Everybody's Fool

by Richard Russo

Overview

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • The Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Empire Falls returns to North Bath, the Rust Belt town first brought to unforgettable life in Nobody’s Fool. • "Irresistible.... Very funny.... A joy." —The New York Times

Now, ten years later, Doug Raymer has become the chief of police and is tormented by the improbable death of his wife—not to mention his suspicion that he was a failure of a husband. Meanwhile, the irrepressible Sully has come into a small fortune, but is suddenly faced with a VA cardiologist’s estimate that he only has a year or two left to live.

As Sully frantically works to keep the bad news from the important people in his life, we are reunited with his son and grandson . . . with Ruth, the married woman with whom he carried on for years . . . and with the hapless Rub Squeers, who worries that he and Sully aren’t still best friends. Filled with humor, heart, and hard-luck characters you can’t help but love, Everybody’s Fool is a crowning achievement from one of the great storytellers of our time.

Look for Nobody's Fool, available now, and Somebody’s Fool, coming soon.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780307454829
Publisher:	Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Publication date:	01/24/2017
Series:	North Bath Trilogy , #2
Pages:	544
Sales rank:	52,521
Product dimensions:	5.10(w) x 7.30(h) x 1.20(d)

About the Author

RICHARD RUSSO is the author of seven previous novels; two collections of stories; and Elsewhere, a memoir. In 2002 he received the Pulitzer Prize for Empire Falls, which like Nobody’s Fool was adapted to film, in a multiple-award-winning HBO miniseries.

Hometown:

Gloversville, New York

Date of Birth:

July 15, 1949

Place of Birth:

Johnstown, New York

Education:

B.A., University of Arizona, 1967; Ph.D., University of Arizona, 1979; M.F.A., University of Arizona, 1980

Read an Excerpt

Triangle

Hilldale cemetery in North Bath was cleaved right down the middle, its Hill and Dale sections divided by a two-­lane macadam road, originally a colonial cart path. Death was not a thing unknown to the town’s first hearty residents, but they seemed to have badly misjudged how much of it there’d be, how much ground would be needed to accommodate those lost to harsh winters, violent encounters with savages and all manner of illness. Or was it life, their own fecundity, they’d miscalculated? Ironically, it amounted to the same thing. The plot of land set aside on the outskirts of town became crowded, then overcrowded, then chock-­full, until finally the dead broke containment, spilling across the now-­paved road onto the barren flats and reaching as far as the new highway spur that led to the interstate. Where they’d head next was anybody’s guess.

Though blighted by Dutch elm disease in the ’70s and more recently by a mold that attacked tree roots, causing them to weaken and constrict and allowing the ground, without warning, to collapse in pits, the original Hill section was still lovely, its mature plantings offering visitors shade and cool breezes. The gentle, rolling terrain and meandering gravel pathways felt natural and comfortable, even giving the impression that those resting beneath its picturesque hummocks—some interred before the Revolutionary War—had come there by choice rather than necessity. They seemed not so much deceased as peacefully drowsing beneath tilting headstones that resembled weathered comfy hats worn at rakish angles. Given the choice of waking into a world even more full of travail than the version they left, who could blame them for punching the snooze button and returning to their slumbers for another quarter century or so?

