SOURCE: Banks, Russell, Robert Faggen, and Barry Munger. “Russell Banks: The Art of Fiction CLII.” Paris Review 40, no. 147 (summer 1998): 50-88.

In the following interview, Banks discusses his writing career, the literary influences behind his body of work, his creative process, and his approach to the legend of John Brown in Cloudsplitter.

Russell Banks was born on March 28, 1940, in Newton, Massachusetts, and raised in the small town of Barnstead, New Hampshire, the son of Earl and Florence Banks. His father, a plumber, deserted the family when Banks was twelve. Banks helped provide for his mother and three siblings. An excellent student, winning a full scholarship to Colgate University, he dropped out in his first year with the intention of joining Fidel Castro's insurgent army in Cuba, but wound up working in a department store in Lakeland, Florida. He lived briefly in Boston, where he began to write short fiction...