Mohawk

I have an unwavering love for Richard Russo's writing.

Surprisingly, I had never delved into his early novels before. So, I decided to go back in time and picked up "Mohawk".

This book is truly a gem, filled with wonderful and vivid characters.

It offers a colorful and detailed look at a small town in upstate New York, where the local industry is on the verge of dying.

The plot initially seems to meander and wander, but as you approach the final 100 pages, it suddenly cascades towards a powerful and satisfying conclusion.

After reading "Mohawk", it has reignited my desire to reread two of his other masterpieces, "Nobody's Fool" and "Empire Falls".

Richard Russo has a unique ability to bring the characters and settings to life, making his books a joy to read and a memorable experience.

I can't wait to immerse myself in his world once again and discover more of his literary treasures.

This is now the third time I've read this book.

It is truly a privilege that I have never bestowed upon any other author. However, this is Richard Russo, and Mohawk is a source of comfort.

It is a place to which you can retreat when you are in need of familiar ground. I first read the book in 2004, then again in 2007, and now for the third time.

This time around, I have noticed that it is clearly the earliest of Russo's books.

His writing style in Mohawk is not nearly as refined or well-developed as in his later novels.

Nonetheless, Mohawk remains comforting.

Russo has an astonishing ability to breathe life into his characters, making you care deeply about them and eager to learn their fates.

And that is a talent that only the very best writers possess.

It is this unique gift that keeps me coming back to his works, time and time again.

This was Russo's first book and it shows.

Richard Russo is truly one of the finest authors I've encountered in my relatively short life. His narrative boasts a high-caliber voice that skillfully delves into the reader's nostalgia, gently pulling it out. He has a remarkable talent for the craft that many contemporary authors lack. His stories present a stable structure and a very unique and entertaining balancing act among numerous characters.

However, I think Mohawk is the weakest of his novels. There are simply too many characters in this story. This not only leads to confusion but also a kind of devaluation of those characters who should be the focus.

That doesn't mean the main characters aren't well-developed or interesting; they are. But the abundance of people in the book can become an overwhelming assault on the reader's memory rather than an engaging introduction to those they'd like to know.

The secondary characters in this novel, on the other hand, lack the very thing that Russo excels at: voice. In his other works that I've read, such as The Risk Pool, Empire Falls, Straight Man, and The Whore's Child (a short story collection), even the secondary characters are powerful and serve a purpose. Mohawk, unfortunately, has a lot of excess baggage in this regard, and it sacrifices the attention that should be given to the more important characters.

Nevertheless, it's still a wonderful read. It touched my heart to witness the abuse of the town's local retarded character, Wild Bill, who is constantly bullied by the high school boys and wrongly accused in most situations. The love stories are filled with frustrating and endearing entanglements. And, finally, the town of Mohawk is an essential character in itself.

This is a book worth reading only after you've explored Russo's better stories. I highly recommend starting with The Risk Pool and then moving on to Mohawk. I feel truly fortunate to have the luxury of choosing from his greatest works rather than having to wait for each one to be released.

The following code is related to working with a database in a Python application.

First, it imports several necessary modules from SQLAlchemy. These include `declarative_base` which is used to create a base class for declarative models, columns such as `String`, `Integer`, and `ForeignKey` for defining the structure of the database tables, `create_engine` for creating a database engine, and `relationship` and `sessionmaker` for handling relationships between tables and creating sessions to interact with the database.

It then defines two classes, `Author` and `Book`, which inherit from the `Base` class. These classes represent the structure of the `authors` and `books` tables in the database, respectively.

After that, it creates a database engine using the `create_engine` function and specifies the database URL. In this case, it is using an SQLite database and the path to the database file is obtained from the `eboek.DATABASE` variable.

The code then creates all the tables defined in the declarative models by calling the `create_all` method on the `Base.metadata` object.

Finally, it creates a session using the `sessionmaker` and stores it in the `session` variable. The `session` object can be used to perform operations such as inserting, updating, and querying the database.

There is also a function `insert_book` defined, but the details of this function are not shown in the provided code.

A good slice of greasy life courtesy of Richard Russo. I was truly impressed by his other work, The Risk Pool, which was the first one I read of his.

I started this novel, but then had to put it down halfway when life, school, and work (in no particular order) caught up with me.

However, about seven years later, when the pandemic hit and we were all in lockdown, I picked it up again and finished the rest.

Now we have Mohawk, an introductory work that delves into the place and people of a small community.

They share a history, but unfortunately, it leads to a detrimental conclusion.

Cigarette-coffee mornings seamlessly transition into cigarette-beer afternoons and then into cigarette-whiskey evenings.

Here, families, marriages, adolescence, divorce, and death all come to the fore.

Yes, it is one of those novels that draw you in and keep you intrigued.

I'm really looking forward to exploring the rest of his work and seeing what other stories he has to tell.

I have finally finished!

Harry, the owner of the 'Mohawk Grill' restaurant, has a calendar that is a year out of date. This is because the person who gave him the calendar the previous year didn't give him a new one this year. The months are the same, and Harry doesn't mind being a few days off. This simple incident symbolizes the characters in Richard Russo's debut novel 'Mohawk', which offers a slice of small town America.

