superlative, 21 Sep 2008
You either 'get' Richard Ford or you don't, or rather you either 'get' Frank Bascombe (his hero) or you don't, and so this is a book that divides readers. For me, and for many others, the Frank Bascombe trilogy - the Sportswriter, Independence Day, and The Lay of the Land - is the best stuff written since F Scott Fitzgerald. I think he's the most important writer writing in English today.

But these are only books for people who like 'voice' books - books written by a voice, in a voice, rather than books in which Plot Happens. Not much happens in any of these books. Instead you travel into the consciousness of an unhappy divorced man living in New Jersey, and are present during his efforts to name and individualise his failures, and in his efforts to communicate with his ex wife, Ann, who is referred to as X in this first book, and whom he still loves. You'll have to read to the end of book 3 to find out if they are reunited....

The prose is sensational. There is no greater stylist alive. Those of us who also write for a living read Ford as a sort of literary pacesetter in the mornings, trying (usually in vain) to pick up his sumptuous rhythms.

Absolute Twaddle, 24 Aug 2008
This is so badly written that I'm not even going to make the effort to adequately express how poor this book is.

Ford Ain't No Yates, 21 Jan 2008
After reading Richard Yates's "Revolutionary Road" a couple of years ago I went on to purchase the rest of his novels, all of which were as concise and bleak as his debut.
Richard Ford wrote the introduction to the recent Methuen edition of this book and so when Amazon posted a recommendation for "The Sportswriter" (the tale of a middle-aged, middle-class divorcee who has an affair with a younger woman) I presumed that it would be an equally impressive read. I was wrong. The two writers do not compare.
Where Yates was a master of pessimism by virtue of the fact that he had absolutely no empathy for his characters (usually in order to progress his narrative), Ford labours over his protagonist, Frank Bascombe's most trivial concerns in tedious and over-descriptive prose.
The events in "The Sportswriter" only take place over three or four days yet it takes Ford almost four hundred pages to reach his eventual conclusion.
Despite this overly verbose approach, Ford's writing contains many well-observed insights and musings. Perhaps with the collaboration of a ruthless editor, willing to chop away two-hundred pages of extraneous drivel (in the same way "American Psycho" could've) "The Sportswriter" may have gained the necessary charm to keep the reader engaged.
Male existentialist characterisation and its inherent angst have been examined many times before, by far better and more focused writers than Ford (Bernard Malamud's "Dubin's Lives" for example) and this book really doesn't offer anything distinctive or new with which to commend it.



It's better the second time around, 07 Aug 2007
There's little about sport or the craft of the sportswriter in this book and my biggest challenge has been to convince women that they should read it. But if you are female, I recommend this book particularly, as I thought it a rare and revealing journey through a man's confusion about the loss of love and relationship.
The first time I read this book, I enjoyed it. I had just divorced and the main character's (Frank Bascombe) struggle to reconcile himself to his new state resonated for me.
Years later, in the throes of a happy and fulfilling relationship, I re-read `The Sportswriter' and found new pleasure in it. I think that Ford creates an uncomfortable character, infuriatingly self-reflective and inert at times. In this sense, Bascombe becomes an anti-hero, challenging the reader to examine his or her own condition.

the sportswriter, 01 Aug 2007
The Sportswriter was the first Richard Ford book I'd read, and when I embarked on it, I hadn't read the thoughts on it posted above, which is just as well, or I may have given up on it halfway through. It's a book that is plodding and ponderous in many respects, but, in the same way that you can warm to an introspective, endlessly self analysing friend, it slowly drew me in.
Introspective is a key word here. Frank Bascombe, the sportswriter of the title, is a thirty eight year-old divorced father of three kids given to self reflection on an epic scale. The fact that one of those kids - his first born, Ralph - is dead, accounts for part of this navel gazing, and the book opens with Frank meeting up with his ex wife - named only as X - on the annual pilgrimage to Ralph's grave. The rest of the novel follows Frank over the course of the next few days, during which he takes an unsuccessful trip to Detroit with his new girlfriend Vicki and then visits Vicki's family on their return.
As with Updike's Rabbit books, much of the story is given over to understanding the central character's personality and his motivation for behaving as he does. And there are similarities between the two men - both Harry Angstrom and Frank Bascombe are selfish, indecisive, detached from others to a certain extent, follow their dicks, and lack self insight. The difference is that Frank WANTS to understand himself and life, and much of the novel is dedicated to his thoughts and reminiscences, whereas Harry was happy to amble through life doing what he wanted without really dissecting it cerebrally at all.
Yet for all Frank's endless musing and his view of himself as a good person and as someone who speaks about his feelings - at one stage, he agrees with Vicki that he is a New Age man - he is, like many men who declare themselves modern - deeply selfish, often more so than 'traditional' unreconstructed males who don't self analyse, and his self appraisals lack criticism and objectivity. He looks back, for instance, on the fact that he slept with eighteen different women in the two years after Ralph died and while he was still married to X with fascination, yet never admits to any guilt for how X must have felt about the infidelities.In fact, in his emotions, Frank is so detached as to seem almost Aspergen, although much of this is probably numbness secondary to Ralph's death. At one stage, he thinks back to a period when he taught in college in Boston and lived away from the family home while still married: during this time, he had a long-standing affair with a mysterious and seductive Arab woman. He reflects on her with longing but with no hint of remorse for his infidelity. And, back in the present time, he follows his libido without engaging his brain - he propositions two different women in the same day without thinking how they would feel afterwards or of the implications. Even while he proposes marriage to Vicki, he is thinking that it doesn't have to be forever.

Ford is no Updike, and his sentences lack the delightfulness of the latter's, whose words can be savoured and pored over like exquisite, perfectly formed jewels. In comparison, Ford's tone can feel monotonous and the lack of leavening spirit can make the prose heavy and leaden - what humour there is is not sharp and quick, dancing off the page in a shimmer of sparkle and wit, but considered and deliberate like the rest of the prose. But Ford is expressive and articulate in a more steady, less dazzling way, and there is a considerable slow burn appeal to the novel. Sometimes, a sentence will encapsulate a place or feeling perfectly, as this description of Manhattan when Frank arrives one night: 'Here, out on Seventh and 34th, I feel an unaccustomed lankness, a post-coital midwestern caress to things - the always dusky air still high and hollowish, streets alive with the girdering wheels of hungry traffic that pours past me and quickly vanishes', which perfectly captures the balance between the languorous sense of possibility and the frenetic rush of city life. Admittedly, for every gem like this, there are a few irksome quirks, such as Ford's occasionally grating vocabulary - 'complexer' and 'vivider' instead of more complex /more vivid, 'unexplainably' instead of inexplicably,'lighted' instead of lit, real' twice in the same sentence, and his liberal use of the word 'literal', which seems to crop up every few pages, as well as the unironic, unhistoric use of 'Negroes' which made me cringe a little. At one point, Frank wonders if his African lodger has a 'long aboriginal penis' - no capital on aboriginal, so presumably Ford is referring to an original inhabitant of Africa rather than a native Australian, but the cliche (black man, big knob) still made me cringe a little. And elsewhere, Frank identifies two besuited men getting off a train as 'Jews' with no context to the observation (how did Frank know? etc). But perhaps these are things that didn't cause the same unease back in 1984, when this book was first published.
So, despite the long, rambling, very dreamy style of this book - and Frank admits that 'dreaminess' is a trait of his, so this wandering may be in character - The Sportswriter has enough of interest to commend it. As a picture of alienation, of a man trying his best but hopelessly goofing up again and again, it works well, and many of the peripheral characters - the drawling Southen belle with bite Vicki, her likeable father and neanderthal brother - are portrayed beautifully. All in all, this is a tale of suburban angst which meanders rather than marching, and once you adapt to the pace and style, it has much to offer.

superlative, 21 Sep 2008
You either 'get' Richard Ford or you don't, or rather you either 'get' Frank Bascombe (his hero) or you don't, and so this is a book that divides readers. For me, and for many others, the Frank Bascombe trilogy - the Sportswriter, Independence Day, and The Lay of the Land - is the best stuff written since F Scott Fitzgerald. I think he's the most important writer writing in English today.

But these are only books for people who like 'voice' books - books written by a voice, in a voice, rather than books in which Plot Happens. Not much happens in any of these books. Instead you travel into the consciousness of an unhappy divorced man living in New Jersey, and are present during his efforts to name and individualise his failures, and in his efforts to communicate with his ex wife, Ann, who is referred to as X in this first book, and whom he still loves. You'll have to read to the end of book 3 to find out if they are reunited....

The prose is sensational. There is no greater stylist alive. Those of us who also write for a living read Ford as a sort of literary pacesetter in the mornings, trying (usually in vain) to pick up his sumptuous rhythms.

Absolute Twaddle, 24 Aug 2008
This is so badly written that I'm not even going to make the effort to adequately express how poor this book is.

Ford Ain't No Yates, 21 Jan 2008
After reading Richard Yates's "Revolutionary Road" a couple of years ago I went on to purchase the rest of his novels, all of which were as concise and bleak as his debut.
Richard Ford wrote the introduction to the recent Methuen edition of this book and so when Amazon posted a recommendation for "The Sportswriter" (the tale of a middle-aged, middle-class divorcee who has an affair with a younger woman) I presumed that it would be an equally impressive read. I was wrong. The two writers do not compare.
Where Yates was a master of pessimism by virtue of the fact that he had absolutely no empathy for his characters (usually in order to progress his narrative), Ford labours over his protagonist, Frank Bascombe's most trivial concerns in tedious and over-descriptive prose.
The events in "The Sportswriter" only take place over three or four days yet it takes Ford almost four hundred pages to reach his eventual conclusion.
Despite this overly verbose approach, Ford's writing contains many well-observed insights and musings. Perhaps with the collaboration of a ruthless editor, willing to chop away two-hundred pages of extraneous drivel (in the same way "American Psycho" could've) "The Sportswriter" may have gained the necessary charm to keep the reader engaged.
Male existentialist characterisation and its inherent angst have been examined many times before, by far better and more focused writers than Ford (Bernard Malamud's "Dubin's Lives" for example) and this book really doesn't offer anything distinctive or new with which to commend it.



