WILL REMAIN
— Kirkus Reviews
– Kirkus Profiles
-- Self-Publishing Review (SPR)
-- BookTrib
- Self-Publishing Review
- Indie Reader Review, 4.5 of 5 IR Rating
Video
Here’s a video introduction to the mill town of Furnass
All That Will Remain — The latest of Richard Snodgrass’ Books of Furnass Series. To learn more about All That Will Remain click here.
Critical Acclaim
For Richard Snodgrass’ Novels
ACROSS THE RIVER
The writing is beautiful. The complex characters, faced daily with choices between their deepest desires and their integrity, in the midst of war, make compelling reading. This book stands alone, while stoking the desire for rest of the books in the series.
— IndieReader
ACROSS THE RIVER
A vivid and intensely personal story couched within the chaos, madness and sacrifice of the Civil War.
— SPR
ACROSS THE RIVER
A beautiful historical novel that proves history is created and changed by individuals, not just events.
— IndieReader
ALL FALL DOWN
An immersive murder mystery wrapped in an emotionally astute look at the burden of a town’s moral history.
— Kirkus Reviews
ALL FALL DOWN
Snodgrass’ writing is unpretentious but poetically evocative, an ambitious attempt to combine a realistic portrayal of a gritty working-class town with literary style.
— Kirkus Reviews
SOME RISE
...An artistically daring examination of the line that separates love from fanatical possession.
— Kirkus Reviews
SOME RISE
Richard Snodgrass’ gift for characterization, plotting, and dialogue make Some Rise one of the most engaging family sagas/literary mysteries we’ve read in years.
— IndieReader Review, “IndieReader Approved”
THE BUILDING
...artistically unflinching and morally unsentimental.
— Kirkus Reviews
THE BUILDING
The pace is unhurried but inexorable, a relentless march toward a shocking conclusion.
— Kirkus Reviews
THERE'S SOMETHING IN THE BACK YARD
Observe this mysterious book and be changed.
— The Washington Post Book World
THERE'S SOMETHING IN THE BACK YARD
A haunting, seductive, original story.
— Publishers Weekly
Richard
Snodgrass
Author &
Photographer
Richard Snodgrass’s short stories and essays have appeared in the New England Review/Bread Loaf Quarterly, South Dakota Review, California Review, Pittsburgh Quarterly, and elsewhere. He is also a master photographer who has been artist-in-residence at LightWorks (University of Syracuse) and at the Helene Wurlitzer Foundation in Taos, New Mexico. He is the recipient of a fellowship from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts.
In 1989, Viking published Snodgrass’s novel There’s Something in the Back Yard to critical acclaim: “Observe this mysterious book and be changed,” wrote Jack Stephens in the Washington Post Book World. Snodgrass is also the author of An Uncommon Field: The Flight 93 Temporary Memorial, published in September of 2011 by Carnegie Mellon University Press, and Kitchen Things: An Album of Vintage Utensils and Farm Kitchen Recipes, published in 2013 by Skyhorse and named one of the year’s “best books to get you thinking about food” by the Associated Press.
Richard Snodgrass lives in Pittsburgh, PA with his wife Marty and two indomitable female tuxedo cats, raised from feral kittens, named Frankie and Becca.
Timeline photosEdward Hopper - Vermont Sugar House, 1938. Watercolor on paper, 14 x 20 in. (35.6 x 50.8 cm). @ Christie's Images, New York
Timeline photosEdward HOPPER![]()
Chop Suey![]()
1929 ![]()
"As in his masterwork ‘Nighthawks’ (1942, Art Institute of Chicago), Edward Hopper’s 1929 painting Chop Suey distills the atmosphere of an everyday eatery into a cinematic scene that at once suggests a specific story as well as alludes to broader themes of social isolation, gender roles and even the art historical tradition through which an artist can reflect such issues within his work. The most iconic painting by Hopper left in private hands, Chop Suey epitomizes the psychologically complex meditations for which the artist is best known, while uniquely capturing the zeitgeist of the city during one of its most fascinating eras of transition.![]()
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In his early years, Hopper studied painting at the New York School of Art under the guidance of the leading promoter of the Ashcan School, the artist Robert Henri. His classmates at the school included George Bellows, Rockwell Kent and Guy Pène du Bois. While transforming and modernizing his style over his lifetime, Hopper always embraced a central teaching of Henri: to paint the city and street life he knew best. Whether during his studies in Paris or his first years in New York as an illustrator, Hopper would sit in cafés and find inspiration through people-watching. Yet, while his contemporaries like Pène du Bois, Reginald Marsh or John Sloan tended to focus on the flamboyant and sordid sides of the flapper set, Hopper focused on the more nuanced stories of society and often those found at the restaurants of the era. For example, while Sloan’s Reganeschi’s Saturday Night (1912, Art Institute of Chicago) has been suggested as inspiration for Hopper’s New York Restaurant (circa 1922, Muskegon Museum of Art) and Chop Suey, the subject matter for both artists was more likely commonly derived, with their approaches markedly different. Robert Hobbs explains, “The two artists are both adhering to the tradition begun by the French Impressionists of picturing ordinary people in modern cities... but unlike Sloan he was not concerned with direct political reform. Hopper was much more involved with a new and distinct sensibility characteristic of his own era...He was concerned with general human values, and he used art as a way to frame the forces at work in the modern world” (R. Hobbs, Edward Hopper, New York, 1987, p. 48).![]()
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While having its roots in the French Impressionist and Ashcan traditions of painting city life, Chop Suey was likely more specifically inspired by Chinese restaurants Hopper visited, both in New York and on his travels. A uniquely American place, in the early twentieth century, the chop suey joint personified the spirit of the modern nation’s melting pot. Derived from a Cantonese phrase, tsap sui, meaning ‘odds and ends,’ chop suey came to refer to not only a low cost stir-fry dish but, moreover, to a public destination where an interested observer could view the societal fusion of different cultural elements of the modern city. Originating as flashy destinations in Chinatown for the nightlife crowd, by the mid-1920s chop suey restaurants had evolved into popular luncheonettes where the burgeoning working-class could gather to grab a bite to eat. The layout of this restaurant has been associated by scholars including Patricia Junker with a spot in Portland, Maine, where Hopper spent the summer of 1927, as well as a restaurant on Columbus Circle on the Upper West Side of New York. Called The Far East Tea Garden, the New York establishment was a cheap, second-floor spot that the Hoppers frequented while dating and in the early years of their marriage, and was also known as a meeting place for Alfred Stieglitz, Georgia O’Keeffe and other Modernists in their circle. (A.F. Smith, ed., Savoring Gotham: A Food Lover’s Companion to New York City, New York, 2015, n.p.) These restaurants were typical for their type, as described by Junker: “Unpretentious places, they were typically located on the upper floors of old commercial brownstones. A large, flashy ‘chop suey’ sign, extending prominently from a building’s façade, identified the restaurant to passerbys on the street below. Many were open for lunch, but all catered, at least initially, to a late-night crowd, remaining open as late as 2:00 A.M... Chop suey restaurants appealed to a widely diverse clientele that included Irish Catholics, European Jews, and blacks from Harlem. Their dining rooms provided a snapshot of modern New York... By the end of 1925, Bertram Reinitz, a popular social commentator and columnist for the New York Times, saw chop suey as a major indication of cultural transformation...it had been ‘promoted to a prominent place in the mid-day menu of the metropolis’” (P. Junker, quoted in Edward Hopper: Women, exh. cat., Seattle Art Museum, 2008, pp. 34-35)."