Richard Russo: "Bridge of Sighs" | Oprah's Book Club

0:00Morning decisions. How about a creamy mocha frappuccino drink? Or sweet vanilla? Smooth caramel, maybe? Or white chocolate mocha? Whichever you choose, delicious coffee awaits. Find Starbucks frappuccino drinks wherever you buy your groceries. Hi, everybody!

0:23This is Richard Russo, everybody. esteemed Pulitzer Prize author. It's great. Once you win that Pulitzer Prize, it follows you everywhere. Isn't that great? First line of the obituary. All right. Are we ready to roll here? Hello, everybody. A warm welcome to you. Thank you for joining me for Oprah's Book Club presented by Starbucks. It is wonderful to be here in stunningly beautiful Seattle. Seattle, we love you. Starbucks hometown. This is where Starbucks was born, where the very first Starbucks opened in 1971. Your cozy neighborhood Starbucks cafe is the perfect place to sit down with a good book, good coffee, and good company for this month's book club pick.

1:11Starbucks is pairing it with a vanilla sweet cream cold brew. It's a slow steeped cold brew coffee accident with vanilla topped with a float of house-made vanilla sweet cream. And my 117th book club selection is Bridge of Sighs, Bridge of Sighs by Pulitzer Prize-winning author Richard Russo. Let's welcome Richard Russo.

1:43This novel is a layered coming-of-age story about the dreams, oh, the dreams both lost and realized, of three friends from small-town America. The story is full of surprises. Going to try today not to give away too many here. This audience has read the book, all 642 pages. Thank you, Mr. Russo. Tell us why you loved it. I'm Quentin. Okay, Quentin. I love this book because I love the relationship between Sarah and Kayla. And I particularly love how Sarah introduces Kayla to a whole new world, bringing her out of the projects and introducing her through art. I'm an artist myself. I teach underserved students here in the South King County area of Seattle.

2:34And so I'm able to relate to that story because that's something that I do in my everyday life. Hear, hear. I'll also just say that today is the anniversary of the death of Maya Angelou. It is. Who I took creative writing with in 2001 at Wake Forest. And so I also see the parallel where Maya Angelou has provided and given a new world to so many different people all around the world. Yeah. Well, thank you for mentioning that. It is her anniversary. Marcy. Hi, I'm Marcy. Thank you so much for having us here today. One of the things that really resonated with me was a scene with Mr. Berg's honors English class.

3:22I just love the way that he was able to get the students to think in a nonconformist way and how he influenced the trajectory of their lives from then until the end of the book. The part that resonated the most for me was when he said that you have the majority of your learning in ages two to three and everything after that is just looking for confirmation of things you already believe. Very insightful. Very insightful. Well, I've loved your work since Empire Falls. And even though Bridge of Sighs was published in 2007, I only recently discovered it for the first time. And I have to tell you, I was brought into the story, of course, by Lucy.

4:08But also, I grew up working in my father's store, which was the E &W Market in Nashville, with a barbershop connected to the store. and my father's store reminded me so much of Ike's. And so I'm curious as to how you came to this name. What does the title symbolize in the context of the story, The Bridge of Sighs? Well, I think a lot of the characters in this book are Lucy, certainly, but not only Lucy, are at a point in their lives where I wouldn't say they're exactly despairing, but they're stressed, certainly. And they're thinking about where their lives are at the moment. And I think that just how high the stakes are for almost all of the characters in this book led me in a way to the Bridge of Sighs because as some of you may know, of course, Venice is a city of bridges.

5:10Yeah. Pontes, as they call them. Yeah. But the story of the actual Bridge of Sighs is one in which the courts were held on one side of the river and the kind of the dungeons, the prison, was on the other side. And it's called the Bridge of Sighs because if you were convicted in the court, you would have to cross the Bridge of Sighs. And the legend has it that, of course, you would sigh crossing that bridge because once you'd crossed it into the prison, you weren't coming out. Yeah, it's pretty much over. You wouldn't necessarily be executed, but you would spend the rest of your life there. In the dungeon.

