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Frank Bascombe #2
Independence Day
This is an alternate cover edition for ISBN 9780679735182
The Pulitzer-Prize Winning novel for 1996.In this visionary sequel to The Sportswriter, Richard Ford deepens his portrait of one of the most unforgettable characters in American fiction, and in so doing gives us an indelible portrait of America.Frank Bascombe, in the aftermath of his divorce and the ruin of his career, has entered an "Existence Period," selling real estate in Haddam, New Jersey, and mastering the high-wire act of normalcy. But over one Fourth of July weekend, Frank is called into sudden, bewildering engagement with life.Independence Day is a moving, peerlessly funny odyssey through America and through the layered consciousness of one of its most compelling literary incarnations, conducted by a novelist of astonishing empathy and perception.
The Pulitzer-Prize Winning novel for 1996.In this visionary sequel to The Sportswriter, Richard Ford deepens his portrait of one of the most unforgettable characters in American fiction, and in so doing gives us an indelible portrait of America.Frank Bascombe, in the aftermath of his divorce and the ruin of his career, has entered an "Existence Period," selling real estate in Haddam, New Jersey, and mastering the high-wire act of normalcy. But over one Fourth of July weekend, Frank is called into sudden, bewildering engagement with life.Independence Day is a moving, peerlessly funny odyssey through America and through the layered consciousness of one of its most compelling literary incarnations, conducted by a novelist of astonishing empathy and perception.
451 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1995
About the author
Richard Ford
188 books1,518 followersRichard Ford, born February 16, 1944 in Jackson, Mississippi, is an American novelist and short story writer. His best-known works are the novel The Sportswriter and its sequels, Independence Day, The Lay of the Land and Let Me Be Frank With You, and the short story collection Rock Springs, which contains several widely anthologized stories. Comparisons have been drawn between Ford's work and the writings of John Updike, William Faulkner, Ernest Hemingway and Walker Percy.
His novel Independence Day won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1996, also winning the PEN/Faulkner Award in the same year.
His novel Independence Day won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1996, also winning the PEN/Faulkner Award in the same year.
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February 18, 2022
TUTTO POTREBBE ANDARE MOLTO PEGGIO
Frank Bascombe non fa più il giornalista sportivo: è diventato agente immobiliare.
Il fenomeno di un protagonista che ritorna in più storie è nato prima sulla pagina che sullo schermo. E, d’altra parte, l’arte delle immagini in movimento ha storia ben più breve di quella che si basa sulla parola scritta.
Ma ritengo sia stato la musa più recente a stimolarlo al livello attuale.
Lo stesso personaggio, protagonista o meno, che si ripresenta, può avere diversi motivi. A parte quello più ‘commerciale’, l’esigenza di sfruttare un eventuale successo, potrebbe essere l’alter ego del suo autore. O anche, colui che l’autore piacerebbe incarnare, la sua anima ‘migliore’.
Oppure, è un punto di vista già sviluppato che si presta in modo particolare a raccontare certe storie.
Per esempio, Richard Ford ha fatto notare come la capacità di Frank Bascombe di miscelare tanto l’aspetto serio che quello comico delle cose che gli succedono l’abbia spinto a utilizzarlo più volte (Sportswriter, questo Il giorno dell’indipendenza, il successivo Lo stato delle cose, per finire con Tutto potrebbe andare molto peggio, che in originale ha titolo ben più interessante: Let Me Be Frank with You, fammi essere Franco, che in una prima edizione era infatti tradotto Francamente, Frank).
E mi sento di dargli ragione, perché di leggerezza e lato comico Richard Ford ne aveva mostrato ben poco nelle sue prime prove.
Frank è stato sposato e ora è divorziato. Ha due figli che vivono con la ex e il suo nuovo ricco marito a grande distanza dal New Jersey, dove Frank abita e lavora. Tutto ciò in parte lo sappiamo già, se abbiamo letto prima The Sportswriter: ma qui, in ogni caso, il quadro si completa, guadagna altri pezzi.
Il rapporto di Frank coi figli è complesso, la distanza certo non aiuta, ma soprattutto incide il pessimo rapporto con la ex che non vuole né vederlo né sentirlo, mentre Frank sarebbe più malleabile.
Il fatto è che Frank è malleabile nei confronti della vita: nel senso che non sembra assumere posizioni ferme, fare scelte. Parrebbe che il suo talento sia lasciarsi vivere, senza però lasciarsi andare. Ha buono spirito di adattamento, è provvisto di un utilissimo robusto senso dell’ironia, preferisce il ruolo di spettatore a quello di attore. In questo senso il suo nuovo mestiere gli è più utile del precedente: essere un agente immobiliare gli consente di poter indossare ogni giorno una maschera sorridente dietro la quale nascondersi e possibilmente essere lasciato in pace.
Mi verrebbe da definire Frank uno che non crede che la vita porti da qualche parte.
Andrew Wyeth: Independence day, 1961.
È il 1988, è il weekend dell’Indipendenza, festa importante in US.
Il quarantaquattrenne Frank guida, pensa e racconta.
Ha in programma di passare un po’ di tempo col figlio adolescente, che di recente ha avuto un piccolo guaio con la giustizia. Figlio che lo affatica e che non gradisce molto, ma che comunque vorrebbe poter avvicinare.