It's better the second time around, 07 Aug 2007
There's little about sport or the craft of the sportswriter in this book and my biggest challenge has been to convince women that they should read it. But if you are female, I recommend this book particularly, as I thought it a rare and revealing journey through a man's confusion about the loss of love and relationship.
The first time I read this book, I enjoyed it. I had just divorced and the main character's (Frank Bascombe) struggle to reconcile himself to his new state resonated for me.
Years later, in the throes of a happy and fulfilling relationship, I re-read `The Sportswriter' and found new pleasure in it. I think that Ford creates an uncomfortable character, infuriatingly self-reflective and inert at times. In this sense, Bascombe becomes an anti-hero, challenging the reader to examine his or her own condition.

the sportswriter, 01 Aug 2007
The Sportswriter was the first Richard Ford book I'd read, and when I embarked on it, I hadn't read the thoughts on it posted above, which is just as well, or I may have given up on it halfway through. It's a book that is plodding and ponderous in many respects, but, in the same way that you can warm to an introspective, endlessly self analysing friend, it slowly drew me in.
Introspective is a key word here. Frank Bascombe, the sportswriter of the title, is a thirty eight year-old divorced father of three kids given to self reflection on an epic scale. The fact that one of those kids - his first born, Ralph - is dead, accounts for part of this navel gazing, and the book opens with Frank meeting up with his ex wife - named only as X - on the annual pilgrimage to Ralph's grave. The rest of the novel follows Frank over the course of the next few days, during which he takes an unsuccessful trip to Detroit with his new girlfriend Vicki and then visits Vicki's family on their return.
As with Updike's Rabbit books, much of the story is given over to understanding the central character's personality and his motivation for behaving as he does. And there are similarities between the two men - both Harry Angstrom and Frank Bascombe are selfish, indecisive, detached from others to a certain extent, follow their dicks, and lack self insight. The difference is that Frank WANTS to understand himself and life, and much of the novel is dedicated to his thoughts and reminiscences, whereas Harry was happy to amble through life doing what he wanted without really dissecting it cerebrally at all.
Yet for all Frank's endless musing and his view of himself as a good person and as someone who speaks about his feelings - at one stage, he agrees with Vicki that he is a New Age man - he is, like many men who declare themselves modern - deeply selfish, often more so than 'traditional' unreconstructed males who don't self analyse, and his self appraisals lack criticism and objectivity. He looks back, for instance, on the fact that he slept with eighteen different women in the two years after Ralph died and while he was still married to X with fascination, yet never admits to any guilt for how X must have felt about the infidelities.In fact, in his emotions, Frank is so detached as to seem almost Aspergen, although much of this is probably numbness secondary to Ralph's death. At one stage, he thinks back to a period when he taught in college in Boston and lived away from the family home while still married: during this time, he had a long-standing affair with a mysterious and seductive Arab woman. He reflects on her with longing but with no hint of remorse for his infidelity. And, back in the present time, he follows his libido without engaging his brain - he propositions two different women in the same day without thinking how they would feel afterwards or of the implications. Even while he proposes marriage to Vicki, he is thinking that it doesn't have to be forever.

Ford is no Updike, and his sentences lack the delightfulness of the latter's, whose words can be savoured and pored over like exquisite, perfectly formed jewels. In comparison, Ford's tone can feel monotonous and the lack of leavening spirit can make the prose heavy and leaden - what humour there is is not sharp and quick, dancing off the page in a shimmer of sparkle and wit, but considered and deliberate like the rest of the prose. But Ford is expressive and articulate in a more steady, less dazzling way, and there is a considerable slow burn appeal to the novel. Sometimes, a sentence will encapsulate a place or feeling perfectly, as this description of Manhattan when Frank arrives one night: 'Here, out on Seventh and 34th, I feel an unaccustomed lankness, a post-coital midwestern caress to things - the always dusky air still high and hollowish, streets alive with the girdering wheels of hungry traffic that pours past me and quickly vanishes', which perfectly captures the balance between the languorous sense of possibility and the frenetic rush of city life. Admittedly, for every gem like this, there are a few irksome quirks, such as Ford's occasionally grating vocabulary - 'complexer' and 'vivider' instead of more complex /more vivid, 'unexplainably' instead of inexplicably,'lighted' instead of lit, real' twice in the same sentence, and his liberal use of the word 'literal', which seems to crop up every few pages, as well as the unironic, unhistoric use of 'Negroes' which made me cringe a little. At one point, Frank wonders if his African lodger has a 'long aboriginal penis' - no capital on aboriginal, so presumably Ford is referring to an original inhabitant of Africa rather than a native Australian, but the cliche (black man, big knob) still made me cringe a little. And elsewhere, Frank identifies two besuited men getting off a train as 'Jews' with no context to the observation (how did Frank know? etc). But perhaps these are things that didn't cause the same unease back in 1984, when this book was first published.
So, despite the long, rambling, very dreamy style of this book - and Frank admits that 'dreaminess' is a trait of his, so this wandering may be in character - The Sportswriter has enough of interest to commend it. As a picture of alienation, of a man trying his best but hopelessly goofing up again and again, it works well, and many of the peripheral characters - the drawling Southen belle with bite Vicki, her likeable father and neanderthal brother - are portrayed beautifully. All in all, this is a tale of suburban angst which meanders rather than marching, and once you adapt to the pace and style, it has much to offer.


The Lay of Middle Age, 20 Aug 2008
The Lay of the Land is the third and final in the Frank Bascombe trilogy by Richard Ford. Frank is now 55 but still as introspective and self indulgent as ever. Life has moved on, and as well as his first ex-wife Ann he now has a second, Sally, who has flown the nest under bizarre circumstances. Frank has done well from real estate and is now comfortably off in financial terms, but he is as wrapped up in himself as ever. He has had a health fright which haunts him, and ponders endlessly about his life.

The novel spans a few days around Thanksgiving in 2000 at the New Jersey shore where Frank now lives.
His two adult children - his adored daughter Clarissa and his socially awkward son Paul - are due round for Thanksgiving dinner with their respective partners. Frank is tying up loose ends before Thanksgiving: seeing to some business with his real estate employee Mike Mahoney, meeting with Ann, doing his good deed bit as a Sponsor (a sort of pop in pop out Samaritan for those whose angst is mild rather than of suicidal proportions). And since Frank has an impending visit to the Mayo Clinic shortly after Thanksgiving, where his health problem (treatable prostatic cancer) will be reviewed, these few days also serve as time to remenesce about his life and revisit old haunts.

As with the previous two novels in the Frank Bascombe series, it is difficult to ascertain how much of Frank's often long-winded self absorption is intended to be staggeringly me-me-me obsessed and how much Richard Ford feels is normal or even admirable. At over 700 pages, the novel is long and it takes time to get into the self-mulling style of it; to adapt to Frank-think where every part of his life is analyzed, categorized and labelled, but in a peculiarly un self-critical way. Reading this, I was struck - as I was with The Sportswriter before it - at the way in which Frank's obsession with his own life is devoid of both self criticism and humour. It seems amazing to me that a middle-aged person can dwell so unremittingly on himself and his own life with no sense of irony. If anyone I know seriously presented their life as capital lettered interludes such as The Permanent Period, The Middle Way and so on, their friends would quickly slag their self importance out of them. This is not to say that the cultural difference between Ford's world and many Brits is due to lack of empathy on our side - as readers I think Brits are always ready to emote and empathise with those in real emotional or physical straits, including those trapped in their own lives due to endogenous depression rather than 'real' physical or mental hardship. But Frank's navel gazing seems devoid of any real melancholy; it's almost flat in affect, which makes it difficult to sympathise or empathise with him.
Add to that the fact that Frank has other unattractive character traits - he is rude and patronizing to his Tibetan employee Mike, stomps all over Mike's career prospects with no remorse or apology, and, in a chance encounter with a stranger with whom he could easily have extended the comfort of kinship (a man who, like Frank, had lost a son), he doesn't even consider offering this tiny balm. Frank is not only self obsessed but selfish with it, which makes for a character to whom it's hard to warm.

Yet The Lay of the Land is one of those slow burners that one grows into. For the first hundred pages or so, I was rolling my eyes at the creeping pace, many meanders down sidetracks such as real estate prices, and lack of event, but, as with The Sportswriter, I eventually locked into pace with the novel. There are times when Ford is funny, and he is always a master of language - not someone who beguiles with flashes of brilliance, but a writer who consistently delivers good quality prose. And towards the end of the book, events do start to occur outside of Frank's head, and Ford conveys these effortlessly and convincingly, in the matter-of-fact way that a stolid guy like Frank would experience them.

The Lay of the Land, then, is one of those unusual books which takes a while to get into because of its concentration on very ordinary preoccupations, but which becomes engrossing in the way that only very well expressed normality can be.

My kind of guy, 26 Mar 2008
I wasn't always sure what was going on for Frank Bascombe in this book and sometimes I stopped to ask myself why I was enjoying these 700+ pages so much. I think it was to do with the fact that I like this man. I felt when I had finished that a friend of mine had moved away to another country. Exactly my age, I was glad to see that one of my contemporaries had some of the bewilderment which seems to be a part of my own life. Slow, gentle, thoughtful. This book took me through the first part of a wet, Scottish winter! Much needed. I could have gone on for another 300 pages.

Frank is Rich, 12 Nov 2007
Proof (if proof were needed) that Ford can be bracketed with Roth, Bellow and Updike as exponents of the extended 20th century Great American Novel. On meeting, Ford's southern charm is evident, but his famously prickly hubris and hauteur has made him less prolific than his forebears and contemporaries. Though his recent 'Women with Men' garnered deservedly mixed reviews, here, with the effort evident on each page, Ford delivers one of the most enjoyable and insightful books of the last decade. There is an original use of language and phraseology, a modernity which to some extent alienates us from his 60ish narrator but distances Ford from his competition.