By contrast, the newer Dale was as flat as a Formica tabletop and every bit as aesthetically pleasing. Its paved pathways were laid out on a grid, the more contemporary grave sites baked and raw looking, its lawn, especially the stretch nearest the highway, a quilt of sickly yellows and fecal browns. The adjacent acreage, where the Ultimate Escape Fun Park had once been pictured, was boggy and foul. Lately, during periods of prolonged rain, its pestilential groundwater tunneled under the road, loosening the soil and tugging downhill the caskets of those most recently interred. After a good nor’easter there was no guarantee that the grave site you visited featured the same casket as the week before. To many the whole thing defied logic. With all that seeping water, the Dale should have been richly verdant, whereas everything planted there shriveled and died, as if in sympathy with its permanent, if shifty, inhabitants. There had to be contamination involved, people said. All those putrid acres had been used as an unofficial dump for as long as anybody could remember, which was why they’d been purchased so cheaply by the fun park’s planners. Recently, during a prolonged drought, dozens of leaking metal drums decorated with skulls and crossbones had surfaced. Some were old and rusty, leaking God-­only-­knew-what; other newcomers were labeled “chrome,” which cast a pall of suspicion on neighboring Mohawk, a town once rich in tanneries, but these accusations were emphatically and for the most part convincingly denied. Anybody wanting to know what those tanneries did with their dyes and carcinogenic chemicals only had to visit the local landfill, the stream that ran through town or the hospital’s oncology ward. Still, didn’t the drums of toxic slurry have to come from somewhere? Downstate most likely. On this point the history of New York was unambiguous. Shit—both liquid and solid, literal and metaphorical—ran uphill in defiance of physics, often into the Catskills, at times all the way to the Adirondacks.

No jaunty, charming grave markers in Dale. Here the stones were laid purposefully flat so they couldn’t be tipped over by teenage hooligans. Bath’s legendary eighth-­grade English teacher, Beryl Peoples, whose dim view of human nature she occasionally shared in acerbic letters to the North Bath Weekly Journal, had warned what would happen. With all the stones lying flat, she cautioned, and without any trees or hedgerows to provide an obstacle, visitors would treat the cemetery like a supermarket parking lot and drive directly to whatever grave they had in mind. This warning had been dismissed as perverse and outrageous, a slander on the citizenry, but the old woman had been vindicated. Not a week went by without someone calling the police station to report tire tracks across Grandma’s headstone, right where her survivors imagined her upturned, beatific face to be. “How’d you like it if somebody drove a pickup over your skull?” the angry caller would want to know.

Chief of Police Douglas Raymer, arriving at Hilldale late to witness the interment of Judge Barton Flatt, was always at a loss how to respond to such queries, which seemed to him so fundamentally flawed that you couldn’t even tell if they were real questions. Were people inviting him to draw the obvious distinction between driving an automobile over an ancestor’s grave—an insensitive, inconsiderate act, sure—and driving it over a living person’s head, obviously a homicidal and criminal one? How was it helpful for him to imagine what either felt like? It was as if people expected him to make sense of both the physical world and its miscreants, the latter too numerous to count, too various to explicate, the former too deeply mysterious to fathom. When had either become part of the police chief’s job description? Wasn’t explaining the world’s riddles and humans’ behaviors what philosophers and psychiatrists and priests were paid to do? Most of the time Raymer had no idea why he himself did what he did, never mind other people.

Whatever his job was, most days—and today was certainly no exception—it sucked. As a patrolman he’d imagined that, as chief, his hours would be filled with genuine police work, or at least real public service, but after two terms he now knew better. Of course in North Bath most crimes didn’t demand much detective work. A woman would turn up at the hospital looking like somebody’d beaten the shit out of her, claiming she tripped over her child’s toy. When you visited her husband and offered to shake, the hand he reluctantly extended looked more like a monstrous fruit, purple and swollen, the skin splitting and oozing interior juices. But even such dispiritingly mundane investigations were fascinating compared with Raymer’s current duties as chief of police. When he wasn’t attending the funerals of people he didn’t even like or addressing groups of “concerned citizens” who seemed less interested in any solutions he might propose than how much churlish invective he could be forced to swallow, he was a glorified clerk, a mere functionary who spent his time filling out forms, reporting to selectmen, going over budgets. Some days he never got out from behind his desk. He was getting fat. Also, the pay really sucked. Okay, sure, he made more than he had as a patrolman, but not enough more to cover the endless aggravation. He supposed he could live with the fact that the job sucked if he was any good at it, but the truth was that he sucked. He had no idea what he’d have done without Charice—speaking of aggravation—and her incessant badgering. Because she was right, he was increasingly forgetful and unfocused and preoccupied. Since Becka . . .