Ma nel weekend di festa vuole passare anche del tempo con la sua fidanzata Sally, con la quale desidera intensificare la relazione, anche se alla base c’è:
Ti amo, le ho detto. Ma avrei anche potuto non dirlo.
La voce di Frank è convincente, autoironica, quotidiana, apparentemente da porta accanto: Ford la costruisce senza farci sentire il lavoro di costruzione. Il che le regala un tono di immediatezza che agevola i salti temporali e logici, le improvvise digressioni, restando fresca, senza mai diventare letteraria.
E a proposito di digressioni, con un gusto che a me sembra prettamente americano, Ford riesce a riempire intere e lunghe pagine di descrizioni dettagliate del mercato immobiliare a stelle-e-strisce, che a qualche lettore risulteranno indigeste e noiose, per altri potrebbero invece essere succose.
Io mi colloco a metà tra le due posizioni: le prime le ho godute, poi ho cominciato a sentirle rallentare.
Potrebbe andare peggio. Potrebbe piovere.
Frank Bascombe non fa più il giornalista sportivo: è diventato agente immobiliare.
Il fenomeno di un protagonista che ritorna in più storie è nato prima sulla pagina che sullo schermo. E, d’altra parte, l’arte delle immagini in movimento ha storia ben più breve di quella che si basa sulla parola scritta.
Ma ritengo sia stato la musa più recente a stimolarlo al livello attuale.
Lo stesso personaggio, protagonista o meno, che si ripresenta, può avere diversi motivi. A parte quello più ‘commerciale’, l’esigenza di sfruttare un eventuale successo, potrebbe essere l’alter ego del suo autore. O anche, colui che l’autore piacerebbe incarnare, la sua anima ‘migliore’.
Oppure, è un punto di vista già sviluppato che si presta in modo particolare a raccontare certe storie.
Per esempio, Richard Ford ha fatto notare come la capacità di Frank Bascombe di miscelare tanto l’aspetto serio che quello comico delle cose che gli succedono l’abbia spinto a utilizzarlo più volte (Sportswriter, questo Il giorno dell’indipendenza, il successivo Lo stato delle cose, per finire con Tutto potrebbe andare molto peggio, che in originale ha titolo ben più interessante: Let Me Be Frank with You, fammi essere Franco, che in una prima edizione era infatti tradotto Francamente, Frank).
E mi sento di dargli ragione, perché di leggerezza e lato comico Richard Ford ne aveva mostrato ben poco nelle sue prime prove.
Frank è stato sposato e ora è divorziato. Ha due figli che vivono con la ex e il suo nuovo ricco marito a grande distanza dal New Jersey, dove Frank abita e lavora. Tutto ciò in parte lo sappiamo già, se abbiamo letto prima The Sportswriter: ma qui, in ogni caso, il quadro si completa, guadagna altri pezzi.
Il rapporto di Frank coi figli è complesso, la distanza certo non aiuta, ma soprattutto incide il pessimo rapporto con la ex che non vuole né vederlo né sentirlo, mentre Frank sarebbe più malleabile.
Il fatto è che Frank è malleabile nei confronti della vita: nel senso che non sembra assumere posizioni ferme, fare scelte. Parrebbe che il suo talento sia lasciarsi vivere, senza però lasciarsi andare. Ha buono spirito di adattamento, è provvisto di un utilissimo robusto senso dell’ironia, preferisce il ruolo di spettatore a quello di attore. In questo senso il suo nuovo mestiere gli è più utile del precedente: essere un agente immobiliare gli consente di poter indossare ogni giorno una maschera sorridente dietro la quale nascondersi e possibilmente essere lasciato in pace.
Mi verrebbe da definire Frank uno che non crede che la vita porti da qualche parte.
Andrew Wyeth: Independence day, 1961.
È il 1988, è il weekend dell’Indipendenza, festa importante in US.
Il quarantaquattrenne Frank guida, pensa e racconta.
Ha in programma di passare un po’ di tempo col figlio adolescente, che di recente ha avuto un piccolo guaio con la giustizia. Figlio che lo affatica e che non gradisce molto, ma che comunque vorrebbe poter avvicinare.
Ma nel weekend di festa vuole passare anche del tempo con la sua fidanzata Sally, con la quale desidera intensificare la relazione, anche se alla base c’è:
Ti amo, le ho detto. Ma avrei anche potuto non dirlo.
La voce di Frank è convincente, autoironica, quotidiana, apparentemente da porta accanto: Ford la costruisce senza farci sentire il lavoro di costruzione. Il che le regala un tono di immediatezza che agevola i salti temporali e logici, le improvvise digressioni, restando fresca, senza mai diventare letteraria.
E a proposito di digressioni, con un gusto che a me sembra prettamente americano, Ford riesce a riempire intere e lunghe pagine di descrizioni dettagliate del mercato immobiliare a stelle-e-strisce, che a qualche lettore risulteranno indigeste e noiose, per altri potrebbero invece essere succose.
Io mi colloco a metà tra le due posizioni: le prime le ho godute, poi ho cominciato a sentirle rallentare.
Potrebbe andare peggio. Potrebbe piovere.
