I got this in the Everyman Edition, where it is bundled with
Independence Day and The Lay of the Land as The Bascomb Novels. This summer Ford has
released a new novel, Canada. I heard
an interview with him on NPR. I thought before getting this book, I would check
out his previous work as part of my new frugality.
The story is narrated and concerns the life of Frank
Bascomb, a one-time novelist, who has become a sportswriter. He is undergoing
an mid-life crisis following the death of his son, a few years ago. He divorced
from his wife and is trying to find his footing. But everything is going wrong;
poor choice girlfriend, too many affairs, and even a really bad choice of interview
subject. He keeps saying that his problem is his dreaminess. He seems to want a life where he can stay at the
surface of everything, without dealing with people and his problems. Of course,
this doesn’t work. In very dense prose, he is constantly reviewing and
reworking old experiences as he shows the reader where he screws up.
Perhaps the creepiest part is the divorced men’s club that
he belongs to in his town in New Jersey. The club members go on fishing trips
and sporting even outings, while they try to hide from their new reality. One
of the members insists on confiding his problems to Frank. ___ has recently had a one-night stand with a
man he met in New York, although he doesn’t consider himself to be gay. He
wants to tell Frank all and at one point tries to give Frank a kiss. In the
climax of the novel he commits suicide, which forces Frank to deal with the
situation; although he doesn’t really.
This is the book that gained Ford his fame. In the
introduction he says that he wrote it at a time when he wasn’t sure he could
succeed as a writer. He almost gave up, when he decided to try something
totally new.
It’s definitely not a cheery book. For someone my age, it
can be downright depressing. I like the author’s conversational tone. But it is
a very dense book. I came across quite a few words whose meanings I had to
guess at. He seemed to also have a lot of incomplete sentences. Yet they fit in
so well that I only slightly noticed them.
Really, all the characters that Bascomb encounters are sad
sacks or losers like him. There are no heroes. Perhaps only his two young
children (Paul and Clary), come off as good, or at least not confused. Yet,
they don’t take up much of the story. The most touching part for me was when
ten-year-old Paul releases one of his pigeons to take a message to his deceased
brother. Another weird aspect was how Bascomb addresses his ex-wife. She is
named only as X. And she is bewildered by the actions of her former husband as
any of the readers would be. She loves him, but can’t stay with him acting this
way.
All in all I liked the story. Yet, I will wait a while
before tackling the next one in the series!
