BIBLIOTECA TECLA SALA February 15, 2018 Let Me Be Frank With You Richard Ford

Introduction

A brilliant new work that returns Richard Ford to the hallowed territory that sealed his reputation as an American master: the world of Frank Bascombe, and the landscape of his celebrated novels The Sportswriter, the Pulitzer Prize and PEN/Faulkner winning Independence Day, and The Lay of the Land.

In his trio of world-acclaimed novels portraying the life of an entire American generation, Richard Ford has imagined one of the most indelible and widely discussed characters in modern literature, Frank Bascombe. Through Bascombe—protean, funny, profane, wise, often inappropriate—we’ve witnessed the aspirations, sorrows, longings, achievements and failings of an American life in the twilight of the twentieth century. Contents:

Now, in Let Me Be Frank with You, Ford reinvents Introduction 1 Bascombe in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy. In four richly luminous narratives, Bascombe (and Ford) Biography: Richard 2 attempts to reconcile, interpret and console a world Ford undone by calamity. It is a moving and wondrous and extremely funny odyssey through the America we live Living with Frank 3-5 in at this moment. Ford is here again working with the Bascombe: an maturity and brilliance of a writer at the absolute interview with height of his powers. Richard Ford

[https://www.harpercollins.com/9780061692062/let- Notes 6 me-be-frank-with-you]

Page 2

Biography: Richard Ford

Richard Ford, (born February 16, the novellas comprisedin Let Me 1944, Jackson, Mississippi, U.S.), Be Frank with You (2014). American writer of novels and short stories about lonely and In Wildlife (1990) Ford depicted a damaged people. teenager in Montana who witnesses the breakup of his Ford attended Michigan State parents’ marriage. Canada (2012) University (B.A., 1966), chronicles the experiences of a Washington University Law man whose life is shaped by his School, and the University of parents’ bungled attempt to rob a California, Irvine (M.A., 1970), and bank during his youth. Rock he subsequently taught at several Springs (1987), Women with American colleges and Men (1997), and A Multitude of universities. He worked as a Sins (2001) are collections of sportswriter during the 1980s. short stories, the last about the complications of love and Ford’s first novel, A Piece of My infidelity. Heart (1976), is set on an island in the southern Mississippi River and Ford also coedited The Best contrasts an intellectual with an American Short Stories of impulsive man in an atmosphere 1990 (1990) and edited The of menace and violence; critics Granta Book of the American Short noted the influence of William Story (1991) and The New Granta Faulkner. The Ultimate Good Book of the American Short Luck (1981) presents an American Story (2007). The in Mexico who is drawn memoir Between Them: reluctantly into violence and Remembering My Parents was murder as he tries to get his published in 2017. girlfriend’s brother out of jail. Frank Bascombe, the protagonist [https://www.britannica.com/ of The Sportswriter (1986), is an biography/Richard-Ford] alienated middle-aged sportswriter reflecting on his life. He returns in the Pulitzer Prize- winning Independence Day (1995), in which he is divorced and leading an empty life until he spends an emotional and spiritual Fourth of July weekend with his son. Completing the Bascombe trilogy is The Lay of the Land (2006), in which Bascombe, now a suburban real estate agent, faces aging, further marital problems, estrangement from his adult children, and cancer. Ford detailed Bascombe’s senescence in

