Quotes and photos from the event 

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“Richard Russo drove more than four hours from Maine to get to campus in time to speak with 50 UAlbany students, including aspiring authors, at an afternoon craft talk. He connected wonderfully with the students and was encouraging and generous in answering their questions.

At the evening event, after an hour on stage in conversation with Casey Seiler, he gave his full attention and had a friendly chat with every person who stood in a long book signing line, some bearing armfuls of Russo titles. He did not rush anyone. He listened to their stories. He spent more than one hour signing books until every single person got their Russo time. And then he waited to talk with and thank members of the band Doctor Baker who played outside afterward.

He is a great American novelist, and an even greater human being.” -- Paul Grondahl  

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“It was great to be back at the New York State Writers Institute last night to hear Richard Russo read to a full auditorium from his new novel, Somebody's Fool and be interviewed by TU Editor Casey Seiler. The conversation mused on fate and free will, Paul Newman, and the existential despair Russo observes in his hometown of Gloversville.” – Tim Cahill

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“I was awed last night to be standing so close to Richard Russo and William Kennedy. Thank you for bringing greatness to the 518!” – Kathy McCarthy

 

“Author Richard Russo spoke at UAlbany last night about how actors playing characters from his novel Nobody’s Fool altered those characters, his inventions, in his own mind. Jessica Tandy didn’t look a bit like the Miss Beryl he described; Paul Newman adlibbed lines the author never wrote; Phillip Seymour Hoffman utterly embodied Officer Raymer. In writing two sequels, Everybody’s Fool and now Somebody’s Fool, Russo said he used Newman’s lines as if Sully had uttered them in the first book and envisioned Hoffman in his head. Sad that Tandy, Newman, and Hoffman are no longer around to play the parts in new movies, but this was testimony to the power of acting to bring words to life — even for their author.”  – Rosemary Armao

 

Near the end of the evening, Casey Seiler noted Newman starred in more movies based on Russo’s writings -- “Nobody's Fool” (1994) “Twilight” (1998) and Empire Falls (2005) -- than any other author. Russo recounted a story that touched on his relationship with the late Paul Newman.

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Here is an excerpt from Russo’s essay published in the New York Times telling the story:

 

“… Since we’re talking about coming clean, I’ll end with a personal anecdote. At some point — in the run-up to filming “Twilight,” I think — Paul invited [director] Robert Benton and me to lunch at his New York apartment overlooking Central Park. He claimed he ate pretty much the same thing every day — roast chicken, a green salad and his favorite crusty bread, which he had flown in from California. The meal struck me as an odd mix of modesty and privilege (in all of New York there was no bakery that met his standard for crusty bread?).

As we ate, the conversation turned to what we liked to cook, and when Paul expressed interest in my lobster sauce, I told him I’d be happy to send him the recipe, to which he replied — wistfully, I thought — that he would prefer an invitation to dinner. I think I understood even at the time that he was serious. I don’t mean to suggest that he would’ve taken me up on the invitation if I had extended it. His life was far too complicated and busy to indulge many such invitations. Rather, it seemed like a good idea at the time, like something he would’ve enjoyed doing if things were different, if, well, he wasn’t Paul Newman.

 

The point is, I never extended the invitation. Why not? I think it’s because just as Paul, even at the height of his fame, considered himself a kid from Shaker Heights [Ohio], I was still a kid from a Rust Belt mill town in upstate New York, where people didn’t invite movie stars to dinner. Where Paul and I met — and where we became friends — was in the make-believe world of books and movies, where men like Sully and Frank Galvin and “Fast Eddie” Felson get second chances to do things right, a world where we teach ourselves who we are and — God help us — why.”

Excerpt from "Paul Newman’s Humanity and Star Power: When the actor appeared in the movie version of “Nobody’s Fool,” Richard Russo saw another side of him" New York Times, October 18, 2002.

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Photography by Patrick Dodson / University at Albany