Novel discussion aims to promote civic engagement

Lenox officials are hoping that an open discussion of an award-winning novel about a small mill town in Maine will encourage people to become more engaged in the issues facing their own community.

“Empire Falls,” a novel by Richard Russo that won a Pulitzer Prize in 2002, describes a town markedly different from Lenox. The fictional town’s main employer, a shirt factory, has fallen victim to global competition, and the town is teetering near bankruptcy. Lenox, by contrast, is home to Tanglewood and other cultural attractions that draw large numbers of visitors and summer residents.

Sharon Hawkes, the town’s library director, said that “Empire Falls” was chosen partly because the circumstances in the fictional town are “removed enough [from Lenox’s] so that people could think about it independently, but also to reflect on the parallels.”

She noted, for example, that Lenox relies on local-option taxes on lodging and meals, a stream of revenue dependent on the ability to attract visitors in good times as well as bad.

Book-discussion sessions are scheduled for March 14 and April 4, and the library also will be showing a two-part HBO adaptation of the novel. Discussion sessions featuring local officials are being planned for early April.

“What I’m hoping is that this will lead to a little bit of conversation about how to get involved [in municipal affairs] and how to do it effectively,” Hawkes said.

While “Empire Falls” is often comic, the book includes a shooting at the town’s high school. Hawkes said that Russo did a good job of foreshadowing the student’s violent tendencies, by showing how he was bullied by his peers and neglected by his parents.

“I don’t want [the shooting scene] to overshadow some of the other things we’ll be talking about,” Hawkes said. “However, I don’t want it to just slide by, either.”