seem fluid in a country of such unlimited economic possibility.” Laura Hapke, Labor's Text: The Worker in American Fiction (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2000), 5. In other words, exceptionalism rests in part upon notions of meritocracy and upward mobility – “fluid” boundaries between classes give the impression that those capable can achieve the naturalized cultural norms of mainstream society, and those failing are simply expressing their personal inadequacy.
18 Empire Falls, 232.
19 By accepting preexisting structures, the town's actions (like Max's) may seem apolitical. In the sense that these actions do not attempt to directly change these structures, such a reading would be correct. However, the sense of pride that these actions exhibit speaks to another political move – self-respect in a way of life deemed regressed by mainstream society. These actions become, in part, political through assaulting the taken-for-granted norms of exceptionalism (i.e. upward mobility, progress and development).
20 Empire Falls, 342–43.
21 Empire Falls, 342.
22 Empire Falls, 342.
23 Empire Falls, 343.
24 The move away from Empire Falls signifies upward mobility throughout the book, particularly in regard to college-educated success that can only be attained outside the borders of the town (see Grace's insistence that Miles attend a school far away so that he won't “come running back to Empire Falls” (Empire Falls, 394)).
25 Empire Falls, 343.
26 Empire Falls, 343.
27 Empire Falls, 468–69.
28 One striking example is Miles's childhood neighbor, Jimmy Minty.
29 Empire Falls, 469.
30 Empire Falls, 472.
31 Empire Falls, 37.
32 Empire Falls, 42.
33 Empire Falls, 42.
34 Empire Falls, 101–2.
35 Empire Falls, 101–2.
36 See Empire Falls, 25–26, for an example.
37 Empire Falls, 462.
38 Empire Falls, 482.
39 Empire Falls, 462.