Page 3

Living with Frank Bascome: an interview with Richard Ford

Richard Ford recently exchanged suffer. Afterward, we drove from Parkinson’s in an emails with Deborah Treisman, down to the Jersey Shore—the “extended-care facility”; in who has been his editor at the scene of many Bascombe the final piece, he visits a magazine since 2004, on the episodes—and I was so affected dying old friend, who chooses subject of his new book, Let Me by the storm’s destruction of to confess a past betrayal. In Be Frank with You, a series of four human life and expectancy. I all four, Frank is forced to novellas. Let Me Be Frank is drove home that day with reflect on some element of the Ford’s fourth work of fiction sentences skirling in my head— past. Why send his thoughts chronicling the life of Frank sentences that I recognized as repeatedly backward in this Bascombe, who is the hero of Frank Bascombe way? the novels The Sportswriter sentences. Neruda said of the All these novels and stories are (1986), Independence Day (1995), instigating experience of a piece at least partly about Frank’s and The Lay of the Land (2006). of imaginative writing, effort to live vitally in the “Something kicked in my soul.” present. They’re all told in Eight years ago, you thought And, although I don’t believe in present-tense verbs, as though The Lay of the Land would souls, I do believe in something to corroborate Wittgenstein’s be the final book in the Frank kicking somewhere that assertion that “to live eternally is Bascombe series. What do you becomes a call to language. That to live in the present.” It seems think has made you go back to happened to me. And what that to me that to live in the present Frank again (and again)? kicking was about, I decided, (and, of course, that’s a term of was a curiosity regarding the A number of forces were acting art, which merely stresses one’s effects of the storm on peoples’ on me. First, of course, was the effort to live vitally at all) … but lives—effects that the broadcast force that Thoreau was referring to live vitally one has to escape media wouldn’t uncover. And to when he said that a writer is the vitiating grasp of the that’s what I set out to do with someone with nothing to do past. Being a mid-century these four stories. Emerson said who finds something to do. I Southerner, I know this is that “nature does not like to be qualified, as I mostly have for true. Most novels—mine among observed.” I thought that the years. Second was that during them—have something to do imagination—mine, in this the promotional tour for my last with assessing how the past case—could perhaps do some novel, Canada, a surprising impinges on the present and observing of what otherwise number of people who showed affects it. So, so, so … my books wouldn’t be noticed. up to have books signed said, and stories inevitably ask for a quite touchingly (to me), that Each of the four novellas in visit to the past, in order that they wished I’d write another Let Me Be Frank with You the present be manumitted. Frank Bascombe book. Now, revolves around a different Frank volunteers in support of neither of these things ought to event: in the first, Frank goes soldiers returning from compel anybody to write a book, to see his former house, which Afghanistan and Iraq, who are and they probably didn’t. But has been demolished by at risk for depression or they affected me. Hurricane Sandy; in the suicide. His wife, Sally, is a second, he is visited by a What did compel me was grief counsellor, kept busy in former occupant of his Hurricane Sandy. My wife, the aftermath of Sandy. The current house who has a Kristina, and I were in New four encounters Frank has in tragic story to tell; in the York when the storm came the course of Let Me Be third, he goes to visit his ex- along, though we didn’t Frank with You are centered wife, Ann, who is suffering

Page 4

around loss or impending In The Sportswriter, Frank was better when it bears the least death. Has Frank come in his thirties; in Independence resemblance to its maker, when its somehow full circle from the Day, he was in his forties; in The maker has been able to fashion loss of his son, Ralph, in The Lay of the Land, in his fifties. something completely separate. As Now, in these novellas, Frank is you point out, though, I haven’t Sportswriter? retired, in his late sixties, and precisely done that. But I’m always That’s a tricky question; tricky, there’s a kind of elegiac trying. In the main, I think it’s true undertone to your writing. How that Frank is a nicer man than I because to answer it in the terms much has Frank changed in the am. Demonstrably. it’s asked is to think of Frank as a course of the four books? person, which he’s not. He’s an Frank Bascombe is far from a instrument and a vessel, made of I don’t really know how much Frank perfect man. But, in his own language, which I fill up with all has changed. I just go on making him flawed way, he offers up an sorts of things that are running up, with a somewhat reluctant but intelligent, idiosyncratic, and through my mind. Which is to still inevitable eye to his past often trenchant critique of “selves.” A more interesting American social, political, and say, how he behaves might’ve question to me is whether any of us cultural life. Is he a vessel for been different at a different change at all, and whether the some of your own thinking about moment in my life. Of course I do notions of change and human the state of the country, or do try to “match” things that development aren’t just similar to you sometimes, or often, disagree interest me with Frank’s fictive notions of character, which seem to with him? Does he surprise you? age, his fictive circumstances, his me to be constructs, built against fictive past, etc. And doing that the bewilderment of chaotic Frank’s not a vessel for my own predigested beliefs. I sometimes requires a lot of concentration on life. What did Frost say … a momentary stay against confusion. cause him to voice points of view “him.” I’ve discovered that in the that I might, in fact, sympathize with, hot crucible that is the writing of Is there a scene in your depiction but only to subject those points of a novel, this concentration finds of Frank’s life that you’re most view to scrutiny and defamation and and invents connections where proud of? hilarity. And does he surprise before connections might not me? Never. I’m his author. I have existed or been intended. In Pride doesn’t figure into anything I authorize everything he says, does, do as a writer. I might’ve said at other words, novel-writing is and thinks. I’m sorry, though, you some time that I was proud of highly adventitious—and, if it don’t think he’s a perfect man. I something I’d written, but that was want him to be. succeeds, it relies on a lot of either an exaggeration or a luck. To me, when you ask if misstatement. It’s an honor to get to Frank refers to life as “a Frank’s pursuits in these stories do it. Period. Sometimes things matter of gradual suggest that he’s over his son’s work out. subtraction.” One could just early death, that seems just Before writing The Sportswriter, as easily argue that it’s a amazing—amazing that such you had worked as a sportswriter matter of gradual addition or matters over all these years yourself—and, like Frank, you accumulation. Is it a matter of should be even fancifully were also a novelist. Since then, the glass half full or half connectable. And yet it doesn’t your lives have largely diverged. empty? Do you think he’s seem far-fetched to ask it. So I You became a full-time writer; right? think it’s just that hot crucible of Frank became a real-estate agent novel-writing (and of art of any in New Jersey. How much of you It doesn’t matter if I think he’s kind) that allows these apparent is in Frank, or Frank in you? right. It matters if I think that what he says is interesting, and I interdependencies. I always think that if Frank and I agree on anything, I’m probably not do. What you say about the

