The Lay of the Land (Vintage Contemporaries) by Richard Ford - Elegant, funny, poignant, and highly recommended

After more than a decade, Richard Ford revives Frank Bascombe, the beloved protagonist from The Sportswriter and Independence Day. Fans will be scrambling for The Lay of the Land, a novel that finds Bascombe contending with health, marital, and familial issues wake of the 2000 presidential election. We asked Richard Ford to tell us a little more about what its like to create (and share so much time with) a character like Frank. Read his short essay below. --Daphne Durham Richard Ford on Frank Bascombe

I never think of the characters I write as exactly people, the way some writers say they do, letting their characters just take over and write the book; or for that matter, in the way I want readers to think of them as people, or even as I think of characters in novels I myself read (and didnt write). In my own books I do all the writing--the characters dont. And for me to think of them as people, instead of as figures made of language, would make my characters less subject to the useful and necessary changes that occur as I grow in my own awareness about them as I make them up. Writing a character for twenty-five years and for three novels, as I have written about Frank Bascombe, has meant that Frank has, of course, become a presence in my life (and a welcome one). When I wrote Independence Day I began with the belief that Frank was pretty much the same character and presence he was in The Sportswriter. But when I went back later and read parts of The Sportswriter, I found that the sentences Frank spoke and that filled that second book were longer, more complex, and actually contained more nitty experience than the first book. This has also been true of The Lay of the Land: longer sentences, more experience to reconcile and transact, more words required to make lived life seem accessible. You could say that Frank had simply changed as we all do. But practically speaking--as his author--what this makes me think is that Ive had to make up Frank up newly each time, and have not exactly gone back and found him--although Franks history from the previous books has certainly needed to be kept in sight and made consistent. What is finally consistent to me about Frank is that I hear language I associate with him, and it is language that pleases me, with which I and he can (if Im a good enough writer) represent life in an intelligent and hopeful and buoyant spirit a reader can make use of. --Richard Ford

Elegant, funny, poignant, and highly recommended
Frank Bascombe, the narrator of THE LAY OF THE LAND is a successful residential real estate agent who finds the experience of selling real estate both empowering and beneficent. At the same time, Frank has a complex but not atypical personal life. He's twice married, loves his current wife, and has two children in their late twenties. His son is childish but is finding happiness in a mainstream American life. His brilliant daughter is slow getting started. Finally, Frank has prostate cancer, which he has addressed with radioactive seed implants. In TLotL, Ford explores these circumstances in Frank's life, primarily in three successive days ending on Thanksgiving 2000. The Florida recount is underway and in the background.

As the highly articulate Frank moves from appointment to appointment during these three days, he constantly discusses his philosophy for what he deems his Permanent Period in life. In this stage, a person has stopped trying "to become" and instead is content "to be." With this Buddhist-like mind set, Frank says regret and guilt fade to a dull and not-painful haze while the present offers the sustenance of predictable yet earned pleasures and rewards. This is a realistic philosophy, Frank believes, for a man of 55.

Of course, Frank's desire to live in the Permanent Period is challenged by life itself, with powerful emotions and irrevocable acts continually exploding in this narrative. There is a bombing at a hospital, a fight in a bar, and an act of vandalism, all representing assertions of anger that a benign philosophy fails to address or contain. Further, there is great cruelty inflicted on Frank, usually borne of confusion, but cruelty and, its subsequent pain, nonetheless. Even so, Frank, through most of this novel, is able to pull all events and experiences inside the big soothing tent of the Permanent Period. What the novel leads up to is a moment of truth when Frank, drinking alone in a bar, tearfully experiences the shortcomings of his philosophy. The insightful and wry Frank then resolves to move to the Next Level, where life "can't be escaped" and must be "faced entire."

In following Frank through his three-days of activities and his philosophic mulling (as well as unscheduled stops to pee), Ford shows a genius-like ability to revisit the same issues--the bittersweet experience of marriage and fatherhood, the pleasures of business interplay, the mighty power of the past, the flora and fauna of the suburbs, and the prospect of death--and keep them fresh and funny. In mocking Frank, Wade Arcenault, his octogenarian buddy, sneers: "Think, think, thinky, think." Yet this is precisely the engine--Frank's interesting mind and fascinating musings--that powers this novel's wonderful narrative. With Frank Bascombe, Ford has created a GREAT character with lots to say about ordinary life and I urge you to meet him. I only wish Frank didn't feel so guilty.

Two quick final observations: The wordplay in THE LAY OF THE LAND is sensational and sometimes hilarious. And Joyce scholars must get special pleasure from this book, since Frank Bascombe is certainly the Leopold Bloom of New Jersey's Ocean County.

Highly recommended.

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