5:53In the dungeon. And that and the fact that Venice is one of my wife's and my favorite cities, and we visited there a lot. And so I was probably just looking for an excuse. To call it and use it? But do you think, obviously, you would know, but was it meant to reflect the emotional and, you know, psychological journeys of the characters in any way? Probably. Yes. Well, I wouldn't want you to think that authors know what they're doing when they write these books. Most of my books take me about anywhere from three to four and a half years to write. This was the four and a half year one. Uh-huh. And during that time, we're basically feeling our way along, trying to figure out what's going on with these characters.

6:48Which is always so fascinating to me. Doesn't that fascinate you? Because when I sit down to write something, I generally know what I'm going to write. Yeah. I know why I'm going to write it because, you know, I write my own speeches. It's never like I'm just waiting to find. Yeah. what the speech is going to tell me yeah it wants to do so what's what's your writing process the illusion that's the illusion that the writer if you spend if you spend four four and a half years on a book the last final illusion is to convince your readers that you knew what you were doing from the beginning yeah you can buy that if you want but i don't recommend it um because that's just not the way it works.

7:30So you've been called the patron saint of small-town fiction. I would agree with that. Do you think that this small town of Thomaston is a reflection of American life, or is it a reflection of the life that you grew up with? In Gloversville, yes. Yes to both of those. I love small towns, Oprah, because they offer something that I think is so important. If you live in a big city, chances are that you live in a neighborhood full of people like you. I remember when my daughter Emily moved to New York, and she was working with a literary agency at the time. But she was living in Brooklyn, and she could tell by looking at the other people on her subway car, she could tell where they were going to get off.

8:19Because most of those people looked like her. They were probably the same age. They had the same amount of education. And all of those things became identifiable as to where they were going to get off in Brooklyn. The thing that's wonderful about small towns, especially if you're interested in class, as I am, the interesting thing about small towns is that the richest and most powerful people in the town have to cross paths with the poorest and the most disenfranchised and the most in danger. They simply cannot escape each other. and so you have the Mrs. Whitings of the world from Empire Falls who are taking who are breathing the same air as as um like that poor boy John Voss who ends up shooting people yes um and that's why I think cities I mean an awful lot of fiction an awful lot of American fiction not just American fiction gets written about cities because that's where a lot of things happen but my god small towns are just gold mines if you really want to understand america yeah i choose a lot of books that are based in small towns because you really get to understand the essence of who people are yeah yeah and everybody knows everybody's business yeah and everybody's connected yeah well i think one of the reasons why this story is so relatable is because you write about um that struggle that so many people have in staying in their hometown or leaving their hometown.

9:48Anybody here grew up in a small town? Yeah. Okay. Okay. Here's a great line from page three about Lucy and Sarah's choice to stay. You say, some people upon learning how we've lived our lives are unable to conceal their chagrin on our behalf, that our lives should be so limited as if experience so geographically circumscribed could be neither rich nor satisfying. When I assure them that it's been both, their smiles suggest we've been blessed with self-deception by way of compensation for all we've missed. I think that's so interesting, and it brings us to your question. James? Yeah, I grew up in a small town of 3 ,000 people in Canada.

10:30The type of town that assumes your identity, even before you know that. I didn't come out until my 30s, yet I think people knew long before I did. It's the town that raised me. My mother still lives there. It's a part of me, but there's this theme of self-exposure that we have no control over, intentional concealment, this hiding in plain sight, and also this tension between origin and becoming. And so the question I have for you is, what does it take to leave the town that raised you? And when we come back, do we ever get to be the true version of the person we became? Good question. Whoa, James.

11:19Good.

11:24James.

11:30Well, I would begin by saying that that's what I did. I mean, I left my small mill town in upstate New York. At my mother's insistence, really, she had a plan for me, and we followed basically the diagram for her plan. And for a while, it kind of worked. We left upstate New York for Tucson, Arizona. and I found a new life there. I think that one of the things that surprised my mother who tried and fought so hard for us to, as she put it, escape this place, one of the things that surprised her the most was that I would find my way back there. I mean, I've never lived in Gloversville since leaving that place.