But no, he wasn’t going to think about her. He would not. He would concentrate on the here and now.

Which was hot as Uganda. By the time Raymer crossed the cemetery parking lot and walked the hundred or so yards to where a couple dozen mourners were clustered around Judge Flatt’s open grave, he was drenched in sweat. Such punishing heat was unheard of in May. Here in the foothills of the Adirondacks, Memorial Day weekend, the unofficial beginning of summer, was almost always profoundly disappointing to the region’s winter-­ravaged populace, who seemed to believe they could will summer into being. They would have their backyard barbecues even when temperatures dipped into the high forties and they had to dig out their parkas. They would play softball, even after a week’s worth of frigid rains made a soupy mess of the diamond. If a pale, weak sun came out they would go out to the reservoir to water-­ski. But this year the town’s fervent prayers had been answered, as they so often were, at least in Raymer’s experience, with ironic vengeance. Midnineties for the past three days, no end in sight.

Raymer would’ve been more than content to suffer on the periphery of today’s proceedings, but he mistakenly made eye contact with the mayor, who, before he could look away, motioned for him to join the other dignitaries, which he reluctantly did. Yesterday, he’d tried his best to weasel out of this funeral, even going so far as to volunteer Charice, who was growing increasingly desperate to get away from the station house, to attend in his place. He’d explained to Gus that he not only had no particular affection for Barton Flatt but also counted him among the many banes of his existence. But the mayor was having none of it. The judge had been an important man, and Gus expected Raymer not just to attend but to be decked out in his dress blues, heat or no heat.

So here he was under the punishing, unseasonable sun, honoring a man who’d disdained him for the better part of two decades. Not that Raymer was alone in this. Disdain was His Honor’s default mode, and he made no secret that he considered all human beings venal (a term Raymer had to look up) and feckless (another). If he disliked criminals, he was even less fond of lawyers and policemen, who in his opinion were supposed to know better. The very first time Raymer had been summoned to the judge’s chambers, after accidentally discharging his weapon, the judge had fixed him with his trademark baleful stare for what had felt like an eternity before turning his attention to Ollie North, the chief back then. “You know my thoughts on arming morons,” he told Ollie. “You arm one, you have to arm them all. Otherwise it’s not even good sport.” Over the years Raymer had had numerous opportunities to improve the man’s low estimation of him but had managed only to worsen it.

But of course there was another reason Raymer had tried to weasel out of this. He hadn’t been back to Hilldale since Becka’s funeral, and he wasn’t at all sure how he’d react to her proximity. He was pretty sure she was out of his system, but what if the shock and pain of her loss came flooding back and he broke down and started sobbing over the memory of a woman who’d made a complete fool of him? What if legitimate mourners witnessed his blubbering? Wouldn’t his unmanly sorrow make a mockery of their more heartfelt grief?

“You’re late,” Gus said out of the corner of his mouth, when Raymer joined him.

Excerpted from Everybody’s Fool by Richard Russo Copyright © 2016 by Richard Russo. Excerpted by permission of Knopf. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.

Reading Group Guide

The introduction, author biography, discussion questions, and suggested reading that follow are designed to enhance your group’s discussion of Everybody’s Fool, the long-awaited sequel to Richard Russo’s hit novel Nobody’s Fool.

1. Evaluate the title of the book. Who do you believe the title is referencing? Is the foolishness of the title character—or characters—something determined by public opinion or something revealed via a process of self-reflection? Explain. What causes the character(s) to act foolishly or otherwise be perceived as foolish?

2. Analyze the setting of the book. How does the author characterize North Bath? How does North Bath compare with its neighboring town Schuyler Springs? What factors have contributed to the condition of North Bath? How does the economic and aesthetic state of the town affect its residents?