July 5, 2019
In this second novel of Richard Ford’s Frank Bascombe quartet, I was drawn further into the microcosm life and lifestyle of not only the man, but also the macrocosm of America – the environment and history that parallels the structure of his life.
In this second novel Frank is experiencing what he calls his “Existence Period”, and I could sense the personal progress he made from what Frank labelled his “fugue state” in the previous novel. He is still an enigma in many ways, and his inconsistencies still present and accounted for, yet I couldn’t help feeling compassion for him despite his flaws – and admiration. He still glides over some of his flaws, finds rosy excuses for some aspects of his life, but he also faces and resolves some of his incongruence.
Frank continues to struggle, to experience inner battles between his baser self and his higher self. In some ways it is almost as though the blows life has dealt him over the past decade or so of his life sent him spinning into a second adolescence, and although his second visit to a bumbling and uncertain time of his life occurs in his early 40’s he is somehow less sure of how to find his way through than he perhaps was decades earlier.
Add to that the fact that he is a divorced man with two children and striving to sort himself out within a whole new framework, and Richard Ford’s skill adeptly molds this raw material into a fascinating character study.
In this novel, Frank’s ex-wife is re-married and his children even less accessible as the new family moves to a different State. Frank is no longer a sportswriter – or a writer of any kind – and has pursued a new career as a Realtor; one who sometimes winces when he is called a “realator” by his prospective customers. He also owns two small rental houses, consistent with his fresh perspective of helping others by finding them homes.
While this novel takes place over the course of one July 4th weekend, Frank’s thoughts and feelings, his attempts to piece together all the ragged edges of his life, all his efforts to make some pieces fit where they never could or should – all generates a long and psychologically fascinating read. Mix in an unexpected family crisis that drags him partway back into the fugue state he was in during the last novel, and it became evident to me why Richard Ford won the Pulitzer Prize for this novel.
I don’t know if this novel could be fully appreciated without previously reading The Sportswriter, but I suspect not. There is so much to be understood about Frank in the previous stage of his life that ties in directly to the stage he is in now.
These novels, each a pinnacle slice of life in one man’s quest for his human being-ness, are a mesmerizing and in-depth character study that gains breadth and depth with each successive book. I look forward to reading the third novel of this quartet in the very near future.
In this second novel Frank is experiencing what he calls his “Existence Period”, and I could sense the personal progress he made from what Frank labelled his “fugue state” in the previous novel. He is still an enigma in many ways, and his inconsistencies still present and accounted for, yet I couldn’t help feeling compassion for him despite his flaws – and admiration. He still glides over some of his flaws, finds rosy excuses for some aspects of his life, but he also faces and resolves some of his incongruence.
Frank continues to struggle, to experience inner battles between his baser self and his higher self. In some ways it is almost as though the blows life has dealt him over the past decade or so of his life sent him spinning into a second adolescence, and although his second visit to a bumbling and uncertain time of his life occurs in his early 40’s he is somehow less sure of how to find his way through than he perhaps was decades earlier.
Add to that the fact that he is a divorced man with two children and striving to sort himself out within a whole new framework, and Richard Ford’s skill adeptly molds this raw material into a fascinating character study.
In this novel, Frank’s ex-wife is re-married and his children even less accessible as the new family moves to a different State. Frank is no longer a sportswriter – or a writer of any kind – and has pursued a new career as a Realtor; one who sometimes winces when he is called a “realator” by his prospective customers. He also owns two small rental houses, consistent with his fresh perspective of helping others by finding them homes.
While this novel takes place over the course of one July 4th weekend, Frank’s thoughts and feelings, his attempts to piece together all the ragged edges of his life, all his efforts to make some pieces fit where they never could or should – all generates a long and psychologically fascinating read. Mix in an unexpected family crisis that drags him partway back into the fugue state he was in during the last novel, and it became evident to me why Richard Ford won the Pulitzer Prize for this novel.
I don’t know if this novel could be fully appreciated without previously reading The Sportswriter, but I suspect not. There is so much to be understood about Frank in the previous stage of his life that ties in directly to the stage he is in now.
These novels, each a pinnacle slice of life in one man’s quest for his human being-ness, are a mesmerizing and in-depth character study that gains breadth and depth with each successive book. I look forward to reading the third novel of this quartet in the very near future.
December 10, 2019
As much as I enjoyed The Sportswriter, I felt that this book was even better. Frank Bascomb is not in 1987 with a Vote Blue! bumpersticker on the Crown Vic(toria) rolling towards his mid-40s and the end of the Existence period. His wife (we finally learn her name is Ann) has moved to Deep Valley, Connecticut and remarried a rich, moody older man who Frank, of course, detests. The story happens - as did The Sportswriter - in a telescopic manner over the three day Independence Day weekend with lots of unexpected surprises both good and not great.
Frank has moved back to New Jersey after his fugue with the lovely young medical student we left him with at the end of The Sportswriter, has traded his sports column for a job in real estate, and has purchased a few rental properties in Haddam. One of which is empty, the other of which is inhabited by the McLeod family and relations are, well, tense.
