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Robert Niemi (essay date 1997)

SOURCE: Niemi, Robert. “Success Story: The Life and Career of Russell Banks.” In Russell Banks, pp. 1-28. New York, N.Y.: Twayne Publishers, 1997.

[In the following essay, Niemi provides a biographical overview of Banks's life and traces his literary development from his early short stories and poetry through Rule of the Bone.]

There's no success like failure. And failure's no success at all.

—Bob Dylan

A ZIGZAG PATTERN

Russell Earl Banks was born on 28 March 1940 in Newton, Massachusetts, the first of four children to Florence (Taylor) Banks, a homemaker, and Earl Banks, a plumber (as was Banks's grandfather). By his own admission, Russell Banks “was not an attractive baby, unusually long and skinny, big-headed and bald” until he was 18 months old.¹ Banks also had crossed eyes, brought on, according to his mother, by whooping cough that...

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1. Introduction
2. Criticism
   1. Howard Frank Mosher (review date 8 September 1991)
   2. Jeff Danziger (review date 24 September 1991)
   3. Donna Rifkind (review date 17 April 1992)
   4. James Finn Cotter (review date 2 May 1992)
   5. Ross Leckie (essay date summer 1994)
   6. Richard Eder (review date 21 May 1995)
   7. Ann Hulbert (review date 29 May 1995)
   8. Penelope Mesic (review date 11 June 1995)
   9. Phil Baker (review date 30 June 1995)
   10. Brian Morton (review date 7 July 1995)
   11. Ed Peaco (review date fall 1995)
   12. Jerry Herron (essay date fall 1996)
   13. Robert Niemi (essay date 1997)
   14. Henry Mayer (review date 8 March 1998)
   15. Russell Banks and Christine Benvenuto (interview date March-April 1998)
   16. Alfred Kazin (review date 9 April 1998)
   17. Lawrence Hill (review date 13 April 1998)
   18. James M. McPherson (review date May 1998)
   19. Joyce Appleby (review date 22 May 1998)
   20. Russell Banks, Robert Faggen, and Barry Munger (interview date summer 1998)
   21. Millicent Bell (review date fall 1998)
   22. Paul Binding (review date 15 September 2000)
   23. Kathleen Snodgrass (review date spring 2001)
3. Further Reading
4. Copyright