Frank (ex-'Sportswriter') Bascombe is not - as Ford rightly denies - an alter ego, though both live on the East Coast and are comfortably late middle-aged. Frank now is seriously wealthy, rocketing property prices inflating the value of both his NJ shore real estate business and his own ocean view mansion. Counterpointing this are continuing unresolved issues, this novel being set (like the Faulkner / Pulitzer winning 'Independence Day') around a traditional holiday where Frank's age and sentimentalism augurs a crisis.

Frank's prolonged internal soliloquy takes up most of the wordage. It contains some of the most sublime self-consciousness, and self-deception. He is successful, gung-ho and energetic. Money is made and lost almost carelessly. But while he has a peripatetic business partner, his life partners are estranged, and his children distant and bewildering. His failing health is a critical subtext: Frank has prostate cancer (treatable). But there are references to heart murmurs and palpitations, which are less evidence of coronary disease, rather unacknowledged stress and incipient nervous disorder and potential breakdown.

All considered, it is a better novel than 'Independence Day'. The odd denouement detracts a little from this wonderful book; but one reads to the end, which is Ford's stated invocation of success as a writer. In part because the end is unsatisfying, tetralogy beckons: Merry Christmas Mr Bascombe? Bascombe at Rest?

Lay of the Land is hopefully final chapter of Bascombe., 20 Sep 2007
Highly uninspiring and hopefully end of story for Frank Bascombe. This book hits the laws of diminishing returns -- originally out of the 'dirty realism' school, Ford was celebratory with his realism with the Sportswriter. Indepence Day was a nice build on it. However, Bascombe by the time we get to Lay of the Land is a complete jerk. I had no sympathy for him. Or any of the characters. When the earlier books had a sense of wonder about the world, Lay of the Land has none. The wisdom that Ford tries to give us through Bascombe comes off as rambling. The end was ridiculous, like a bad John Irving plotline (Russian twins kill his neighbours and shoots Bascombe, at the very moment, he is going to rescue his formerly gay daughter from the clutches of the polcie for running down a highwayman? -- please.) Ford still writes beautifully but ultimately has nothing to say anymore. Thus the one star. If anything, this book made me mourn for Carver.

Now I lay me down to sleep..., 16 Jul 2007
Richard Ford has impeccable taste in fiction, as we know from his introductions to UK editions of James Salter's Light Years and Richard Yates's Revolutionary Road. He also enjoys greatness by association with his old friends, the late Raymond Carver and the not late (except when it comes to turning out novels) Tobias Wolff. And his last collection of stories, A Multitude of Sins, was a delight. But I get the impression that what he wants to be remembered for are the Frank Bascombe novels: The Sportswriter (1984), Independence Day (1995) and now The Lay of the Land. A clue to this comes in the early pages of chapter 1, where the uncommon word angstrom appears. Of course! It's Rabbit by Richard.

And The Lay of the Land does seem more than either of the others to be Ford's attempt to square up to Updike and give the world his own Harry Angstrom. It seems less interested in doing something new (it copies the structure of Independence Day: the detailed moment-by-moment recreation of the days approaching a public holiday - this time Thanksgiving - and a dramatic event near the end), and is content to examine Bascombe's life with positively forensic attention.

This is not without event - Bascombe gets involved along the way in a bar brawl, a terrorist attack, and several switchbacks of his present and previous love lives - but there's no denying that it does get at times extremely boring. It's hard to tell whether this is deliberate - Frank after all is an estate agent and not a man given to outbursts of emotion - and at times this quality made it the ideal holiday read, as I had nothing else with me to put it down for. Ford's prose is not the match of Updike's, or Salter's for that matter, and in storytelling circles Yates leaves him standing.

Nonetheless the book was not at all a difficult or reluctant read, and there are moments of brilliant observation, such as this assessment of Bascombes' Tibetan employee, Mike Mahoney:

"In this, he's like many of our citizens, including the ones who go back to the Pilgrims: He's armed himself with just enough information, even if it's wrong, to make him believe that what he wants he deserves, that bafflement is a form of curiosity and that these two together form an inner strength that should let him pick all the low-hanging fruit."

This also plays into the Rabbitesque background to the book: the recounts and court challenges to the 2000 Bush/Gore election, which gives Ford a chance to put some choice anti-Bushisms in Bascombe's mouth.

Finally, there is the inevitable impressed satisfaction of reading any book this length, that the author should have managed to sustain the performance for so long, even if we didn't always enjoy it that much (or perhaps, as Forster once suggested, we tend to overpraise long books simply because we have got through them). Oh, and a word about that: my obsession with flagrant page-bloat has been mentioned before, but I think swelling the page count from 496 in the hardback to 726 in the paperback sets a new record. Unless of course you are even more anally retentive than I am about things like that, and know better.

superlative, 21 Sep 2008
You either 'get' Richard Ford or you don't, or rather you either 'get' Frank Bascombe (his hero) or you don't, and so this is a book that divides readers. For me, and for many others, the Frank Bascombe trilogy - the Sportswriter, Independence Day, and The Lay of the Land - is the best stuff written since F Scott Fitzgerald. I think he's the most important writer writing in English today.

But these are only books for people who like 'voice' books - books written by a voice, in a voice, rather than books in which Plot Happens. Not much happens in any of these books. Instead you travel into the consciousness of an unhappy divorced man living in New Jersey, and are present during his efforts to name and individualise his failures, and in his efforts to communicate with his ex wife, Ann, who is referred to as X in this first book, and whom he still loves. You'll have to read to the end of book 3 to find out if they are reunited....

The prose is sensational. There is no greater stylist alive. Those of us who also write for a living read Ford as a sort of literary pacesetter in the mornings, trying (usually in vain) to pick up his sumptuous rhythms.

Absolute Twaddle, 24 Aug 2008
This is so badly written that I'm not even going to make the effort to adequately express how poor this book is.

Ford Ain't No Yates, 21 Jan 2008
After reading Richard Yates's "Revolutionary Road" a couple of years ago I went on to purchase the rest of his novels, all of which were as concise and bleak as his debut.
Richard Ford wrote the introduction to the recent Methuen edition of this book and so when Amazon posted a recommendation for "The Sportswriter" (the tale of a middle-aged, middle-class divorcee who has an affair with a younger woman) I presumed that it would be an equally impressive read. I was wrong. The two writers do not compare.
Where Yates was a master of pessimism by virtue of the fact that he had absolutely no empathy for his characters (usually in order to progress his narrative), Ford labours over his protagonist, Frank Bascombe's most trivial concerns in tedious and over-descriptive prose.
The events in "The Sportswriter" only take place over three or four days yet it takes Ford almost four hundred pages to reach his eventual conclusion.
Despite this overly verbose approach, Ford's writing contains many well-observed insights and musings. Perhaps with the collaboration of a ruthless editor, willing to chop away two-hundred pages of extraneous drivel (in the same way "American Psycho" could've) "The Sportswriter" may have gained the necessary charm to keep the reader engaged.
Male existentialist characterisation and its inherent angst have been examined many times before, by far better and more focused writers than Ford (Bernard Malamud's "Dubin's Lives" for example) and this book really doesn't offer anything distinctive or new with which to commend it.



It's better the second time around, 07 Aug 2007
There's little about sport or the craft of the sportswriter in this book and my biggest challenge has been to convince women that they should read it. But if you are female, I recommend this book particularly, as I thought it a rare and revealing journey through a man's confusion about the loss of love and relationship.
The first time I read this book, I enjoyed it. I had just divorced and the main character's (Frank Bascombe) struggle to reconcile himself to his new state resonated for me.
Years later, in the throes of a happy and fulfilling relationship, I re-read `The Sportswriter' and found new pleasure in it. I think that Ford creates an uncomfortable character, infuriatingly self-reflective and inert at times. In this sense, Bascombe becomes an anti-hero, challenging the reader to examine his or her own condition.

the sportswriter, 01 Aug 2007
The Sportswriter was the first Richard Ford book I'd read, and when I embarked on it, I hadn't read the thoughts on it posted above, which is just as well, or I may have given up on it halfway through. It's a book that is plodding and ponderous in many respects, but, in the same way that you can warm to an introspective, endlessly self analysing friend, it slowly drew me in.
Introspective is a key word here. Frank Bascombe, the sportswriter of the title, is a thirty eight year-old divorced father of three kids given to self reflection on an epic scale. The fact that one of those kids - his first born, Ralph - is dead, accounts for part of this navel gazing, and the book opens with Frank meeting up with his ex wife - named only as X - on the annual pilgrimage to Ralph's grave. The rest of the novel follows Frank over the course of the next few days, during which he takes an unsuccessful trip to Detroit with his new girlfriend Vicki and then visits Vicki's family on their return.
As with Updike's Rabbit books, much of the story is given over to understanding the central character's personality and his motivation for behaving as he does. And there are similarities between the two men - both Harry Angstrom and Frank Bascombe are selfish, indecisive, detached from others to a certain extent, follow their dicks, and lack self insight. The difference is that Frank WANTS to understand himself and life, and much of the novel is dedicated to his thoughts and reminiscences, whereas Harry was happy to amble through life doing what he wanted without really dissecting it cerebrally at all.
Yet for all Frank's endless musing and his view of himself as a good person and as someone who speaks about his feelings - at one stage, he agrees with Vicki that he is a New Age man - he is, like many men who declare themselves modern - deeply selfish, often more so than 'traditional' unreconstructed males who don't self analyse, and his self appraisals lack criticism and objectivity. He looks back, for instance, on the fact that he slept with eighteen different women in the two years after Ralph died and while he was still married to X with fascination, yet never admits to any guilt for how X must have felt about the infidelities.In fact, in his emotions, Frank is so detached as to seem almost Aspergen, although much of this is probably numbness secondary to Ralph's death. At one stage, he thinks back to a period when he taught in college in Boston and lived away from the family home while still married: during this time, he had a long-standing affair with a mysterious and seductive Arab woman. He reflects on her with longing but with no hint of remorse for his infidelity. And, back in the present time, he follows his libido without engaging his brain - he propositions two different women in the same day without thinking how they would feel afterwards or of the implications. Even while he proposes marriage to Vicki, he is thinking that it doesn't have to be forever.