"I smiled at Larry through the metal screen. "Uh-huh" was the total of what he had to say, though he glanced over his shoulder as if we has about to instruct his wife to come interpret something I'd said. Then he returned his gaze to me and looked down at the pistol on the table. "That's registered", he said. "Check it out." The pistol was big and black, looked well oiled and completely bursting with bullets - able to do an innocent world irretrievable damage." (p. 29)
This thinly veiled threat leaves Frank edgy as we start the novel.
In fact, as the previous novel revolved around multiple metaphors involving sports, Independence Day revolves around metaphors involving real estate. Two of the more darkly comical characters in the book are the hapless Joe and Phillis Markham from Vermont, down in Haddam trying to build a new future for their twilight years for them and their daughter Sonja for whom Frank is acting as an agent trying unsuccessfully to interest them in a property they can afford. The interactions between Frank and this couple tend to be a parallel to all of our reactions to the disappointments of middle age, when we see that our time left on the planet is shorter than that which we have already lived and we have not really arrived at the place we wanted to be.
"My own view is that the realty dreads...originate not in actual house buying...but in the cold, unwelcome America realization that we're just like the other schmo, wishing his wishes, lusting his stunted lusts, quaking over his idiot frights and fantasies, all of of popped out from the same unchinkable mold." (p. 56)
He thinks that in general, people do not do enough soul-searching.
"It's perfectly evident that the Markhams haven't looked into life's mirror in a while....Vermont's spiritual mandate, after all, is that you don't look at yourself, but spend years gazing at everything else as penetratingly as possiblein the conviction that everything out there more or less stands for you, and everything's pretty damn great because you are....Only, with home-buying as a goal, there's no real getting around a real self-viewing." (p. 89)
A little further on, Frank explains the tension in his life at this point being between "a bright feeling of synchronicity in which everything [he] thought about...all these hopeful activities seemed to be...what my whole life was about" and "a sensation that everything I contemplated was limited or at least underwritten by the 'plain fact of my existence': that I was after all only a human being, as untranscendant as a tree trunk, and that everything I might do had to be calculated against the weight of the practical...I now think of this balancing act of urgent forces as having begun the Existence Period...the time in life when whatever was going to affect us 'later' actually affects us." (p. 94)
That is about as close as I could possible imagine my impressions at 50 (despite Frank being only mid-40s here, a generational shift has probably occured in the two decades since this was written?)
I like the realism of how Frank looks back "how things used to be anyway, except that you used to be happier - only you may not have known it at the time, or might've been unable to seize it, so stuck were you in life's gooeyness; or, as is often the case, you might never have been quite as happy as you like to believe you were." (p. 95)
He therefore feels qualified to talk about the Existence period (and thus living this phase of he life because:
1/ he is not preoccupied with how things used to be
2/ intimacy began to matter less to him (although this is disproven later - he is after all an imperfect narrator in the first person)
3/ he wasn't worried that he was a coward
In other words, he thinks he has succeeded in becoming complacent and able to drift through his 40s with a minimum of disturbance. The book however will demonstrate that this foundation is shifting and that there is a sensitive person beneath the laisser faire attitude.
Another minor character is Karl Bemish with whom Frank has a root beer and hotdog stand. Bemish reminded me of the protatonist in A Confederacy of Dunces, but far more racist and even less self-aware than Ignatius J. Reilly. (Incidentally, this book has been out for over a decade before Ford wrote this one, so one could wonder if he drew inspiration from it or not.) This is one of the glances we get into Frank's unique philanthropy: "a chance to help another, do a good deed well and diversify in a way that would pay dividends (as it's begun to) without driving myself crazy. We should all be so lucky." (p. 135). Indeed.
A little further on is what I truly believe is an important life lesson that some folks in my life never adequately learned (myself included):
"to cease sanctifying places - houses, beaches, hometowns, a street corner where you once kissed a girl, a parade ground where you marched in line, a courthouse where you secured a divorce on a cloudy day in July but where there is now no sign of you, no mention in the air's breath that you were there or that you were ever important you, or that you even were." (p. 151)
It is certainly one of the most common magnetic impulses in our middle age, this ineluctable yet doomed pull to the past. Frank's entire motivation in talking to us is an attempt to push this toxic nostalgia back even as it threatens to engulf him time and time again.
We also meet his current part-time girlfriend Sally who lives on an exquisitely described Jersey Shore. Their relationship is tight-rope between regret and memory and the promise of something else in ths Existence Period and yet never realized or accomplished during the novel. That is truly one of the powers of his writing: it is never truly predictable as you are reading it and many things you take for granted as taking place, actually never do.
As he naps waiting to talk to Sally, there is a wonderful passage where Richard Ford seems to push Frank aside for a moment and talk about his passion: "if you were a writer, even a half-baked short-story writer, you'd have someplace to put that fact buildup so you wouldn't have to think about it all the time. You'd just write it all down, put quotes around the most gruesome and rueful lines, stick them in somebody else's mouth who doesn't exist (or better, a thinly disguised enemy of yours), turn it into pathos and get it all off your ledger for the enjoyment of others." (p. 157)
He later bats a hasty retreat and muses about resolve during the Existence Period:
"Beyond an indistinct but critical point in life...most of your latter-day resolves fall apart and you end up doing either whatever's damn well easiest or else whateer you feel strongest about...At the same time it also gets harder and harder to believe you can control anything bia principle or discipline, though we all talk as if we can, and actually try like hell." (p. 176)
Once again Richard Ford seems to shine through Bascombe in talking about how writers deal with disappointment and divorce:
"Though in the end the real trick to divorce remains, given this refractory increase in perspectives, not viewing yourself ironically and losing heart. You have, on the one hand, such an obsessively detailed and minute view of yourself from your prior experience, and on the other hand, an equally specific view of yourself later on, that it becomes almost impossible not to see yourself as a puny oxymoron...Writers in fact survive this condition better than almost anyone, since they understand how everything-e-v-e-r-y-t-h-i-n-g-is not really made up of views but words, should you not like them, you can change." (p. 248).
