Russell Banks retells a particular book signing that caused some memories to resurface in his essay “A Novelist’s Vivid Memory Spins Fiction of Its Own”. He first focuses on his initial memories of what caused him to leave Boston to go to Florida and become a writer, and then he recalls what really happened. Banks was at a book signing in his hometown of Boston, across the street from the bookstore where he once worked. He reminisces briefly about his life in the city. He had been a dropout, and it is implied that he lived in some level of poverty. In his own words, “I was literary, but not very literate, a late-arriving beatnik with a taste mainly for getting wasted” (Banks 8). He lost his job at the bookstore after having a nervous