Ford is no Updike, and his sentences lack the delightfulness of the latter's, whose words can be savoured and pored over like exquisite, perfectly formed jewels. In comparison, Ford's tone can feel monotonous and the lack of leavening spirit can make the prose heavy and leaden - what humour there is is not sharp and quick, dancing off the page in a shimmer of sparkle and wit, but considered and deliberate like the rest of the prose. But Ford is expressive and articulate in a more steady, less dazzling way, and there is a considerable slow burn appeal to the novel. Sometimes, a sentence will encapsulate a place or feeling perfectly, as this description of Manhattan when Frank arrives one night: 'Here, out on Seventh and 34th, I feel an unaccustomed lankness, a post-coital midwestern caress to things - the always dusky air still high and hollowish, streets alive with the girdering wheels of hungry traffic that pours past me and quickly vanishes', which perfectly captures the balance between the languorous sense of possibility and the frenetic rush of city life. Admittedly, for every gem like this, there are a few irksome quirks, such as Ford's occasionally grating vocabulary - 'complexer' and 'vivider' instead of more complex /more vivid, 'unexplainably' instead of inexplicably,'lighted' instead of lit, real' twice in the same sentence, and his liberal use of the word 'literal', which seems to crop up every few pages, as well as the unironic, unhistoric use of 'Negroes' which made me cringe a little. At one point, Frank wonders if his African lodger has a 'long aboriginal penis' - no capital on aboriginal, so presumably Ford is referring to an original inhabitant of Africa rather than a native Australian, but the cliche (black man, big knob) still made me cringe a little. And elsewhere, Frank identifies two besuited men getting off a train as 'Jews' with no context to the observation (how did Frank know? etc). But perhaps these are things that didn't cause the same unease back in 1984, when this book was first published.
So, despite the long, rambling, very dreamy style of this book - and Frank admits that 'dreaminess' is a trait of his, so this wandering may be in character - The Sportswriter has enough of interest to commend it. As a picture of alienation, of a man trying his best but hopelessly goofing up again and again, it works well, and many of the peripheral characters - the drawling Southen belle with bite Vicki, her likeable father and neanderthal brother - are portrayed beautifully. All in all, this is a tale of suburban angst which meanders rather than marching, and once you adapt to the pace and style, it has much to offer.


The Lay of Middle Age, 20 Aug 2008
The Lay of the Land is the third and final in the Frank Bascombe trilogy by Richard Ford. Frank is now 55 but still as introspective and self indulgent as ever. Life has moved on, and as well as his first ex-wife Ann he now has a second, Sally, who has flown the nest under bizarre circumstances. Frank has done well from real estate and is now comfortably off in financial terms, but he is as wrapped up in himself as ever. He has had a health fright which haunts him, and ponders endlessly about his life.

The novel spans a few days around Thanksgiving in 2000 at the New Jersey shore where Frank now lives.
His two adult children - his adored daughter Clarissa and his socially awkward son Paul - are due round for Thanksgiving dinner with their respective partners. Frank is tying up loose ends before Thanksgiving: seeing to some business with his real estate employee Mike Mahoney, meeting with Ann, doing his good deed bit as a Sponsor (a sort of pop in pop out Samaritan for those whose angst is mild rather than of suicidal proportions). And since Frank has an impending visit to the Mayo Clinic shortly after Thanksgiving, where his health problem (treatable prostatic cancer) will be reviewed, these few days also serve as time to remenesce about his life and revisit old haunts.

As with the previous two novels in the Frank Bascombe series, it is difficult to ascertain how much of Frank's often long-winded self absorption is intended to be staggeringly me-me-me obsessed and how much Richard Ford feels is normal or even admirable. At over 700 pages, the novel is long and it takes time to get into the self-mulling style of it; to adapt to Frank-think where every part of his life is analyzed, categorized and labelled, but in a peculiarly un self-critical way. Reading this, I was struck - as I was with The Sportswriter before it - at the way in which Frank's obsession with his own life is devoid of both self criticism and humour. It seems amazing to me that a middle-aged person can dwell so unremittingly on himself and his own life with no sense of irony. If anyone I know seriously presented their life as capital lettered interludes such as The Permanent Period, The Middle Way and so on, their friends would quickly slag their self importance out of them. This is not to say that the cultural difference between Ford's world and many Brits is due to lack of empathy on our side - as readers I think Brits are always ready to emote and empathise with those in real emotional or physical straits, including those trapped in their own lives due to endogenous depression rather than 'real' physical or mental hardship. But Frank's navel gazing seems devoid of any real melancholy; it's almost flat in affect, which makes it difficult to sympathise or empathise with him.
Add to that the fact that Frank has other unattractive character traits - he is rude and patronizing to his Tibetan employee Mike, stomps all over Mike's career prospects with no remorse or apology, and, in a chance encounter with a stranger with whom he could easily have extended the comfort of kinship (a man who, like Frank, had lost a son), he doesn't even consider offering this tiny balm. Frank is not only self obsessed but selfish with it, which makes for a character to whom it's hard to warm.

Yet The Lay of the Land is one of those slow burners that one grows into. For the first hundred pages or so, I was rolling my eyes at the creeping pace, many meanders down sidetracks such as real estate prices, and lack of event, but, as with The Sportswriter, I eventually locked into pace with the novel. There are times when Ford is funny, and he is always a master of language - not someone who beguiles with flashes of brilliance, but a writer who consistently delivers good quality prose. And towards the end of the book, events do start to occur outside of Frank's head, and Ford conveys these effortlessly and convincingly, in the matter-of-fact way that a stolid guy like Frank would experience them.

The Lay of the Land, then, is one of those unusual books which takes a while to get into because of its concentration on very ordinary preoccupations, but which becomes engrossing in the way that only very well expressed normality can be.

My kind of guy, 26 Mar 2008
I wasn't always sure what was going on for Frank Bascombe in this book and sometimes I stopped to ask myself why I was enjoying these 700+ pages so much. I think it was to do with the fact that I like this man. I felt when I had finished that a friend of mine had moved away to another country. Exactly my age, I was glad to see that one of my contemporaries had some of the bewilderment which seems to be a part of my own life. Slow, gentle, thoughtful. This book took me through the first part of a wet, Scottish winter! Much needed. I could have gone on for another 300 pages.

Frank is Rich, 12 Nov 2007
Proof (if proof were needed) that Ford can be bracketed with Roth, Bellow and Updike as exponents of the extended 20th century Great American Novel. On meeting, Ford's southern charm is evident, but his famously prickly hubris and hauteur has made him less prolific than his forebears and contemporaries. Though his recent 'Women with Men' garnered deservedly mixed reviews, here, with the effort evident on each page, Ford delivers one of the most enjoyable and insightful books of the last decade. There is an original use of language and phraseology, a modernity which to some extent alienates us from his 60ish narrator but distances Ford from his competition.

Frank (ex-'Sportswriter') Bascombe is not - as Ford rightly denies - an alter ego, though both live on the East Coast and are comfortably late middle-aged. Frank now is seriously wealthy, rocketing property prices inflating the value of both his NJ shore real estate business and his own ocean view mansion. Counterpointing this are continuing unresolved issues, this novel being set (like the Faulkner / Pulitzer winning 'Independence Day') around a traditional holiday where Frank's age and sentimentalism augurs a crisis.

Frank's prolonged internal soliloquy takes up most of the wordage. It contains some of the most sublime self-consciousness, and self-deception. He is successful, gung-ho and energetic. Money is made and lost almost carelessly. But while he has a peripatetic business partner, his life partners are estranged, and his children distant and bewildering. His failing health is a critical subtext: Frank has prostate cancer (treatable). But there are references to heart murmurs and palpitations, which are less evidence of coronary disease, rather unacknowledged stress and incipient nervous disorder and potential breakdown.

All considered, it is a better novel than 'Independence Day'. The odd denouement detracts a little from this wonderful book; but one reads to the end, which is Ford's stated invocation of success as a writer. In part because the end is unsatisfying, tetralogy beckons: Merry Christmas Mr Bascombe? Bascombe at Rest?

Lay of the Land is hopefully final chapter of Bascombe., 20 Sep 2007
Highly uninspiring and hopefully end of story for Frank Bascombe. This book hits the laws of diminishing returns -- originally out of the 'dirty realism' school, Ford was celebratory with his realism with the Sportswriter. Indepence Day was a nice build on it. However, Bascombe by the time we get to Lay of the Land is a complete jerk. I had no sympathy for him. Or any of the characters. When the earlier books had a sense of wonder about the world, Lay of the Land has none. The wisdom that Ford tries to give us through Bascombe comes off as rambling. The end was ridiculous, like a bad John Irving plotline (Russian twins kill his neighbours and shoots Bascombe, at the very moment, he is going to rescue his formerly gay daughter from the clutches of the polcie for running down a highwayman? -- please.) Ford still writes beautifully but ultimately has nothing to say anymore. Thus the one star. If anything, this book made me mourn for Carver.

Now I lay me down to sleep..., 16 Jul 2007
Richard Ford has impeccable taste in fiction, as we know from his introductions to UK editions of James Salter's Light Years and Richard Yates's Revolutionary Road. He also enjoys greatness by association with his old friends, the late Raymond Carver and the not late (except when it comes to turning out novels) Tobias Wolff. And his last collection of stories, A Multitude of Sins, was a delight. But I get the impression that what he wants to be remembered for are the Frank Bascombe novels: The Sportswriter (1984), Independence Day (1995) and now The Lay of the Land. A clue to this comes in the early pages of chapter 1, where the uncommon word angstrom appears. Of course! It's Rabbit by Richard.