A bit of time and a few catastrophes later, Frank meets his sort of half-brother for the first time in over thirty years, Irv, who proposes the idea of "continuity" which is bsasically that backwards-looking nostalgia that Frank railed against a few hundred pages before, and leads to the "catch of dread, a guilty, hopeless even deathly feeling he experiences just at the moment when anyone else in his right mind might feel exhultation - upon seeing sea gulls in dizzying great numbers on a matte of blue sky..." (p. 388).
This book was definitely worthy of its 1996 Pulitzer prize despite my love for Sabbath's Theater by Philip Roth. I truly enjoy Richard Ford's writing and felt that Independence Day was extremely well-written and insightful. It may take another read and a bit of contemplation to fully absorb the lessons here. Or perhaps not so much:
"'I love you', I say to my son, slipping away, but who should hear these words again if only to be able to recall them much later on: 'Somebody said that to me, and nothing since then has really seemed quite as bad as it might have been.'" (p. 331)
As a coda, the inside title page of the copy of this that I read coming from the American Library in Paris had someone's comments in pencil above the title: "creaty [sic], clichéd, flatulent, waffle". So, perhaps not everyone agrees on the greatness of the book, but, curiously, I don't think Frank would have disapproved.
Frank has moved back to New Jersey after his fugue with the lovely young medical student we left him with at the end of The Sportswriter, has traded his sports column for a job in real estate, and has purchased a few rental properties in Haddam. One of which is empty, the other of which is inhabited by the McLeod family and relations are, well, tense.
"I smiled at Larry through the metal screen. "Uh-huh" was the total of what he had to say, though he glanced over his shoulder as if we has about to instruct his wife to come interpret something I'd said. Then he returned his gaze to me and looked down at the pistol on the table. "That's registered", he said. "Check it out." The pistol was big and black, looked well oiled and completely bursting with bullets - able to do an innocent world irretrievable damage." (p. 29)
This thinly veiled threat leaves Frank edgy as we start the novel.
In fact, as the previous novel revolved around multiple metaphors involving sports, Independence Day revolves around metaphors involving real estate. Two of the more darkly comical characters in the book are the hapless Joe and Phillis Markham from Vermont, down in Haddam trying to build a new future for their twilight years for them and their daughter Sonja for whom Frank is acting as an agent trying unsuccessfully to interest them in a property they can afford. The interactions between Frank and this couple tend to be a parallel to all of our reactions to the disappointments of middle age, when we see that our time left on the planet is shorter than that which we have already lived and we have not really arrived at the place we wanted to be.
"My own view is that the realty dreads...originate not in actual house buying...but in the cold, unwelcome America realization that we're just like the other schmo, wishing his wishes, lusting his stunted lusts, quaking over his idiot frights and fantasies, all of of popped out from the same unchinkable mold." (p. 56)
He thinks that in general, people do not do enough soul-searching.
"It's perfectly evident that the Markhams haven't looked into life's mirror in a while....Vermont's spiritual mandate, after all, is that you don't look at yourself, but spend years gazing at everything else as penetratingly as possiblein the conviction that everything out there more or less stands for you, and everything's pretty damn great because you are....Only, with home-buying as a goal, there's no real getting around a real self-viewing." (p. 89)
A little further on, Frank explains the tension in his life at this point being between "a bright feeling of synchronicity in which everything [he] thought about...all these hopeful activities seemed to be...what my whole life was about" and "a sensation that everything I contemplated was limited or at least underwritten by the 'plain fact of my existence': that I was after all only a human being, as untranscendant as a tree trunk, and that everything I might do had to be calculated against the weight of the practical...I now think of this balancing act of urgent forces as having begun the Existence Period...the time in life when whatever was going to affect us 'later' actually affects us." (p. 94)
That is about as close as I could possible imagine my impressions at 50 (despite Frank being only mid-40s here, a generational shift has probably occured in the two decades since this was written?)
I like the realism of how Frank looks back "how things used to be anyway, except that you used to be happier - only you may not have known it at the time, or might've been unable to seize it, so stuck were you in life's gooeyness; or, as is often the case, you might never have been quite as happy as you like to believe you were." (p. 95)
He therefore feels qualified to talk about the Existence period (and thus living this phase of he life because:
1/ he is not preoccupied with how things used to be
2/ intimacy began to matter less to him (although this is disproven later - he is after all an imperfect narrator in the first person)
3/ he wasn't worried that he was a coward
In other words, he thinks he has succeeded in becoming complacent and able to drift through his 40s with a minimum of disturbance. The book however will demonstrate that this foundation is shifting and that there is a sensitive person beneath the laisser faire attitude.