doing my job well enough. I believe accumulations of the past is that a piece of imaginative work is

Page 5

right. And interesting. Both are approach to your recurring [https://www.newyorker.com/ interesting. Both are provisional, characters? Do Rabbit and books/page-turner/living-frank- and therefore open to be thought Frank have anything in bascombe-interview-richard-ford] about seriously. common?

New Jersey is central to Frank’s Well, that’s complicated. I have life and thoughts. Why did you to say, with no reluctance, that if choose the state for Frank, and John hadn’t written the Rabbit how did you become intimate books I might not have thought enough with it to write about it (as his contemporary) that the way that you do? three, then four, books about a real-estate salesman in New Well, again … Thoreau … a man Jersey could be plausible. But with nothing to do there are other sets of finding something to do. I was connected novels that are living in New Jersey when I set important to me, too—Ford about writing The Sportswriter. I Madox Ford’s Tietjens books, just looked around and asked notably. I have to admit here myself, “What do I know anything that I’ve read all the way about?” I knew, it seemed, a few through only Rabbit Is Rich, and things about New Jersey. I liked precious little of the others. New Jersey quite a lot. I still do. I Terrible, I admit. But Updike’s thought, Well. Set your novel books are, crucially, narrated in there. And, when I made that the third person, which creates determination, it occurred to me a very different moral that the standard, tired line about positioning from books narrated New Jersey was that it was like in the first—as my books the back of an old radio. But I just are. But. John Updike was a didn’t think that. So I made the great and majestic writer, and book—in a contrarian’s way anything I might’ve learned from (which then became a salient him I gladly concede. feature of Frank Bascombe’s character)—a paean to New There was talk a few years Jersey. I took the opposite tack ago about The Sportswriter and kept going for thirty-plus being adapted as a miniseries years. It’s never seemed for HBO. Is that happening? wrong. New Jersey is a wonderful Can you imagine Frank’s life place; I love it. being translated to a different medium? When talking about Frank Bascombe, people often bring HBO dropped its option after a up John Updike’s creation few years of paying me well for Rabbit Angstrom, who was the it. My books are my books and hero of four novels and a always will be. If people want to novella, written in the course of make a musical out of them, all decades. Do you think that you they have to do is pay me a lot and Updike have had a similar of money, and the deal’s done.

BIBLIOTECA TECLA SALA

Avinguda de Josep Tarradellas i Joan, 44 Telèfon: 93 403 26 30 [email protected] Els dilluns, de 15.30 a 21 h De dimarts a divendres, de 9 a 21 h Els dissabtes, d’10 a 14 h i de 15 a 20 h Setmana Santa, Nadal i estiu: horaris especials

www.bibliotequeslh.cat

barcelonabookclub.wordpress.com

Notes

______

______

______

______

______

______

______

______

______

______

______

______

______

______

______

______

______