3. Everybody’s Fool opens with a description of the local cemetery. How might the cemetery and its present condition function as symbolism? What might the uprooted tree and coffins represent? Why do you think that Russo chose to begin the story with this imagery of the divided and overflowing cemetery?

4. Evaluate the themes of fortune and luck. How much are the characters’ lives shaped by luck? Do they have any control over their fate? If so, where is this evident? Why does Gus think that the townspeople of North Bath are determined to believe in the idea of luck and fortune? Do you agree with him? Why or why not?

5. At the start of the book, Raymer notes that he has always been “vulnerable to the judgments of others” (18), so much so that he actually becomes whatever people call him. Is he ever able to overcome this problem? What other characters in the novel are influenced by the judgments of others? Are the judgments a primarily positive or negative influence?

6. In the chapter entitled “Slinky,” Raymer indicates that he prefers order, but says that generally “humans preferred to meander” (75). What does he mean by this? Does the novel ultimately seem to support or refute his claim? Explain.

7. Is there an identifiable protagonist or antagonist in the book or a sense of “good” and “bad” characters, or do the characters offer a more complicated and nuanced view of humanity and human nature? Does any single point of view overshadow the rest? Which of the characters do you feel most sympathetic toward and why? Who do you find the most disagreeable and how does the author elicit this response? Does your perception of any one of the characters change substantially over the course of the novel? If so, which character and how?

8. Consider the various relationships depicted in the book. Do the characters in North Bath share a strong bond with one another? If so, what unites them? Alternatively, why do you think that so many of the characters are entangled in or just out of broken relationships, and how have they been affected by these relationships? What seems to prevent the characters from having healthier and stronger relationships?

9. Why do you believe that the author incorporates elements of comedy and the absurd in the novel? How did these elements influence and shape your interpretation of the novel and your response to its characters? For instance, does the use of comedy make you feel more or less sympathetic to the characters and their plight? Explain.

10. Many of the characters in the book are aging and are faced with their morality. How does this affect their actions and the way they choose to live? What questions arise as a result of their awareness of their limited time? What answers to these questions do they arrive at? Do these aging characters seem to become wiser with age?

11. How does Russo portray the aging process? Do the older characters age gracefully and with dignity? Do they seem to have control over this process and how they handle it? Discuss.

12. How do the characters use fantasy to escape their present condition? What examples of this are found in the novel? Does this kind of escapism prove to be an effective or destructive means of coping?

13. Why did Gus wish to be mayor of North Bath? What did he hope to accomplish in this position? What obstacles does he face as he attempts to accomplish this? Is he ultimately successful? Why or why not?

14. Evaluate the theme of complicity. Which of the characters believe they have been complicit and why do they believe this? Do you agree? Explain. Where else in the novel do we see complicity at work? What do you think causes the characters to be complicit and what are the consequences?

15. In the chapter entitled “Grave Doings,” Carl asks what men are even good for. Sully admits that this is a question he has avoided asking himself his entire life. Does the novel ever answer this question? Why might the characters be so determined to avoid it?

16. Explore the theme of legacy. How do characters who are deceased or who are referenced indirectly in the story influence the main characters of the book? Consider, for example, Miss Beryl, Rub’s parents, Becka, or Judge Flatt. How do they continue to have an impact on the lives of others and affect the community even in their absence? What might this indicate about the power of an individual, the weight of one’s actions, and the value of a single human life?

17. Evaluate the treatment of prejudice and race in the book. Why is Miller hesitant to ask out Charice? Why does Raymer feel like a fool when Charice tells him what she plans to make him for dinner? How do the people of Bath treat Jerome? Are the residents of North Bath primarily an accepting people?

18. Consider the treatment of women. What do the female characters seem to share in common? How are they treated by the men in the novel? How do the women view themselves? What do their stories, when considered collectively, reveal about sexuality and womanhood?