Another minor character is Karl Bemish with whom Frank has a root beer and hotdog stand. Bemish reminded me of the protatonist in A Confederacy of Dunces, but far more racist and even less self-aware than Ignatius J. Reilly. (Incidentally, this book has been out for over a decade before Ford wrote this one, so one could wonder if he drew inspiration from it or not.) This is one of the glances we get into Frank's unique philanthropy: "a chance to help another, do a good deed well and diversify in a way that would pay dividends (as it's begun to) without driving myself crazy. We should all be so lucky." (p. 135). Indeed.
A little further on is what I truly believe is an important life lesson that some folks in my life never adequately learned (myself included):
"to cease sanctifying places - houses, beaches, hometowns, a street corner where you once kissed a girl, a parade ground where you marched in line, a courthouse where you secured a divorce on a cloudy day in July but where there is now no sign of you, no mention in the air's breath that you were there or that you were ever important you, or that you even were." (p. 151)
It is certainly one of the most common magnetic impulses in our middle age, this ineluctable yet doomed pull to the past. Frank's entire motivation in talking to us is an attempt to push this toxic nostalgia back even as it threatens to engulf him time and time again.
We also meet his current part-time girlfriend Sally who lives on an exquisitely described Jersey Shore. Their relationship is tight-rope between regret and memory and the promise of something else in ths Existence Period and yet never realized or accomplished during the novel. That is truly one of the powers of his writing: it is never truly predictable as you are reading it and many things you take for granted as taking place, actually never do.
As he naps waiting to talk to Sally, there is a wonderful passage where Richard Ford seems to push Frank aside for a moment and talk about his passion: "if you were a writer, even a half-baked short-story writer, you'd have someplace to put that fact buildup so you wouldn't have to think about it all the time. You'd just write it all down, put quotes around the most gruesome and rueful lines, stick them in somebody else's mouth who doesn't exist (or better, a thinly disguised enemy of yours), turn it into pathos and get it all off your ledger for the enjoyment of others." (p. 157)
He later bats a hasty retreat and muses about resolve during the Existence Period:
"Beyond an indistinct but critical point in life...most of your latter-day resolves fall apart and you end up doing either whatever's damn well easiest or else whateer you feel strongest about...At the same time it also gets harder and harder to believe you can control anything bia principle or discipline, though we all talk as if we can, and actually try like hell." (p. 176)
Once again Richard Ford seems to shine through Bascombe in talking about how writers deal with disappointment and divorce:
"Though in the end the real trick to divorce remains, given this refractory increase in perspectives, not viewing yourself ironically and losing heart. You have, on the one hand, such an obsessively detailed and minute view of yourself from your prior experience, and on the other hand, an equally specific view of yourself later on, that it becomes almost impossible not to see yourself as a puny oxymoron...Writers in fact survive this condition better than almost anyone, since they understand how everything-e-v-e-r-y-t-h-i-n-g-is not really made up of views but words, should you not like them, you can change." (p. 248).
A bit of time and a few catastrophes later, Frank meets his sort of half-brother for the first time in over thirty years, Irv, who proposes the idea of "continuity" which is bsasically that backwards-looking nostalgia that Frank railed against a few hundred pages before, and leads to the "catch of dread, a guilty, hopeless even deathly feeling he experiences just at the moment when anyone else in his right mind might feel exhultation - upon seeing sea gulls in dizzying great numbers on a matte of blue sky..." (p. 388).
This book was definitely worthy of its 1996 Pulitzer prize despite my love for Sabbath's Theater by Philip Roth. I truly enjoy Richard Ford's writing and felt that Independence Day was extremely well-written and insightful. It may take another read and a bit of contemplation to fully absorb the lessons here. Or perhaps not so much:
"'I love you', I say to my son, slipping away, but who should hear these words again if only to be able to recall them much later on: 'Somebody said that to me, and nothing since then has really seemed quite as bad as it might have been.'" (p. 331)
As a coda, the inside title page of the copy of this that I read coming from the American Library in Paris had someone's comments in pencil above the title: "creaty [sic], clichéd, flatulent, waffle". So, perhaps not everyone agrees on the greatness of the book, but, curiously, I don't think Frank would have disapproved.
November 30, 2007
Well, sometimes I have to wonder if I'm on the right planet. Never has a book been so praised - and by the right people - as this one and The Sportswriter - so I gave this one a go and found myself in a hot muggy sauna of smugness, breathing in the profoundly self-satisfied atmosphere of this guy Bascombe - self-satisfied in spite of failed marriages, bad relationship with son and all that, one of those deeply wise, mature, creased lived-in face type guys who you instinctively trust - sorry pal, not me though, I kept turning the pages hoping that at some point Tony Soprano would drive round the corner like a bat out of hell in a four by four and in a tragic case of mistaken identity him and Chris would jump out, grab this guy Bascombe and bundle him into the boot, drive off like crazy bastards into the nearby woods and bury him where only wolverines and badgers would pick over his wise old bones.
November 11, 2016
Another Home Run in the Frank Bascombe Series
Okay, let me just say it: Richard Ford’s fictional alter ego, Frank Bascombe, seems more real to me than many people I know.