12:20I go back and I visit. I still have family there. There are still people that I love there. But I've never lived there. But I would also say, if this kind of answers your question, is that if you read my novels, I think it would be almost as fair to say that I never left. Yeah. So I live my imaginative life among people that I didn't know I loved until I was, I mean, all that time I spent in Arizona, I did a BA in English, an MA in English, a PhD in English, always with the idea that I would become a professor. and had no idea at all that I would ever want and need as desperately to live my life imaginatively in various versions of Gloversville, New York.

13:21Never occurred to me. So can you go back? Absolutely. You can go back. And be fully yourself. And having discovered what you didn't know before, which was who the hell you are, right? It's really this notion of being a traveler like some of the characters, taking a step off the path and making a life elsewhere. But as a traveler, we can always come home. And that's what happens to Noonan in this book. He becomes a traveler. He's the one who lives in Venice and thinks until pretty close to the end of the book that he knows who he is. and he carries his rage, his animosity into his paintings. But it's only when he changes that he's able to come back home as the person he was destined to be as opposed to the person he was trying to protect who was so full of rage, if that makes any sense.

14:24For me, this book raises the question, I don't know about you guys, you think about this, what's more important, ambition or contentment? And the question is, was Lucy content being in that community and never leaving? I love Lucy Lynch. And what I love about him, Oprah, is exactly what you're saying. He's an optimist, for one thing, and I try to be... He's an optimist with limited ambition. Yes. And it's true. That's absolutely true. And he has found contentment in his life. And it's, I have to say, something that I envy in him. Yeah. It's, I mean, he's married to this wonderful woman. Yeah. Sarah.

15:18He adored his father. um he's it seems to me that he's living the life that he was that he was destined to live and very different from very different from newman very very different from newman bobby is it admirable or naive or just a coping mechanism his optimism yes

15:43all these what did you think what do you think james was it admirable naive or just a coping mechanism? Well, I know people like Lucy who have not left. And there is an optimism. And I don't think it is naive. I think it is a choice. Our world doesn't have to extend beyond the borders of the town. This town I grew up in has a start and a finish. You know when you're in town and you know when you're out of town and you know everybody that's from there. And so I think for a lot of people, it is default. It's maybe naive. But I think for Lucy, it was a choice. And he was happy and satisfied with that choice.

16:22Even though the town of Thomaston is small and he has been content there, he has had a journey, too, because he goes from Berman court in one section of that town to another section of town that's slightly more affluent. And he ends up in the borough where what limited wealth there is in this town exists. So it's not like he hasn't taken a journey at all. He hasn't gone to Venice, but he's gone somewhere. And that world isn't as large as Noonan's world, but it's larger than you would think at first glance because it's so centered in Ike Lubens. And it speaks to the fact that you can still have meaning, lead a really powerful, meaningful life, powerful for you, meaningful life, living and remaining in a small town.

17:14On page 65, Lucy says, in America, my mother claimed that the very luckiest were insulated against failure, just as it was the unavoidable destiny of the luckless to remain thwarted. I still remember how much this upset me. There wasn't supposed to be any limit to the benefits of hard work and honesty. And her saying that there were limits imply that she didn't believe in America or worse, in us. I know your time is so valuable to you, dear listeners. So I thank you for joining my conversation with the much beloved and celebrated Pulitzer Prize winning author, Richard Russo. His sixth novel, Bridge of Sighs, is my 117th Oprah's Book Club selection.

17:57Coming up, our audience has questions that explore small town life, self-exploration, and finding meaning, themes which run deep throughout this compelling story. Maybe you left your hometown or maybe you chose to stay. Do you ever think about your life if you had made a different choice? We're going to answer that question. Stay with us. Tomorrow morning is knocking. Stock your fridge now. How about a creamy mocha frappuccino drink or a sweet vanilla? Smooth caramel maybe or a white chocolate mocha. Whichever you choose, delicious coffee awaits. Find Starbucks Frappuccino drinks wherever you buy your groceries.