19. Russo named one of the chapters “Secrets”. What secrets do the characters in the novel keep? Do any of the characters ultimately choose to reveal their secrets? If so, what motivates them and what happens when they do? What might this indicate about truth telling or about shared experience?

20. Is there any evidence of a system of justice in the world the characters inhabit? Explain. If you believe that there is, does the book seem to suggest that justice is something dealt by an outside force such as karma, God, or fate, or is it something that must be dealt by humankind? What injustices are presented in the novel? Do you believe that they could have been prevented or otherwise addressed? If so, how?

21. Why didn’t Miss Beryl want Sully to enlist in the army? What does she think young people are always being asked to risk? Do you agree with her? Can readers tell how the veterans in the story have been affected or changed by their service?

22. Evaluate the theme of forgiveness. What examples of forgiveness, if any, are evident in the book? What causes the characters to reach a place of forgiveness—or to be unable to forgive? What does Miss Beryl think is the real reason that people forgive others? What does the book suggest about self-forgiveness?

23. Compare Everybody’s Fool with Russo’s 1993 novel Nobody’s Fool. What themes does Russo revisit in Everybody’s Fool? Who are some of the recurring characters and how have they changed or remained the same between books? What do you think the books offer collectively that they do not or cannot offer when considered singularly?

Editorial Reviews

New York Times Notable Book of the Year

“A delightful return to form.... Irresistible.... Very funny.... A joy.” —The New York Times

“Profound and wise.... [Russo is] a writer of great comedy and warmth.” —USA Today

“Elegiac but never sentimental.... Russo’s compassionate heart is open to the sorrows, and yes, the foolishness of this lonely world, but also the humor, friendship and love that abide.” —San Francisco Chronicle

“For fans who’ve missed Sully and the gang, Everybody’s Fool is like hopping on the last empty barstool surrounded by old friends.” —Entertainment Weekly

“A delight.” —The Washington Post

From the Publisher

4/22/2016
If this book's title looks a little familiar to you, it's probably because it's the sequel to the 1993 smash hit Nobody's Fool. The residents of the blink-and-you-miss-it town of North Bath, New York are back at it again with their haphazard antics. Unlike the first novel, Everybody's Fool features well-meaning malcontent Sully Sullivan as a side character instead of the main event. This time around, it's earnest Chief of Police Doug Raymer who's the star of the show. Read More

B&N Reads

…delightful…North Bath, N.Y., a fictitious upstate town [is]…a town where dishonesty abounds, everyone misapprehends everyone else and half the citizens are half-crazy. It's a great place for a reader to visit, and it seems to be Mr. Russo's spiritual home…Both Bath and Everybody's Fool are funny—very funny…Mr. Russo's people…sideswipe, wisecrack, sneak, scheme and talk to figments of their imaginations. It's a joy to spend time with any of them, two-legged or four.

The New York Times - Janet Maslin

…in both [Nobody's Fool and Everybody's Fool], the humor is…genial, and it works in service of the characters. Sully in particular emerges as one of the most credible and engaging heroes in recent American fiction…Taken together, at over 1,000 pages, the two Fool books represent an enormous achievement, creating a world as richly detailed as the one we step into each day of our lives. Bath is real, Sully is real, and so is Hattie's and the White Horse Tavern and Miss Peoples's house on Main, and I can only hope we haven't seen the last of them. I'd love to see what Sully's going to be up to at 80.