And The Lay of the Land does seem more than either of the others to be Ford's attempt to square up to Updike and give the world his own Harry Angstrom. It seems less interested in doing something new (it copies the structure of Independence Day: the detailed moment-by-moment recreation of the days approaching a public holiday - this time Thanksgiving - and a dramatic event near the end), and is content to examine Bascombe's life with positively forensic attention.

This is not without event - Bascombe gets involved along the way in a bar brawl, a terrorist attack, and several switchbacks of his present and previous love lives - but there's no denying that it does get at times extremely boring. It's hard to tell whether this is deliberate - Frank after all is an estate agent and not a man given to outbursts of emotion - and at times this quality made it the ideal holiday read, as I had nothing else with me to put it down for. Ford's prose is not the match of Updike's, or Salter's for that matter, and in storytelling circles Yates leaves him standing.

Nonetheless the book was not at all a difficult or reluctant read, and there are moments of brilliant observation, such as this assessment of Bascombes' Tibetan employee, Mike Mahoney:

"In this, he's like many of our citizens, including the ones who go back to the Pilgrims: He's armed himself with just enough information, even if it's wrong, to make him believe that what he wants he deserves, that bafflement is a form of curiosity and that these two together form an inner strength that should let him pick all the low-hanging fruit."

This also plays into the Rabbitesque background to the book: the recounts and court challenges to the 2000 Bush/Gore election, which gives Ford a chance to put some choice anti-Bushisms in Bascombe's mouth.

Finally, there is the inevitable impressed satisfaction of reading any book this length, that the author should have managed to sustain the performance for so long, even if we didn't always enjoy it that much (or perhaps, as Forster once suggested, we tend to overpraise long books simply because we have got through them). Oh, and a word about that: my obsession with flagrant page-bloat has been mentioned before, but I think swelling the page count from 496 in the hardback to 726 in the paperback sets a new record. Unless of course you are even more anally retentive than I am about things like that, and know better.

You feel for the guy, but don't understand him, 22 Aug 2005
I read the Sportswriter, and thought it was a 4-star book. The sequel tells about the Independence Day weekend a few years later, when Frank Bascombe has settled more into his divorced life and has become a real estate agent. He is taking his son, who has been showing some troubling behavior, out for the weekend. But first you have to read a large bit where he tries to sell a house to an unhappy couple. Then about his relationship which he hasn't made up his mind up about. When the weekend with his son gets underway, Frank tries to get through to his son, but does not seem too bothered when things don't go smoothly. Although his thoughts are not, his actions are quite unlogical.
I have had trouble with some other American writers more often, and maybe this is because they do not write in a captivating way (for me).



Ford's lyrical sequel to 'The Sportswriter', 10 Sep 2004
Check your pulse if you fail to surrender to the evocative opening to this novel. Frank Bascombe, ex-"Sportswriter", now a middling success at real estate agency in New Jersey, attempts to connect with his anomic son from a failed marriage. Undertaking to improve his 'connection' via a misguided jock's trip though various sporting museums, the truthfulness of this relationship is counterpointed by some less convincing portraits of the new women in Bascombe's life. Mere details - the novel has a wonderful, down-home American drawl and rhythm that defies criticism. Unhestitatingly recommended.

I must be in a minority here..., 27 Feb 2003
Reading all these glowing reviews made me wonder whether I'd read the same book. I bought this on the strength of a few reviews, and good things that I'd heard about The Sportswriter. Never has my opinion of a book been so at odds with the reviews - I thought the book was awful. The narrator was so insufferably smug that I actually panicked halfway through the book. Maybe it wasn't the book - maybe it was me? Maybe I'd missed that it was actually meant to be a slyly satirical novel, and that I'd totally missed the point. Was it actually a comedy in the same vein as The Office, on the surface a documentary but actually an attack on a pompous, smug central character?

I went back and checked. No, it wasn't. It really was that smug and self-satisfied - not just the narrator, but the entire book. I read a lot, and this book still rates in my top five of my most ill-advised purchases ever. Not one that I'll be reading again...

An extraordinary novel about living in the world, 21 Jan 2002
This is an extraordinary book, about what it is to be alive. Ford's sheer level of skill in using the language is a delight; reading "Independence Day" will make you love words for themselves and where they can take you. The action occupies little more than a weekend, but encompasses an epic spiritual journey, told with pace, humour, and the razor-sharp observations of people, places and emotions. Everything about the narrator, Frank, his interior life and his external world, is touchably, touchingly real, and draws you inexorably into the novel from the very first page. The suburban setting and the ordinariness of [most of] the events makes Ford's handling of abstract ideas and huge issues of life, love and belief, utterly compelling and deeply moving.

Ford's most striking - and unusual - achievement in "Independence Day" is the astonishing compassion with which he treats characters, story and theme. There are no grotesques, no stereotypes, no over-simplifications; the author takes no intellectual, emotional or linguistic shortcuts. This is a rich book, honest, entertaining, satisfying, and ultimately profoundly optimistic. Don't be put off by the length!

Luminous, 28 Jan 2001
The sequel to The Sportwriter, Indepenence Day is better still and a worthy Pulitzer Prize winner. Frank Bascombe's story continues with his teenage son experiencing some psychological problems due probably to the trauma of his brother's death and his parent's marriage breakup. This however is not a downtrodden situation, but one luminous with hope and tenderness. Frank shows that you don't have to be a winner to contribute to humanity and that some failure may be valuable in trying to achieve a state of grace. This book will become a classic.

superlative, 21 Sep 2008
You either 'get' Richard Ford or you don't, or rather you either 'get' Frank Bascombe (his hero) or you don't, and so this is a book that divides readers. For me, and for many others, the Frank Bascombe trilogy - the Sportswriter, Independence Day, and The Lay of the Land - is the best stuff written since F Scott Fitzgerald. I think he's the most important writer writing in English today.

But these are only books for people who like 'voice' books - books written by a voice, in a voice, rather than books in which Plot Happens. Not much happens in any of these books. Instead you travel into the consciousness of an unhappy divorced man living in New Jersey, and are present during his efforts to name and individualise his failures, and in his efforts to communicate with his ex wife, Ann, who is referred to as X in this first book, and whom he still loves. You'll have to read to the end of book 3 to find out if they are reunited....

The prose is sensational. There is no greater stylist alive. Those of us who also write for a living read Ford as a sort of literary pacesetter in the mornings, trying (usually in vain) to pick up his sumptuous rhythms.

Absolute Twaddle, 24 Aug 2008
This is so badly written that I'm not even going to make the effort to adequately express how poor this book is.

Ford Ain't No Yates, 21 Jan 2008
After reading Richard Yates's "Revolutionary Road" a couple of years ago I went on to purchase the rest of his novels, all of which were as concise and bleak as his debut.
Richard Ford wrote the introduction to the recent Methuen edition of this book and so when Amazon posted a recommendation for "The Sportswriter" (the tale of a middle-aged, middle-class divorcee who has an affair with a younger woman) I presumed that it would be an equally impressive read. I was wrong. The two writers do not compare.
Where Yates was a master of pessimism by virtue of the fact that he had absolutely no empathy for his characters (usually in order to progress his narrative), Ford labours over his protagonist, Frank Bascombe's most trivial concerns in tedious and over-descriptive prose.
The events in "The Sportswriter" only take place over three or four days yet it takes Ford almost four hundred pages to reach his eventual conclusion.
Despite this overly verbose approach, Ford's writing contains many well-observed insights and musings. Perhaps with the collaboration of a ruthless editor, willing to chop away two-hundred pages of extraneous drivel (in the same way "American Psycho" could've) "The Sportswriter" may have gained the necessary charm to keep the reader engaged.
Male existentialist characterisation and its inherent angst have been examined many times before, by far better and more focused writers than Ford (Bernard Malamud's "Dubin's Lives" for example) and this book really doesn't offer anything distinctive or new with which to commend it.



It's better the second time around, 07 Aug 2007
There's little about sport or the craft of the sportswriter in this book and my biggest challenge has been to convince women that they should read it. But if you are female, I recommend this book particularly, as I thought it a rare and revealing journey through a man's confusion about the loss of love and relationship.
The first time I read this book, I enjoyed it. I had just divorced and the main character's (Frank Bascombe) struggle to reconcile himself to his new state resonated for me.
Years later, in the throes of a happy and fulfilling relationship, I re-read `The Sportswriter' and found new pleasure in it. I think that Ford creates an uncomfortable character, infuriatingly self-reflective and inert at times. In this sense, Bascombe becomes an anti-hero, challenging the reader to examine his or her own condition.

the sportswriter, 01 Aug 2007
The Sportswriter was the first Richard Ford book I'd read, and when I embarked on it, I hadn't read the thoughts on it posted above, which is just as well, or I may have given up on it halfway through. It's a book that is plodding and ponderous in many respects, but, in the same way that you can warm to an introspective, endlessly self analysing friend, it slowly drew me in.
Introspective is a key word here. Frank Bascombe, the sportswriter of the title, is a thirty eight year-old divorced father of three kids given to self reflection on an epic scale. The fact that one of those kids - his first born, Ralph - is dead, accounts for part of this navel gazing, and the book opens with Frank meeting up with his ex wife - named only as X - on the annual pilgrimage to Ralph's grave. The rest of the novel follows Frank over the course of the next few days, during which he takes an unsuccessful trip to Detroit with his new girlfriend Vicki and then visits Vicki's family on their return.
As with Updike's Rabbit books, much of the story is given over to understanding the central character's personality and his motivation for behaving as he does. And there are similarities between the two men - both Harry Angstrom and Frank Bascombe are selfish, indecisive, detached from others to a certain extent, follow their dicks, and lack self insight. The difference is that Frank WANTS to understand himself and life, and much of the novel is dedicated to his thoughts and reminiscences, whereas Harry was happy to amble through life doing what he wanted without really dissecting it cerebrally at all.
Yet for all Frank's endless musing and his view of himself as a good person and as someone who speaks about his feelings - at one stage, he agrees with Vicki that he is a New Age man - he is, like many men who declare themselves modern - deeply selfish, often more so than 'traditional' unreconstructed males who don't self analyse, and his self appraisals lack criticism and objectivity. He looks back, for instance, on the fact that he slept with eighteen different women in the two years after Ralph died and while he was still married to X with fascination, yet never admits to any guilt for how X must have felt about the infidelities.In fact, in his emotions, Frank is so detached as to seem almost Aspergen, although much of this is probably numbness secondary to Ralph's death. At one stage, he thinks back to a period when he taught in college in Boston and lived away from the family home while still married: during this time, he had a long-standing affair with a mysterious and seductive Arab woman. He reflects on her with longing but with no hint of remorse for his infidelity. And, back in the present time, he follows his libido without engaging his brain - he propositions two different women in the same day without thinking how they would feel afterwards or of the implications. Even while he proposes marriage to Vicki, he is thinking that it doesn't have to be forever.