18:34I welcome you back to Oprah's Book Club. We're in Seattle, the home of Starbucks, and I'm talking with legendary author Richard Russo about his sixth novel, Bridge of Sighs. It's a layered coming-of-age story about the dreams, both lost and realized, of three friends from small-town America. Let's get back to our conversation. Kiara in our audience has a question about what are the recurring metaphors in the novel. Kiara? Bridges are featured prominently throughout the story. First, with the narrow bridge that Lucy is afraid to cross. And then again with the famous bridge of sighs. And they come up throughout the novel many times.

19:17I'm curious, what do they represent in the novel? them. I guess most people find themselves crossing bridges. I think it's more a metaphor than anything else to get from one place to another. It may not be a physical bridge, but we pass through some kind of bridge. I think the most important bridge in some ways in this novel is the smallest of the bridges, not the bridge of size, but that first bridge that Lucy Lynch has to cross over and he's afraid to do unless his friend... You know when he's held in the trunk? Yeah, yeah. That is traumatic. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That impacted him in ways that he didn't even realize.

20:08And is still impacting him at the end of the book. At the end of the book, he doesn't even realize. Because as a result of that, I mean, the trunk that he is locked in, And you learn towards the end that Bobby Marconi himself is not free of blame in terms of what happened. That's right. Bobby Marconi was there. And he was there. And as a result of that, Lucy has lived with these spells his entire life. And he's also learned a piece of wisdom that he wishes in some ways that he hadn't learned. His belief is that some people have to pay to cross the bridge and other people don't. I'm not sure that the novel bears that out, Oprah, because I think the actual ending of the novel suggests, and certainly Robert Noonan seems to believe, that in the end we all pay to cross that bridge.

21:01But from Lucy's point of view, it sure doesn't seem fair that some people have to pay and other people don't have to pay. So who is Lucy? Is he a composite of other people you knew, or is he completely made up? Lucy is certainly more made up than Noonan is. Lucy and his father are based on people from my own childhood. I had a much-beloved, adored uncle who had a milk truck. He delivered milk throughout Gloversville, New York. And he would let... When milk was in bottles. Yeah, when milk was in bottles, right, right. Did you all realize milk used to be in bottles? You see people in the audience going, what?

21:48What? It used to deliver milk and bottles to your door, yes. And he would let me. Not in my neighborhood. We had our own cow. It was my job to take the cow out to the pasture every day. But anyway, go ahead. But he would allow my cousin and me to surf the truck. Wow. So that's a detail that did come from my own life. But on one side of the family, it did seem to me that there were these wonderful, generous, optimistic, and, yes, naive human beings, where on the other side of my family there was a kind of ingrained cynicism that was more likely to put people in motion. I think one of the things about Bobby Marconi becoming Robert Noonan is that that begins with motion.

22:49He has to go. He has to leave this place. Leave the town, yes. In order to discover who he is, he's not going to discover it there. As is the case for a lot of people having to leave small towns. Yeah. I mean, which made me think about, you know, I was born and raised for the earliest years of my life, a small town in Kosciuszko, Mississippi. Who would I have been? Do you all ever think about this? Who would you have been if you had stayed? Do you think about this, James? Who would you have been if you had stayed? I would be in Mississippi with a grocery store that everybody came by the grocery store.

23:23I would be the town place where everybody gathered and we wouldn't just sell vegetables and food and stuff, but it would be the gathering place and I would be doing exactly what I'm doing now. I would be, honey, say, honey, come on over here. Let me talk to you. Yes, it's time for you to leave that man, I gotta say. You know, it would be the gathering place for people. That's what I think. Can I ask you a question? Sure, ask me. Would that have been a tragic thing? No, it wouldn't have been a tragic thing because I wouldn't have known that there was a whole other way of being. I would have found a way to manifest my personality and be who I am in an environment that would be conducive to that.

