Image Credit: Larry D. Morre/Wikimedia Commons
The acclaimed novelist Russell Banks has died of cancer on the age of 82. Banks was twice a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, known for drawing on his working-class background to put in writing about criminals, outcasts and revolutionaries. His books “Rule of the Bone,” “The Sweet Hereafter” and “Affliction” were adapted into feature movies, and his 1998 historical novel “Cloudsplitter” focuses on the revolutionary abolitionist John Brown. Russell Banks spoke to Democracy Now! in 2011 about John Brown’s life and legacy.
Russell Banks: “Brown kind of stood at that crossroads of faith and violence within the American imagination, and righteous wrath, if you happen to will, or principled violence. And he was our homegrown terrorist, but he was a terrorist for a cause that actually today we’re universally in support of, which is the ending of slavery. And so, his story remains to be a really complicated one for many Americans.”
Click here to see our full interview with Russell Banks in 2011.