Ford is no Updike, and his sentences lack the delightfulness of the latter's, whose words can be savoured and pored over like exquisite, perfectly formed jewels. In comparison, Ford's tone can feel monotonous and the lack of leavening spirit can make the prose heavy and leaden - what humour there is is not sharp and quick, dancing off the page in a shimmer of sparkle and wit, but considered and deliberate like the rest of the prose. But Ford is expressive and articulate in a more steady, less dazzling way, and there is a considerable slow burn appeal to the novel. Sometimes, a sentence will encapsulate a place or feeling perfectly, as this description of Manhattan when Frank arrives one night: 'Here, out on Seventh and 34th, I feel an unaccustomed lankness, a post-coital midwestern caress to things - the always dusky air still high and hollowish, streets alive with the girdering wheels of hungry traffic that pours past me and quickly vanishes', which perfectly captures the balance between the languorous sense of possibility and the frenetic rush of city life. Admittedly, for every gem like this, there are a few irksome quirks, such as Ford's occasionally grating vocabulary - 'complexer' and 'vivider' instead of more complex /more vivid, 'unexplainably' instead of inexplicably,'lighted' instead of lit, real' twice in the same sentence, and his liberal use of the word 'literal', which seems to crop up every few pages, as well as the unironic, unhistoric use of 'Negroes' which made me cringe a little. At one point, Frank wonders if his African lodger has a 'long aboriginal penis' - no capital on aboriginal, so presumably Ford is referring to an original inhabitant of Africa rather than a native Australian, but the cliche (black man, big knob) still made me cringe a little. And elsewhere, Frank identifies two besuited men getting off a train as 'Jews' with no context to the observation (how did Frank know? etc). But perhaps these are things that didn't cause the same unease back in 1984, when this book was first published.
So, despite the long, rambling, very dreamy style of this book - and Frank admits that 'dreaminess' is a trait of his, so this wandering may be in character - The Sportswriter has enough of interest to commend it. As a picture of alienation, of a man trying his best but hopelessly goofing up again and again, it works well, and many of the peripheral characters - the drawling Southen belle with bite Vicki, her likeable father and neanderthal brother - are portrayed beautifully. All in all, this is a tale of suburban angst which meanders rather than marching, and once you adapt to the pace and style, it has much to offer.


The Lay of Middle Age, 20 Aug 2008
The Lay of the Land is the third and final in the Frank Bascombe trilogy by Richard Ford. Frank is now 55 but still as introspective and self indulgent as ever. Life has moved on, and as well as his first ex-wife Ann he now has a second, Sally, who has flown the nest under bizarre circumstances. Frank has done well from real estate and is now comfortably off in financial terms, but he is as wrapped up in himself as ever. He has had a health fright which haunts him, and ponders endlessly about his life.

The novel spans a few days around Thanksgiving in 2000 at the New Jersey shore where Frank now lives.
His two adult children - his adored daughter Clarissa and his socially awkward son Paul - are due round for Thanksgiving dinner with their respective partners. Frank is tying up loose ends before Thanksgiving: seeing to some business with his real estate employee Mike Mahoney, meeting with Ann, doing his good deed bit as a Sponsor (a sort of pop in pop out Samaritan for those whose angst is mild rather than of suicidal proportions). And since Frank has an impending visit to the Mayo Clinic shortly after Thanksgiving, where his health problem (treatable prostatic cancer) will be reviewed, these few days also serve as time to remenesce about his life and revisit old haunts.

As with the previous two novels in the Frank Bascombe series, it is difficult to ascertain how much of Frank's often long-winded self absorption is intended to be staggeringly me-me-me obsessed and how much Richard Ford feels is normal or even admirable. At over 700 pages, the novel is long and it takes time to get into the self-mulling style of it; to adapt to Frank-think where every part of his life is analyzed, categorized and labelled, but in a peculiarly un self-critical way. Reading this, I was struck - as I was with The Sportswriter before it - at the way in which Frank's obsession with his own life is devoid of both self criticism and humour. It seems amazing to me that a middle-aged person can dwell so unremittingly on himself and his own life with no sense of irony. If anyone I know seriously presented their life as capital lettered interludes such as The Permanent Period, The Middle Way and so on, their friends would quickly slag their self importance out of them. This is not to say that the cultural difference between Ford's world and many Brits is due to lack of empathy on our side - as readers I think Brits are always ready to emote and empathise with those in real emotional or physical straits, including those trapped in their own lives due to endogenous depression rather than 'real' physical or mental hardship. But Frank's navel gazing seems devoid of any real melancholy; it's almost flat in affect, which makes it difficult to sympathise or empathise with him.
Add to that the fact that Frank has other unattractive character traits - he is rude and patronizing to his Tibetan employee Mike, stomps all over Mike's career prospects with no remorse or apology, and, in a chance encounter with a stranger with whom he could easily have extended the comfort of kinship (a man who, like Frank, had lost a son), he doesn't even consider offering this tiny balm. Frank is not only self obsessed but selfish with it, which makes for a character to whom it's hard to warm.

Yet The Lay of the Land is one of those slow burners that one grows into. For the first hundred pages or so, I was rolling my eyes at the creeping pace, many meanders down sidetracks such as real estate prices, and lack of event, but, as with The Sportswriter, I eventually locked into pace with the novel. There are times when Ford is funny, and he is always a master of language - not someone who beguiles with flashes of brilliance, but a writer who consistently delivers good quality prose. And towards the end of the book, events do start to occur outside of Frank's head, and Ford conveys these effortlessly and convincingly, in the matter-of-fact way that a stolid guy like Frank would experience them.

The Lay of the Land, then, is one of those unusual books which takes a while to get into because of its concentration on very ordinary preoccupations, but which becomes engrossing in the way that only very well expressed normality can be.

My kind of guy, 26 Mar 2008
I wasn't always sure what was going on for Frank Bascombe in this book and sometimes I stopped to ask myself why I was enjoying these 700+ pages so much. I think it was to do with the fact that I like this man. I felt when I had finished that a friend of mine had moved away to another country. Exactly my age, I was glad to see that one of my contemporaries had some of the bewilderment which seems to be a part of my own life. Slow, gentle, thoughtful. This book took me through the first part of a wet, Scottish winter! Much needed. I could have gone on for another 300 pages.

Frank is Rich, 12 Nov 2007
Proof (if proof were needed) that Ford can be bracketed with Roth, Bellow and Updike as exponents of the extended 20th century Great American Novel. On meeting, Ford's southern charm is evident, but his famously prickly hubris and hauteur has made him less prolific than his forebears and contemporaries. Though his recent 'Women with Men' garnered deservedly mixed reviews, here, with the effort evident on each page, Ford delivers one of the most enjoyable and insightful books of the last decade. There is an original use of language and phraseology, a modernity which to some extent alienates us from his 60ish narrator but distances Ford from his competition.

Frank (ex-'Sportswriter') Bascombe is not - as Ford rightly denies - an alter ego, though both live on the East Coast and are comfortably late middle-aged. Frank now is seriously wealthy, rocketing property prices inflating the value of both his NJ shore real estate business and his own ocean view mansion. Counterpointing this are continuing unresolved issues, this novel being set (like the Faulkner / Pulitzer winning 'Independence Day') around a traditional holiday where Frank's age and sentimentalism augurs a crisis.

Frank's prolonged internal soliloquy takes up most of the wordage. It contains some of the most sublime self-consciousness, and self-deception. He is successful, gung-ho and energetic. Money is made and lost almost carelessly. But while he has a peripatetic business partner, his life partners are estranged, and his children distant and bewildering. His failing health is a critical subtext: Frank has prostate cancer (treatable). But there are references to heart murmurs and palpitations, which are less evidence of coronary disease, rather unacknowledged stress and incipient nervous disorder and potential breakdown.

All considered, it is a better novel than 'Independence Day'. The odd denouement detracts a little from this wonderful book; but one reads to the end, which is Ford's stated invocation of success as a writer. In part because the end is unsatisfying, tetralogy beckons: Merry Christmas Mr Bascombe? Bascombe at Rest?

Lay of the Land is hopefully final chapter of Bascombe., 20 Sep 2007
Highly uninspiring and hopefully end of story for Frank Bascombe. This book hits the laws of diminishing returns -- originally out of the 'dirty realism' school, Ford was celebratory with his realism with the Sportswriter. Indepence Day was a nice build on it. However, Bascombe by the time we get to Lay of the Land is a complete jerk. I had no sympathy for him. Or any of the characters. When the earlier books had a sense of wonder about the world, Lay of the Land has none. The wisdom that Ford tries to give us through Bascombe comes off as rambling. The end was ridiculous, like a bad John Irving plotline (Russian twins kill his neighbours and shoots Bascombe, at the very moment, he is going to rescue his formerly gay daughter from the clutches of the polcie for running down a highwayman? -- please.) Ford still writes beautifully but ultimately has nothing to say anymore. Thus the one star. If anything, this book made me mourn for Carver.