24:14But I would have risen in that environment. I do believe that. Yeah, that's a great answer because I don't think it would have been either. I mean, you are who you are, Oprah, and you have, my God, what you have done is just breathtaking and astonishing. But the other version of you, I suspect, would have been just as astonishing in its own way. I would have been the deaconess in the church. I would have had the whole thing, you know, all of that thing. Krista's here, and she said that she could relate to Bobby's complicated feelings about his father. Krista? Hi. there was a passage that spoke to me and it was when Bobby was reflecting on the different version of his father that he observed with Maxine as compared to at home with his mom I'd like to read it was there one thing he wanted an explanation for or everything without warning his father had stopped being a simple man did Noonan want an explanation for the kindness he'd shown this Maxine and her idiot kid or for the mean spirited bullying he'd offered his mother and his brothers and himself.

25:16The best guy Willie had called him. In what reality was his father even a decent guy? It was as if the first 17 years of Noonan's life had taken place under a full moon that suddenly had waned, allowing his wolf of a father to take on the shape of an ordinary man. How had he managed to miss that transformation? So this made me think of my dad. So my dad left my mom for another woman after 25 years of marriage. And the person he is today is very different from the person I grew up with. And so I wonder, you know, if the real crime was the environment he created in my home, his, you know, short temper or lack of affection, or was it that he married the wrong person?

26:02And I think that the book asks the question, can you change or are you always the same person at your core? But when you do change, which version of you is your true self and how much of who we are is determined by the people in our lives. Thank you. Thank you. Y 'all, I'm going to deeply sigh over the bridge for all of y 'all. Wow. Deep questions here, Bridge of Sighs. And I think in order, I don't know if that was exactly a question, but to comment on I would go to Noonan because I think that Noonan, when he becomes a painter, that's the first stage of something new for him. He becomes, by going to Venice and learning to paint, he's made an enormous change in his life.

27:00it's probably not as enormous however is the last change in his life which takes place just before he comes back to america for his last as it turns out final show and something very surprising happens to him there because he's he's painting that what people think of as a self-portrait he's painting his father his rage against his father that he is protected as if it is as if he might run out of it at some point. He's protected that rage. And throughout his paintings, not only that painting of his father, but other paintings, Hugh, his agent, refers to those paintings as being all worm. Because Noonan thinks of himself as somebody who's, if there's an apple there and there's a worm at the center of the apple, he's always after the worm.

27:51And as his paintings have gotten darker and darker. Hugh says that they're all worm. There's nothing else. But at the end, the astonishing thing happens that he decides to paint Sarah, this woman that he was in love with all those years ago. And he sets up the easel right next to the easel, the all worm version of his father. And when he begins to paint Sarah, it's as if the light from that painting of Sarah is now shedding on his father and it changes his father's portrait. It's not all worm anymore. I think that's the big change in Noonan is that But his love for Sarah, even remembered all those years ago, proves stronger than his hatred of his father.

28:57So when you say, which is the real person? I'll just throw the question back at you. But I think the real Robert Noonan is the one we see just before he dies. and to add to that because we all went whoo when you said like did your father marry the wrong person you marry the person that is going to most help you evolve into the person that you need to be and perhaps being with your mother even if it was you know they were not compatible or he was not happy there. It helped him move on to a better version of himself. Just like many times you're in a relationship with somebody who makes you better because their behavior is so the antithesis of what you really want.

29:49And so you recognize this is not what I want. And so he moved out of that relationship and evolved into somebody that you don't recognize because he was a different person with her. And also people can, people can get really sick of themselves. You know, you can, if you, if you, if you live the kind of life your father had lived with your mother and was, was, was, was unhappy about that. Another, that's another way of saying that he was really sick of the person that he was. And when he had a chance to do something different, he did. And I would only say to add on to that, one of the things that to my mind has always been the thing that I love most about fiction writing is that it has saved me from, I mean, I still get sick of myself, believe me.

30:42But fiction writing, losing yourself in stories of people like Lucy Lynch and Bobby Marconi and Sarah, the four and a half years that it took to write that book, losing myself in their lives was wonderful because it was a way to keep myself from being sick of myself. You know, that's the beauty of art. It allows you to not fall into that place of being trapped in yourself all the time. Just a quick moment to say I'm so grateful you've joined us for this episode of Oprah's Book Club. When we come back, more of my conversation with Bridge of Sighs author Richard Russo, my 117th Oprah's Book Club selection.