How is this possible? In Independence Day, the second and most celebrated of his four Bascombe books – it won the Pulitzer Prize and the PEN/Faulkner Award in 1996 – Ford shows that he knows everything about this charming, flawed and oh-so-relatable Everyman, including things Frank wouldn’t want him, or anyone, to know.
The result is another masterpiece of realistic fiction, a chapter in Ford’s Great American Epic.
After the midlife crisis suggested at the end of The Sportswriter (), Frank, now 44, is back in Haddam, NJ, having (re-)purchased his old house, and is selling real estate (he’s, ahem, a “Residential Specialist”), casually dating a new (more age-appropriate) woman, and maintaining a couple of homes he’s rented out, as well as a hot dog place he’s bought and refurbished.
His ex-wife Ann (she was called "X" in The Sportswriter) has married an established, sexagenarian architect and they’re living in an expensive Vermont suburb with Ann and Frank’s two children, Clarissa and Paul. (You’ll recall a third, Ralph, died in childhood.) At 15, Paul is acting out, with two recent violent incidents under his adolescent belt, one involving his step-dad.
Paul’s disturbing behaviour has made Frank suggest a Fourth Of July weekend road trip, a sort of archetypal father-and-son odyssey. They’re going to visit the baseball and basketball halls of fame. And maybe between consuming junk food, trying out their sports skills and cracking jokes, they’ll discuss some serious stuff. But can Frank, who’s kind of a kid himself, dispense any worthy advice?
At the same time, Frank’s dealing with many other things: hot-and-cold clients; tenants who are behind in the rent; the memory of a former girlfriend whose murder was never solved; his unresolved feelings for Ann…
This book, longer and denser but no less readable than The Sportswriter, has a leisurely pace, with lots of detours to phone booths to talk, check or leave messages (remember: this was before cellphones became ubiquitous), and a couple of haunting trips to motels, one involving a murder.
You can feel Ford reaching slightly for his metaphors about independence and how to live a worthy life. But the writing throughout is stunning. Here are some examples:
Ford has set the book at a fascinating time, 1988, with the country recovering from an economic downturn (sound familiar?) and the upcoming Dukakis vs. Bush presidential election on everyone’s minds. The country is on the brink of becoming really divided, in a way that would – that will? – upset Frank’s natural Southern civility and sense of equilibrium. And Ford’s writing about race also feels more contemporary, especially since Frank repeatedly referred to African-Americans as “Negroes” in the first book.
The central section, involving Frank and Paul’s road trip, contains some of the most painful, honest prose I’ve ever read about fathers and sons. One climactic scene literally made me cry out, it was so difficult to read. But Ford understands the straight male psyche so well.
I’ve now read more than 800 pages about Frank Bascombe in less than two weeks. Um, Frank-ly, I need a break from being inside his head. I’ll definitely finish the other two books. I want to know what happens, in the same way that I’d like to catch up with people I haven’t seen in years.
But these books contains wise and truthful observations about life in the late 20th century and early 21st that are solid and substantial as rock. They’ll still be around when I’m ready to read them.
Okay, let me just say it: Richard Ford’s fictional alter ego, Frank Bascombe, seems more real to me than many people I know.
How is this possible? In Independence Day, the second and most celebrated of his four Bascombe books – it won the Pulitzer Prize and the PEN/Faulkner Award in 1996 – Ford shows that he knows everything about this charming, flawed and oh-so-relatable Everyman, including things Frank wouldn’t want him, or anyone, to know.
The result is another masterpiece of realistic fiction, a chapter in Ford’s Great American Epic.
After the midlife crisis suggested at the end of The Sportswriter (), Frank, now 44, is back in Haddam, NJ, having (re-)purchased his old house, and is selling real estate (he’s, ahem, a “Residential Specialist”), casually dating a new (more age-appropriate) woman, and maintaining a couple of homes he’s rented out, as well as a hot dog place he’s bought and refurbished.
His ex-wife Ann (she was called "X" in The Sportswriter) has married an established, sexagenarian architect and they’re living in an expensive Vermont suburb with Ann and Frank’s two children, Clarissa and Paul. (You’ll recall a third, Ralph, died in childhood.) At 15, Paul is acting out, with two recent violent incidents under his adolescent belt, one involving his step-dad.
Paul’s disturbing behaviour has made Frank suggest a Fourth Of July weekend road trip, a sort of archetypal father-and-son odyssey. They’re going to visit the baseball and basketball halls of fame. And maybe between consuming junk food, trying out their sports skills and cracking jokes, they’ll discuss some serious stuff. But can Frank, who’s kind of a kid himself, dispense any worthy advice?
At the same time, Frank’s dealing with many other things: hot-and-cold clients; tenants who are behind in the rent; the memory of a former girlfriend whose murder was never solved; his unresolved feelings for Ann…
This book, longer and denser but no less readable than The Sportswriter, has a leisurely pace, with lots of detours to phone booths to talk, check or leave messages (remember: this was before cellphones became ubiquitous), and a couple of haunting trips to motels, one involving a murder.
You can feel Ford reaching slightly for his metaphors about independence and how to live a worthy life. But the writing throughout is stunning. Here are some examples:
…when you’re young your opponent is the future; but when you’re not young, your opponent is the past and everything you’ve done in it and the problem of getting away from it.
