After high school, he left Stone Mountain, another of Russo’s fictional upstate hamlets, riding his guitar to stardom. Among all the hard-luck men in these hardscrabble towns, the ones who compound their bad luck with bad choices interest Russo the most. There’s good and bad everywhere, and Russo is alert to self-serving delusions wherever they surface. This article appears in the September 2026 print edition with the headline “Bad Luck, Bad Choices.” The post Bad Luck, Bad Choices appeared first on The Atlantic.