Empire Falls

So I just watched the HBO miniseries adaption of Richard Russo's empire falls and found it to be freaking great. I think it helped sate a new hunger I have for quality storytelling. I made the mistake of starting to watch the new TV Series American Gothic, which is a little fun but a lot of awful.

In American Gothic, the characters are very poorly developed. The cartoonist looks like a cartoonist. The junky looks like a junky. The guy who ran off to live in the Maine woods looks just like someone who would do that. The main characters of Empire Falls are complex and evoke our curiosity and empathy. These Mainers are a breath of fresh air to me.

The story of Empire Falls is hence driven by these masterfully crafted characters. But the declined Maine mill town of Empire Falls is a finely crafted layer in the story too. The town's textile mill was the community's source of prosperity before it closed and residents continue to mourn its loss and fantasize about it reopening a generation later.

The American rust belt is not limited to the Midwest. To be sure, Boston, New York City, and some smaller pockets of the Northeast are very prosperous. But the region is also peppered with post-industrial cities that continue to struggle. Examples include Lawrence, Fitchburg, and Lowell, Massachusetts; Biddeford and Skowhegan, Maine; and Rochester, and Buffalo, New York. Buffalo, in fact, is in about as bad shape as Detroit.

I'd be interested in other stories with a backdrop of deindustrialization. It is an big part of the story of late Twentieth Century America and it needs to be told. It is certainly part of Maine's story.