Material Detail

This video was recorded at MIT World Series: MIT Writers Series. Fans of prolific fiction writer Russell Banks will find great comfort hearing his voice bring his writing to life. Viewers unfamiliar with Banks vivid yet stark descriptions will enjoy this new discovery. His short story, The Moor, deals with an unlikely encounter between a middle-aged man and his "first love," now an 80-year-old woman. The second and longer reading consists of the first chapter of The Darling, a novel Banks began taking notes on five years ago, and started writing a mere three years ago. Banks comments with typical understatement, "Novelists are people who have a great affection for delayed rewards." The plot of the novel, as gleaned from this small sample, surprisingly connects a woman running an organic farm in New England to Liberia's bloody and endless civil war.

Disciplines:

• Humanities  / Comparative Literature and Classics