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 refused to abate: “‘You wouldn't stop coughing, you couldn't, and your eyes...