Revisiting Richard Ford

Profiled in 1996 by Ploughshares, Richard Ford said of his wife, “She’s a quite happy person by nature, and it might’ve been that she thought I’d find a wider audience if I stopped writing about dark souls and dark fates. In retrospect, I’d say she was right. I know it’s much more of a challenge—for me in particular—to find language for people essaying to be better and happier, than for people wrestling with murder and mayhem.”

With that, a new character adjustment went to work in Ford’s novel, The Sportswriter. The protagonist is Frank Bascombe, a wandering soul whose well-adjusted career and everyday anxiety registered deeply with readers.

Kristina Henseley, Ford’s wife, provided his writing regular counsel. Resulting partly from her advice, Ford’s career and subsequent novels went on to earn rigorous applause and prestigious awards.

But this change in Ford’s characters, which are so rich that his novels are regularly driven by them, may have been the very reason I neglected for so long to give his work the attention it deserves. The most appealing trait an author could posses, back when I was busy declaring myself a writer and sculpting my personality to resemble my heroes, was a reputation with mythic, genius and tragic qualities. As a teenager I devoured Kerouac and Richard Brautigan, Carver, Rimbaud and Hemingway. Later, as Andre Dubus and Richard Yates entered my intellectual bloodstream, I heard about Richard Ford. Ford was a celebrated and talented author. Of this I had little doubt. But he seemed to lack the rebellious mind that usually I craved.

The Fall of Icarus

Fortunately my tastes matured. By my early-twenties I decided the type of writer I should model myself after was not an Icarus-like figure, but one that demonstrated consistent clarity, dedicated scope and regular productivity. Richard Ford was this type of writer. He may have lacked the romantic aspects of Kerouac and Rimbaud, but he compensated with a steely vision that routinely captivated.

I mention this only because an author’s characters often reflect his own character, or the type of company he keeps. Ford’s Bascombe, with his average struggles and meandering thoughts, sounded boring and conventional. Truth be told, I was the bore, masquerading as a young madcap genius carousing the streets with a pen in my pocket and a bottle in my hand. Bascombe, and by extension Ford, were far more interesting and developed than I, or many of my fictitious heroes, aspired to be.

Then one day I met Michael McCourt, brother to novelist Frank McCourt, in a San Francisco bar. Michael was working the day shift. He and I got talking about books. I was reading Liars in Love, Richard Yates’ collection of short fiction, and Michael asked if I also enjoyed Richard Ford. I said sure, but that I didn’t think he could hold a candle to Yates. This was a double lie. At the time I had read very little of Ford’s work and, as I have come to discover, Yates and Ford do in fact share a similar light. Michael McCourt praised Ford. He said he was an essential American author, one whom I would do well to investigate. In retrospect, it seems Michael called my bluff. He knew a well-read Richard Ford man when he saw one.

Soon thereafter I began picking up Ford’s books. I started with The Sportswriter, moved on to Independence Day, and then burned through Wildlife and Rock Springs. I was an addict. My allegiance to my old favorites remained strong. It was just that a new, different type of author had joined their ranks.

Richard Ford is unique reading. His command is patient and nuanced; he controls his narrative with precise subtlety and grace. His characters have the power to unravel and then pick themselves back up, all in the space of a dozen or so pages. His drama is minimal and drawn on the large scale of contemporary America. Readers can find the influence of Hemingway, Sherwood Anderson, and Richard Yates in his stories. Yet he is no such protege. He crosses familiar terrain, but instead drives a narrative style he himself has designed.

Recently I moved from the east coast to the west coast. Doing so forced me to pare down my personal library. Of the dozen or so books I took with me, one was Women with Men, Ford’s story collection that chronicles the tumult and sudden glow of personal relationships. Reading these stories again I was struck by their balance and intimacy, their emotional intelligence and troubling insight. Of the three stories, the titles of which are The Womanizer, Jealous, and Occidentals, one undisputed winner emerges. That’s not to say the others are inferior, or that there’s even any sort of competition among them. It’s simply stating that the story Jealous, to me, reads like so many of the stories I’ve preserved in my mental file cabinet: Hemingway’s A Clean, Well Lighted Place; Thieves by Richard Yates; Kerouac’s Good Blonde, and Townies by Andre Dubus. Jealous is a story worthy of similar applause and distinction.

Happy Mayhem Ensues

It blazes with slow burning tenacity, pressing forward like a strong, steady tank. Despite most of the story taking place on a snowy Montana highway, Jealous has a rosy incandescence that enamors the reader to Larry, the first-person protagonist, and Doris, his floozy aunt. The two have a kinetic relationship and the dialogue snaps with tough friction, which instills a particularly Noirish feeling. Behind the narrative’s sinister underpinnings and ghostly setting, though, is a warm story about love, family and longing.

The following scene occurs when seventeen year old Larry and his aunt Doris stop at a highway bar. Doris begins a conversation with a suspicious man named Barney, whom she simultaneously flirts with and derides. She is getting drunk and shouting to the bartender. Larry narrates.

“Don’t confuse me with your wife,” Doris said loudly, then motioned for another drink. “All boats seek a place to sink is what I believe.” And I stood closer to the bar, wanting to think of a way to get her to leave and wondering what Barney was going to show me when he got back. “I told him Esther was my given name,” Doris said in a whisper. “It’s my least favorite name. But it’s Biblical, and Indians are all so religious, he likes it. He’s pathetic, but he’s a hoot.”

And then later:

She blew more ice breath in the air. “I don’t think the heater’s working.” She turned the knob around and back. “Feel my hands.” She put her small hands together and shoved them toward me, and they were cold and hard-feeling. “They’re my prettiest feature, I believe,” Doris said, looking at her own hands. She looked at my hands then, and touched the place where her wedding ring had worked into my knuckle. “Your skin’s your nicest feature,” she said, and looked at my face. “You look like your mother, and you have your father’s skin. You’ll probably look like him eventually.” She pushed closer to me. “I’m so cold, baby,” she said, holding her two hands still clasped together against my chest and putting her face against my cheek. The skin on her face was cold and stiff and not very soft, and the frames of her glasses were cold too. There was the smell of sweat in her hair. “I feel numb, and you’re so warm. Your face is warm.”

Unlike The Sportsman and Independence Day, this story is told in the first person, an approach that allows Ford to find the language for people trying to get better, happier, and at the same time evoke the adrenaline rush of murder, mayhem.

This is no small feat.

Early in his career Ford moved away from “dark souls and dark fates.” He channeled instead the everyman. His characters struggled to improve their lives, to achieve the American dream. In Jealous, his characters are still chasing that dream. But the dark side of things is fast on their heels.

Video: Richard Ford on New Jersey, Frank Bascombe