(3) River Towns (6:16)

[ingridswing]

Same here

[Ingo]

This is certainly a grower. It climbs higher and higher in my personal favourits

True for me, too.
Especially the outro groove !! 

[LoveExpresso]

No grower here. It was my top favourite from the first listen. Love it.

LE

[border_reiver]

I agree with you!

I voted it on the Top 5

[recon]

Has anyone here read the story, "A Room Forever" by Breece D'J Pancake, that inspired Mark to write this song?

[Nick14]

I agree that this is a great song - real depth and power to this one and very much part of the great start to the album.

[Lestroid]

Has anyone here read the story, "A Room Forever" by Breece D'J Pancake, that inspired Mark to write this song?

I have not read it, but in looking at the author's biography,  it is in keeping with many of Mark's  other songs.  Breece Pancake was a talented short story writer who had published a couple of stories in the Atlantic  Monthly, which is a fairly  prestigious literary magazine. He was from West Virginia, which is a poor, rural, coal mining state with a lot of similarities  to the northeast of England. He committed  suicide in 1979 at age 26 and his collected short stories were posthumously  nominated for the Pulitzer Prize.  He was clearly a very talented writer who killed himself just as he was beginning to  make  his mark.

Hopefully  I can track down a copy of his short story.

[straitsway75]

I've found it at Amazon, "The Stories of Breece D'J Pancake", only $7.34

"I hear him in there laughing at me, laughing because I am alone. All the way down the stairs I can hear his laugh. He is right: I need a woman - not just a lousy chip - I need the laying quiet after that a chip never heard of. When I come to the lobby full of fat women and old men, I think how this is all the home I have. Maybe I have bought this room forever - I just might not need another flop after tonight."
 
"A Room Forever" is very short and very brutal, not in a sense that the blood is spilling out.

"I look at her, think what she could be if she had a break or two. But she won't get them here. Nobody here gets a break."

I understand why MK might have felt a need to somehow make up for the dark, cold world of sorry river towns by ending the song with this moral, self-reflective remark of the main character ("But something’s hit a nerve / And I’m looking in the mirror / At the face that I deserve"), which you won't find in the book ("I look for her in the mirror but she is gone.", "I have not gotten that low."). In Pancake's reality there's no guilt, no crime and punishment, only a silent acceptance, summed up with the second mate's observation on a "stumblebum" and himself:

"I think how there must be ten of his kind in every town down to the delta, and how the odds on ending up that way must be pretty low. Something goes screwy and they grab the wrong wire, make a stupid move on the locks. But if nothing goes wrong, then they are on for a month, off for a month, and if they are lucky they can live that way the rest of their days."

[Lestroid]

MK really nails the feeling of the short story with the song.  Glad I downloaded the book.  Some writers have a way of telling a story that sticks with you long after you finish reading, and Breece Pancake is one of those.  I can see why MK was moved to write a song based on his work.

I have to say that MK has introduced me to a lot of excellent writing.  He would have been an excellent literature lecturer, I'm sure.

For anyone who wants to sample Breece Pancake's other work, here are a couple of links to his short stories that were published in The Atlantic.  "A Room Forever", which is the story that River Town is based on was not published in the Atlantic, so for that you need a copy of his collected stories.


http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1982/10/hollow/376308/

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1978/08/in-the-dry/376290/

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1977/12/trilobites/376288/

[surferboy]

Thanks recon for sharing this with us!

[Knopflerfan]

Deffo a massive grower on me also.....

[nababo]

It was one of my favourites since the first auditions. Not a grower. It was always there.

[Lis]

Instant love for me too.  The sax on this is perfect. 

[foma]

This song is a bit like 'Mississippi' by Bob Dylan, anybody noticed? The studio version indeed.

[yontwocrows]

Although Lestroid gave this information already, here is an Interview quote by Mark about the song that conferms the background
:

“River Towns” was a short story by a writer who’s not well known. He’s an American writer called Breece D’J Pancake, who wrote about the people of West Virginia. He actually committed suicide when he was 26. It was very tragic. He could really have been the future.

  http://www.salon.com/2015/03/28/mark_knopfler_this_getting_older_stuff_ain%E2%80%99t_for_wimps/