The New York Times Book Review - T. C. Boyle

03/07/2016
When Doug Raymer, chief of police of the forlornly depressed town of North Bath, Maine, falls into an open grave during a funeral service, it is only the first of many farcical and grisly incidents in Russo's shaggy dog story of revenge and redemption. Among the comical set pieces that propel the narrative are a poisonous snakebite, a falling brick wall, and a stigmatalike hand injury. North Bath, as readers of Nobody's Fool will remember, is the home of Sully Sullivan, the hero of the previous book and also a character here. Self-conscious, self-deprecating, and convinced he's everybody's fool, Raymer is obsessed with finding the man his late wife was about to run off with when she fell down the stairs and died. He's convinced that the garage door opener he found in her car will lead him to her lover's home. Meanwhile, he pursues an old feud with Sully; engages in repartee with his clever assistant and her twin brother; and tries to arrest a sociopath whose preferred means of communication are his fists. The remaining circle of ne'er-do-wells, ex-cons, daily drunks, deadbeats, and thieves behave badly enough to keep readers chuckling. The give-and-take of rude but funny dialogue is Russo's trademark, as is his empathy for down-and-outers on the verge of financial calamity. He takes a few false steps, such as giving Raymer a little voice in his head named Dougie, but clever plot twists end the novel on lighthearted note. 250,000-copy announced first printing. (May)

Publishers Weekly

★ 05/15/2016
A new novel from Pulitzer Prize winner Russo is always cause for celebration, even more so when it returns readers to North Bath, NY, where Sully Sullivan (Nobody's Fool) and his cronies still inhabit the same bar stools. Ten years on, Sully's circumstances have changed considerably. Landlady Miss Beryl died, willing her home to Sully, while he and his estranged son have forged a tentative peace. He's still harassing his old buddy Rub and has drummed up sympathy for the contractor Carl Roebuck, who's struggling with the aftereffects of prostate cancer. The action turns to police chief Doug Raymer, a painfully insecure man burning with anger and grief at the betrayal and sudden death of his wife, Becka. Does everybody in town believe Raymer is the biggest fool going? Only his worldly wise office assistant, Charice, can talk him down off the ledge. Loneliness and missed connections loom large in Russo's work, but he tempers tear-inducing sentiment with laugh-out-loud moments. VERDICT Known for his keen sense of place, the blue-collar mill towns of the Northeast, Russo avoids caricature with writing that reflects his deep affection for the quotidian and for the best and worst that's found in every human heart. [See Prepub Alert, 2/21/16.]—Sally Bissell, formerly with Lee Cty. Lib. Syst., Fort Myers, FL

Library Journal

★ 2016-02-17
A sequel to the great Nobody's Fool (1993) checks in on the residents of poor old North Bath, New York, 10 years later. In his breakout third novel, Russo (Elsewhere, 2012, etc.) introduced a beat-up cast of variously broke, overweight, senile, adulterous, dissolute, and philosophical citizens of a ruined resort town, living out their luckless lives between a bar known as the Horse and a diner called Hattie's Lunch. Cock of the walk was Sully, the gruff but softhearted practical joker/construction worker played by Paul Newman in the movie. Now past 70, Sully is back with a nest egg (his trifecta came in twice; his landlady left him her house), serious health problems, and a dog named Rub. Since his best friend is a mentally challenged dwarf also named Rub, this causes confusion. Wisely, Russo moves Sully off center stage and features one of his nemeses from the first book, a pathetic police officer named Douglas Raymer (Philip Seymour Hoffman in the film). Raymer is now the chief of police, and the novel follows him and other characters through an action-packed two-day period that includes a funeral, a building collapse, an escaped cobra, a grave robbery, multiple lightning strikes, assaults, and auto thefts, strung together with the page-turning revelations about the characters' private lives Russo does so well. Now it's the 1990s, so the characters' weaknesses include hoarding, OCD, depression, sex addiction/impotence, and a mild case of multiple personality disorder. Chief Raymer is tormented by his beautiful wife's horrible death, by a sophisticated colleague from the yuppie town next door, and by the malaprop motto he accidentally had printed on his campaign cards: "We're Not Happy Until You're Not Happy." Who is this Douglas Raymer, his English teacher used to write on his papers, and it will take a whole lot of hell breaking loose for him to find the answer. For maximum pleasure, read Nobody's Fool first. Russo hits his trademark trifecta: satisfying, hilarious, and painlessly profound.

Kirkus Reviews