Now I lay me down to sleep..., 16 Jul 2007
Richard Ford has impeccable taste in fiction, as we know from his introductions to UK editions of James Salter's Light Years and Richard Yates's Revolutionary Road. He also enjoys greatness by association with his old friends, the late Raymond Carver and the not late (except when it comes to turning out novels) Tobias Wolff. And his last collection of stories, A Multitude of Sins, was a delight. But I get the impression that what he wants to be remembered for are the Frank Bascombe novels: The Sportswriter (1984), Independence Day (1995) and now The Lay of the Land. A clue to this comes in the early pages of chapter 1, where the uncommon word angstrom appears. Of course! It's Rabbit by Richard.

And The Lay of the Land does seem more than either of the others to be Ford's attempt to square up to Updike and give the world his own Harry Angstrom. It seems less interested in doing something new (it copies the structure of Independence Day: the detailed moment-by-moment recreation of the days approaching a public holiday - this time Thanksgiving - and a dramatic event near the end), and is content to examine Bascombe's life with positively forensic attention.

This is not without event - Bascombe gets involved along the way in a bar brawl, a terrorist attack, and several switchbacks of his present and previous love lives - but there's no denying that it does get at times extremely boring. It's hard to tell whether this is deliberate - Frank after all is an estate agent and not a man given to outbursts of emotion - and at times this quality made it the ideal holiday read, as I had nothing else with me to put it down for. Ford's prose is not the match of Updike's, or Salter's for that matter, and in storytelling circles Yates leaves him standing.

Nonetheless the book was not at all a difficult or reluctant read, and there are moments of brilliant observation, such as this assessment of Bascombes' Tibetan employee, Mike Mahoney:

"In this, he's like many of our citizens, including the ones who go back to the Pilgrims: He's armed himself with just enough information, even if it's wrong, to make him believe that what he wants he deserves, that bafflement is a form of curiosity and that these two together form an inner strength that should let him pick all the low-hanging fruit."

This also plays into the Rabbitesque background to the book: the recounts and court challenges to the 2000 Bush/Gore election, which gives Ford a chance to put some choice anti-Bushisms in Bascombe's mouth.

Finally, there is the inevitable impressed satisfaction of reading any book this length, that the author should have managed to sustain the performance for so long, even if we didn't always enjoy it that much (or perhaps, as Forster once suggested, we tend to overpraise long books simply because we have got through them). Oh, and a word about that: my obsession with flagrant page-bloat has been mentioned before, but I think swelling the page count from 496 in the hardback to 726 in the paperback sets a new record. Unless of course you are even more anally retentive than I am about things like that, and know better.

You feel for the guy, but don't understand him, 22 Aug 2005
I read the Sportswriter, and thought it was a 4-star book. The sequel tells about the Independence Day weekend a few years later, when Frank Bascombe has settled more into his divorced life and has become a real estate agent. He is taking his son, who has been showing some troubling behavior, out for the weekend. But first you have to read a large bit where he tries to sell a house to an unhappy couple. Then about his relationship which he hasn't made up his mind up about. When the weekend with his son gets underway, Frank tries to get through to his son, but does not seem too bothered when things don't go smoothly. Although his thoughts are not, his actions are quite unlogical.
I have had trouble with some other American writers more often, and maybe this is because they do not write in a captivating way (for me).



Ford's lyrical sequel to 'The Sportswriter', 10 Sep 2004
Check your pulse if you fail to surrender to the evocative opening to this novel. Frank Bascombe, ex-"Sportswriter", now a middling success at real estate agency in New Jersey, attempts to connect with his anomic son from a failed marriage. Undertaking to improve his 'connection' via a misguided jock's trip though various sporting museums, the truthfulness of this relationship is counterpointed by some less convincing portraits of the new women in Bascombe's life. Mere details - the novel has a wonderful, down-home American drawl and rhythm that defies criticism. Unhestitatingly recommended.

I must be in a minority here..., 27 Feb 2003
Reading all these glowing reviews made me wonder whether I'd read the same book. I bought this on the strength of a few reviews, and good things that I'd heard about The Sportswriter. Never has my opinion of a book been so at odds with the reviews - I thought the book was awful. The narrator was so insufferably smug that I actually panicked halfway through the book. Maybe it wasn't the book - maybe it was me? Maybe I'd missed that it was actually meant to be a slyly satirical novel, and that I'd totally missed the point. Was it actually a comedy in the same vein as The Office, on the surface a documentary but actually an attack on a pompous, smug central character?

I went back and checked. No, it wasn't. It really was that smug and self-satisfied - not just the narrator, but the entire book. I read a lot, and this book still rates in my top five of my most ill-advised purchases ever. Not one that I'll be reading again...

An extraordinary novel about living in the world, 21 Jan 2002
This is an extraordinary book, about what it is to be alive. Ford's sheer level of skill in using the language is a delight; reading "Independence Day" will make you love words for themselves and where they can take you. The action occupies little more than a weekend, but encompasses an epic spiritual journey, told with pace, humour, and the razor-sharp observations of people, places and emotions. Everything about the narrator, Frank, his interior life and his external world, is touchably, touchingly real, and draws you inexorably into the novel from the very first page. The suburban setting and the ordinariness of [most of] the events makes Ford's handling of abstract ideas and huge issues of life, love and belief, utterly compelling and deeply moving.

Ford's most striking - and unusual - achievement in "Independence Day" is the astonishing compassion with which he treats characters, story and theme. There are no grotesques, no stereotypes, no over-simplifications; the author takes no intellectual, emotional or linguistic shortcuts. This is a rich book, honest, entertaining, satisfying, and ultimately profoundly optimistic. Don't be put off by the length!

Luminous, 28 Jan 2001
The sequel to The Sportwriter, Indepenence Day is better still and a worthy Pulitzer Prize winner. Frank Bascombe's story continues with his teenage son experiencing some psychological problems due probably to the trauma of his brother's death and his parent's marriage breakup. This however is not a downtrodden situation, but one luminous with hope and tenderness. Frank shows that you don't have to be a winner to contribute to humanity and that some failure may be valuable in trying to achieve a state of grace. This book will become a classic.

We dash the black river, its flats smooth as stone..., 10 Jul 2007
Poetry in prose and technically brilliant. Never heard of James Salter before picking up this book. Perhaps because the American tradition is to prefer transparent plain text and books which are all plot and character (rather than beautiful writing - surely at least as important!), Salter just doesn't get that much press.

In any case, the writing is astonishing. Shocking to start with - the briefest of sentences like dabs of paint, rhythmic: "We dash the black river, its flats smooth as stone. Not a ship, not a dinghy, not one cry of white. The water lies broken, cracked from the wind."

And amazingly, the beauty of the prose doesn't get in the way of the meaning, the plot and the characters. In describing the main female character, Nedra, Salter (rarely and interestingly) begins speaking as the author in first person: "Before her were scissors, paper-thin boxes of cheese, French knives. On her shoulders there was perfume. I am going to describe her life from the inside outward, from its core, the house as well, rooms in the morning sunlight...Salter continues with one of the longest sentences of the book in this direct address.

Highly recommended.


Poetry in prose, 20 Aug 1999
Not a traditionally told story, the plot is almost entirely incidental. What we are left with is the language, lyrical and beautiful, that can veer from a description of a family to spoons in a drawer, and make it seem like a logical extension of a house and its inhabitants.

Profoundly moving, 11 Jul 1999
I read this book while vacationing in Italy and attempting to cope with my divorce, a sudden and unexpected loss in my life. This book will knock you out. You'll never forget it.

Beautiful novel, 29 Jun 1999
A wonderfully-written, poignant portrait of a marriage. The end filled me with sadness and the chapters were consistently memorable. Salter is a miniaturist -- that is, he very effectively evokes isolated scenes with memorable details -- but he manages to convey time's passage as well. Salter has to be one of the top English stylists of the century. I marked the novel down one star only because I thought the fate of one of the central characters was not believable.

The Death of a Marriage Described in Lyrical Prose, 08 Apr 1999
This novel, set in the period between the mid 1950s and mid 1970s in New York, is the story of the marriage of well-off Viri and Nedra. The chapters are episodic, each one painting a picture of the marriage. Much of the plot (what there is of plot that is)seems to takes place at small intimate dinner parties. The prose is quite beautiful - thick and textured, lyrical and evocative. But it only keeps us distanced from these already remote characters. I felt like I was observing Viri and Nedra under water, or through a thick layer of fog. Why are Viri and Nedra having their respective affairs? Why is the marriage crumbling, while they remain polite and affable with each other? The author never answers these questions other than to suggest it is collapsing under the weight of their own ennui and vacuity.The tumultuous political and historical events of the Sixties never seem to touch the characters in the book. I must admit that the first half of the book left me cold. Viri and Nedra seem self-indulgent people, not worthy of the readers attention. What kept me with the story was the exquisite prose style that Salter has crafted. But more and more I was drawn into and touched by their very sad story even as I still felt distanced from them. Just to immerse oneself in Salter's beautiful writing style made this a worthwhile reading experience.

superlative, 21 Sep 2008
You either 'get' Richard Ford or you don't, or rather you either 'get' Frank Bascombe (his hero) or you don't, and so this is a book that divides readers. For me, and for many others, the Frank Bascombe trilogy - the Sportswriter, Independence Day, and The Lay of the Land - is the best stuff written since F Scott Fitzgerald. I think he's the most important writer writing in English today.

But these are only books for people who like 'voice' books - books written by a voice, in a voice, rather than books in which Plot Happens. Not much happens in any of these books. Instead you travel into the consciousness of an unhappy divorced man living in New Jersey, and are present during his efforts to name and individualise his failures, and in his efforts to communicate with his ex wife, Ann, who is referred to as X in this first book, and whom he still loves. You'll have to read to the end of book 3 to find out if they are reunited....