In fact, this mentality is symptomatic of many characters in Russo's works. They are people who are just waiting for something to happen instead of taking the initiative. They may dislike their town's life and feel suffocated by it, but they would rather suffer silently or complain about it than do anything to change it.

Mohawk, a fictional town, is decaying. The tannery industry that once provided jobs to the townspeople is dying out, and with it, the entire town economy and the town itself. The basic theme of the novel is also explored in Russo's later works, but in this debut, he has tried a more expansive canvas. Instead of focusing on a few characters as in his later works, he has attempted to include many, each with their own individuality.

There is Anne, a divorced mother living with her parents in a claustrophobic atmosphere. She has been in love with her cousin's husband, Dan, for many years, and he reciprocates her feelings. However, their affair is largely unconsummated, with only rare sexual trysts. Dallas Younger, Anne's ex-husband, lives in a pot-induced daze, constantly facing various issues in life without understanding why. Their son, Randall, and other characters like Wild Bill, a mentally challenged young man, and Anne's sick father and complaining mother, also add to the complexity of the story.

With such a diverse cast of characters, one would expect the novel to be highly engaging. And indeed, it starts off well, but unfortunately, it soon devolves into a showy and manipulative one. All art is to some extent manipulative, but when it becomes too obvious and the flow of the novel seems forced, it becomes a problem. This is what happens in 'Mohawk', and you can sense Russo trying too hard to impress the reader.

In an attempt to define his characters clearly, he overdoes it, making most of them seem almost like they are saying, "Look at me, I'm not a fictional character, I'm a real person." After a while, you get tired of all the not-so-subtle hints about the characters that are supposed to add depth to them. For example, Russo tries hard to convey the significance of the hidden affair between Anne and Dan, but it doesn't have much impact on the reader.

To digress a bit, a similar theme is handled much better by Russo in 'Bridge Of Sighs', where he offers many subtle layers that are open to interpretation. In 'Mohawk', however, we feel that Anne and Dan should stop complaining, grow up, and move on with their lives. This may seem cruel considering what they have been through, but Russo is to blame for making us unsympathetic towards these characters who deserve our sympathy.

There is also a supposedly mysterious sub-plot involving Anne's father that promises a lot but ultimately leads to a convoluted trigger for the events that occur before the end. And of course, there are the events that take place on a stormy night before the end. While there is no rule that a character can't have an epiphany or that things can't come to a head on a stormy night, when multiple storylines converge on a single night, it seems like a convenient way for the author to tie up loose ends.

Ironically, the novel is saved from being a complete disaster by the very characters on which Russo doesn't spend too much time. There are many small moments that lift the novel from the mire of forced sentimentality it is mired in. For example, the mention of Dallas's younger brother, Dan, who passed away from cancer at the age of 30, leaving behind a one-year-old daughter. When he learned of his terminal illness, he took out a large loan and bought presents for nearly 20 years for his daughter. This simple incident could have been developed into an excellent short story.

Another such moment is at the end when Dallas meets his brother's wife, Lorraine, at the hospital. What happens then is one of the most goosebump-raising moments I have read in recent years. It's an ambiguous moment that affects us in a way that the other forced moments in the novel do not.

I have mentioned Dallas several times because he is the character with whom we empathize the most. He is a flawed character, a cad, a compulsive drinker and gambler, but he also tries to do the right thing, even if he often fails. He is like a child in many ways, looking at the world with wide eyes, not understanding how things happen and that he has a role to play in them. But despite all his flaws, he comes across as the most authentically crafted character in the entire novel.

Russo doesn't try to impose him on the reader, and as a result, he is the one we can relate to the most. The things that Russo leaves in the shadows are ultimately what capture our attention. His friendship with Benny is a good example. They have been friends since youth, and Benny now owns an automobile workshop where Dallas works. It's difficult to say what exactly works between them. They had a terrible fight when they were young but never bring it up now. Benny puts up with Dallas's carousing and not coming to work, perhaps because Dallas is a skilled worker and Benny also enjoys joining him in raising hell in the bars and gambling dens. But is that the only reason? The refreshing thing is that there is no grand declaration of undying friendship or anything like that. It's just two guys who are very comfortable with each other, enjoying each other's company and friendship.

Personally, I would love to know more about Dallas and his life. And as in his other works, Russo perfectly captures the rhythms of small town life, the bar where people gather to gossip as much as to eat, the aspirations of the characters, and their stoic acceptance of their lot in life.

While these elements salvage the novel to a great extent, ultimately it remains only a fair read. It suffers from the author's over-enthusiasm in trying to impress the reader, perhaps due to the fact that it was his first novel. Whatever the reason, it is definitely not on par with his later works. Read it if you have read his other works and want to complete his oeuvre. Otherwise, it can wait, and you can read his other novels or short stories instead.

Russo's debut is truly remarkable. His engaging style, which was already firmly in place, sets him apart from many other writers. He has a unique ability to handle small town life with great authenticity and detail. It's as if he has a deep understanding of the people, the relationships, and the idiosyncrasies that make up a small community. His writing brings the small town to life, making the reader feel as if they are right there, experiencing it all firsthand.

As one of my favorite authors, Russo never fails to disappoint. His debut is just the beginning of what I'm sure will be a long and successful career. I can't wait to see what he comes up with next. Whether it's another story set in a small town or something completely different, I know it will be worth reading.