The prose is sensational. There is no greater stylist alive. Those of us who also write for a living read Ford as a sort of literary pacesetter in the mornings, trying (usually in vain) to pick up his sumptuous rhythms.

Absolute Twaddle, 24 Aug 2008
This is so badly written that I'm not even going to make the effort to adequately express how poor this book is.

Ford Ain't No Yates, 21 Jan 2008
After reading Richard Yates's "Revolutionary Road" a couple of years ago I went on to purchase the rest of his novels, all of which were as concise and bleak as his debut.
Richard Ford wrote the introduction to the recent Methuen edition of this book and so when Amazon posted a recommendation for "The Sportswriter" (the tale of a middle-aged, middle-class divorcee who has an affair with a younger woman) I presumed that it would be an equally impressive read. I was wrong. The two writers do not compare.
Where Yates was a master of pessimism by virtue of the fact that he had absolutely no empathy for his characters (usually in order to progress his narrative), Ford labours over his protagonist, Frank Bascombe's most trivial concerns in tedious and over-descriptive prose.
The events in "The Sportswriter" only take place over three or four days yet it takes Ford almost four hundred pages to reach his eventual conclusion.
Despite this overly verbose approach, Ford's writing contains many well-observed insights and musings. Perhaps with the collaboration of a ruthless editor, willing to chop away two-hundred pages of extraneous drivel (in the same way "American Psycho" could've) "The Sportswriter" may have gained the necessary charm to keep the reader engaged.
Male existentialist characterisation and its inherent angst have been examined many times before, by far better and more focused writers than Ford (Bernard Malamud's "Dubin's Lives" for example) and this book really doesn't offer anything distinctive or new with which to commend it.



It's better the second time around, 07 Aug 2007
There's little about sport or the craft of the sportswriter in this book and my biggest challenge has been to convince women that they should read it. But if you are female, I recommend this book particularly, as I thought it a rare and revealing journey through a man's confusion about the loss of love and relationship.
The first time I read this book, I enjoyed it. I had just divorced and the main character's (Frank Bascombe) struggle to reconcile himself to his new state resonated for me.
Years later, in the throes of a happy and fulfilling relationship, I re-read `The Sportswriter' and found new pleasure in it. I think that Ford creates an uncomfortable character, infuriatingly self-reflective and inert at times. In this sense, Bascombe becomes an anti-hero, challenging the reader to examine his or her own condition.

the sportswriter, 01 Aug 2007
The Sportswriter was the first Richard Ford book I'd read, and when I embarked on it, I hadn't read the thoughts on it posted above, which is just as well, or I may have given up on it halfway through. It's a book that is plodding and ponderous in many respects, but, in the same way that you can warm to an introspective, endlessly self analysing friend, it slowly drew me in.
Introspective is a key word here. Frank Bascombe, the sportswriter of the title, is a thirty eight year-old divorced father of three kids given to self reflection on an epic scale. The fact that one of those kids - his first born, Ralph - is dead, accounts for part of this navel gazing, and the book opens with Frank meeting up with his ex wife - named only as X - on the annual pilgrimage to Ralph's grave. The rest of the novel follows Frank over the course of the next few days, during which he takes an unsuccessful trip to Detroit with his new girlfriend Vicki and then visits Vicki's family on their return.
As with Updike's Rabbit books, much of the story is given over to understanding the central character's personality and his motivation for behaving as he does. And there are similarities between the two men - both Harry Angstrom and Frank Bascombe are selfish, indecisive, detached from others to a certain extent, follow their dicks, and lack self insight. The difference is that Frank WANTS to understand himself and life, and much of the novel is dedicated to his thoughts and reminiscences, whereas Harry was happy to amble through life doing what he wanted without really dissecting it cerebrally at all.
Yet for all Frank's endless musing and his view of himself as a good person and as someone who speaks about his feelings - at one stage, he agrees with Vicki that he is a New Age man - he is, like many men who declare themselves modern - deeply selfish, often more so than 'traditional' unreconstructed males who don't self analyse, and his self appraisals lack criticism and objectivity. He looks back, for instance, on the fact that he slept with eighteen different women in the two years after Ralph died and while he was still married to X with fascination, yet never admits to any guilt for how X must have felt about the infidelities.In fact, in his emotions, Frank is so detached as to seem almost Aspergen, although much of this is probably numbness secondary to Ralph's death. At one stage, he thinks back to a period when he taught in college in Boston and lived away from the family home while still married: during this time, he had a long-standing affair with a mysterious and seductive Arab woman. He reflects on her with longing but with no hint of remorse for his infidelity. And, back in the present time, he follows his libido without engaging his brain - he propositions two different women in the same day without thinking how they would feel afterwards or of the implications. Even while he proposes marriage to Vicki, he is thinking that it doesn't have to be forever.

Ford is no Updike, and his sentences lack the delightfulness of the latter's, whose words can be savoured and pored over like exquisite, perfectly formed jewels. In comparison, Ford's tone can feel monotonous and the lack of leavening spirit can make the prose heavy and leaden - what humour there is is not sharp and quick, dancing off the page in a shimmer of sparkle and wit, but considered and deliberate like the rest of the prose. But Ford is expressive and articulate in a more steady, less dazzling way, and there is a considerable slow burn appeal to the novel. Sometimes, a sentence will encapsulate a place or feeling perfectly, as this description of Manhattan when Frank arrives one night: 'Here, out on Seventh and 34th, I feel an unaccustomed lankness, a post-coital midwestern caress to things - the always dusky air still high and hollowish, streets alive with the girdering wheels of hungry traffic that pours past me and quickly vanishes', which perfectly captures the balance between the languorous sense of possibility and the frenetic rush of city life. Admittedly, for every gem like this, there are a few irksome quirks, such as Ford's occasionally grating vocabulary - 'complexer' and 'vivider' instead of more complex /more vivid, 'unexplainably' instead of inexplicably,'lighted' instead of lit, real' twice in the same sentence, and his liberal use of the word 'literal', which seems to crop up every few pages, as well as the unironic, unhistoric use of 'Negroes' which made me cringe a little. At one point, Frank wonders if his African lodger has a 'long aboriginal penis' - no capital on aboriginal, so presumably Ford is referring to an original inhabitant of Africa rather than a native Australian, but the cliche (black man, big knob) still made me cringe a little. And elsewhere, Frank identifies two besuited men getting off a train as 'Jews' with no context to the observation (how did Frank know? etc). But perhaps these are things that didn't cause the same unease back in 1984, when this book was first published.
So, despite the long, rambling, very dreamy style of this book - and Frank admits that 'dreaminess' is a trait of his, so this wandering may be in character - The Sportswriter has enough of interest to commend it. As a picture of alienation, of a man trying his best but hopelessly goofing up again and again, it works well, and many of the peripheral characters - the drawling Southen belle with bite Vicki, her likeable father and neanderthal brother - are portrayed beautifully. All in all, this is a tale of suburban angst which meanders rather than marching, and once you adapt to the pace and style, it has much to offer.


The Lay of Middle Age, 20 Aug 2008
The Lay of the Land is the third and final in the Frank Bascombe trilogy by Richard Ford. Frank is now 55 but still as introspective and self indulgent as ever. Life has moved on, and as well as his first ex-wife Ann he now has a second, Sally, who has flown the nest under bizarre circumstances. Frank has done well from real estate and is now comfortably off in financial terms, but he is as wrapped up in himself as ever. He has had a health fright which haunts him, and ponders endlessly about his life.

The novel spans a few days around Thanksgiving in 2000 at the New Jersey shore where Frank now lives.
His two adult children - his adored daughter Clarissa and his socially awkward son Paul - are due round for Thanksgiving dinner with their respective partners. Frank is tying up loose ends before Thanksgiving: seeing to some business with his real estate employee Mike Mahoney, meeting with Ann, doing his good deed bit as a Sponsor (a sort of pop in pop out Samaritan for those whose angst is mild rather than of suicidal proportions). And since Frank has an impending visit to the Mayo Clinic shortly after Thanksgiving, where his health problem (treatable prostatic cancer) will be reviewed, these few days also serve as time to remenesce about his life and revisit old haunts.

As with the previous two novels in the Frank Bascombe series, it is difficult to ascertain how much of Frank's often long-winded self absorption is intended to be staggeringly me-me-me obsessed and how much Richard Ford feels is normal or even admirable. At over 700 pages, the novel is long and it takes time to get into the self-mulling style of it; to adapt to Frank-think where every part of his life is analyzed, categorized and labelled, but in a peculiarly un self-critical way. Reading this, I was struck - as I was with The Sportswriter before it - at the way in which Frank's obsession with his own life is devoid of both self criticism and humour. It seems amazing to me that a middle-aged person can dwell so unremittingly on himself and his own life with no sense of irony. If anyone I know seriously presented their life as capital lettered interludes such as The Permanent Period, The Middle Way and so on, their friends would quickly slag their self importance out of them. This is not to say that the cultural difference between Ford's world and many Brits is due to lack of empathy on our side - as readers I think Brits are always ready to emote and empathise with those in real emotional or physical straits, including those trapped in their own lives due to endogenous depression rather than 'real' physical or mental hardship. But Frank's navel gazing seems devoid of any real melancholy; it's almost flat in affect, which makes it difficult to sympathise or empathise with him.
Add to that the fact that Frank has other unattractive character traits - he is rude and patronizing to his Tibetan employee Mike, stomps all over Mike's career prospects with no remorse or apology, and, in a chance encounter with a stranger with whom he could easily have extended the comfort of kinship (a man who, like Frank, had lost a son), he doesn't even consider offering this tiny balm. Frank is not only self obsessed but selfish with it, which makes for a character to whom it's hard to warm.

Yet The Lay of the Land is one of those slow burners that one grows into. For the first hundred pages or so, I was rolling my eyes at the creeping pace, many meanders down sidetracks such as real estate prices, and lack of event, but, as with The Sportswriter, I eventually locked into pace with the novel. There are times when Ford is funny, and he is always a master of language - not someone wh