Unmarried men in their forties, if we don’t subside entirely into the landscape, often lose important credibility and can even attract unwholesome attention in a small, conservative community. And in Haddam, in my new circumstances, I felt I was perhaps becoming the personage I least wanted to be and, in the years since my divorce, had feared being: the suspicious bachelor, the man whose life has no mystery, the graying, slightly jowly, slightly too tanned and trim middle-ager, driving around town in a cheesy ’58 Chevy ragtop polished to a squeak, always alone on balmy summer nights, wearing a faded yellow polo shirt and green suntans, elbow over the window top, listening to progressive jazz, while smiling and pretending to have everything under control, when in fact there was nothing to control.
Ford has set the book at a fascinating time, 1988, with the country recovering from an economic downturn (sound familiar?) and the upcoming Dukakis vs. Bush presidential election on everyone’s minds. The country is on the brink of becoming really divided, in a way that would – that will? – upset Frank’s natural Southern civility and sense of equilibrium. And Ford’s writing about race also feels more contemporary, especially since Frank repeatedly referred to African-Americans as “Negroes” in the first book.
The central section, involving Frank and Paul’s road trip, contains some of the most painful, honest prose I’ve ever read about fathers and sons. One climactic scene literally made me cry out, it was so difficult to read. But Ford understands the straight male psyche so well.
I’ve now read more than 800 pages about Frank Bascombe in less than two weeks. Um, Frank-ly, I need a break from being inside his head. I’ll definitely finish the other two books. I want to know what happens, in the same way that I’d like to catch up with people I haven’t seen in years.
But these books contains wise and truthful observations about life in the late 20th century and early 21st that are solid and substantial as rock. They’ll still be around when I’m ready to read them.
August 13, 2012
I rarely find myself thinking "wow, I hated that book." Often times the last few sentences of a book I've struggled through make me seriously reconsider whether or not I actually disliked it at all. But I can confidently say that this is by far the most aggravating, pretentious and boring book I've ever read. The entire book is essentially monologue and inner-workings, which I'm typically more than happy with, but the stuff Ford presents fells absolutely contrived and ridiculous. The main character is stale and has typical middle aged thoughts, while simultaneously being incredibly delusional about father-son relationships. His son's motivations make little to no sense and I never, ever, EVER, want to talk about real estate with anyone again. Ever. Please god, don't pick this up. Don't do it. Don't let the fancy award draw you in. I speak not its name as I can't believe its designation was bestowed upon this heinous book.
November 30, 2016
Το μεγαλείο του Ricahrd Ford: τάχατες δεν συμβαίνει τίποτα, κι όμως συμβαίνουν τα πάντα. Σπουδαίος συγγραφέας, σπουδαίο μυθιστόρημα.
January 20, 2018
"To λυπηρό, φυσικά, με την ενήλικη ζωή είναι ότι διακρίνεις στον ορίζοντα να έρχονται πράγματα στα οποία δε θα προσαρμοστείς ποτέ. Τα αναγνωρίζεις ως προβλήματα, ανησυχείς στο έπακρο γι αυτά, προβλέπεις, παίρνεις προφυλάξεις και κάνεις διάφορες διευθετήσεις, λέγοντας στον εαυτό σου ότι πρέπει να αλλάξεις τον τρόπο με τον οποίο έκανες μέχρι τώρα τα πράγματα. Μόνο που δεν το κάνεις. Δε μπορείς. Κατά κάποιον τρόπο είναι ήδη πολύ αργά. Ίσως είναι κάτι ακόμα χειρότερο: ίσως αυτό που βλέπεις να έρχεται από πολύ μακριά δεν είναι πραγματικά αυτό που σε φοβίζει αλλά τα επακόλουθα του, και αυτό που φοβάσαι μήπως συμβεί έχει ήδη συμβεί. Αυτό μοιάζει στην ουσία με τη συνειδητοπο��ηση ότι όλοι εμείς δεν πρόκειται να ωφεληθούμε από τις σπουδαίες πρόσφατες προόδους της ιατρικής επιστήμης, ωστόσο τις επικροτούμε ελπίζοντας ότι κάποιο εμβόλιο θα είναι εγκαίρως έτοιμο και νομίζοντας ότι τα πράγματα μπορεί ακόμα να βελτιωθούν. Μόνο που και ως προς αυτό είναι πολύ αργά. Έτσι ακριβώς η ζωή μας τελειώνει πριν καν το καταλάβουμε."
Διαβάζοντας τα παραπάνω λόγια στην αρχή του βιβλίου λέω ώπα εδώ είμαστε ο τύπος έχει πολλά και ενδιαφέροντα να μας πει. Φαινόταν να έχει μελετήσει καλά την ανθρώπινη ψυχοσύνθεση και όλα έδειχναν ότι θα ήταν ένα πολύ ενδιαφέρον βιβλίο για τη ζωή και τις δυσκολίες της και για το πώς αγωνιζόμαστε για να τις ξεπεράσουμε και να την κάνουμε λίγο πιο υποφερτή. Όλα καλά μέχρι εδώ αλλά εδώ κάπου ξεκινάνε και τα προβλήματα και άρχισαν τα ζόρια. Δύσκολο βιβλίο. Δύσκολο γιατί πρέπει σε όλη σχεδόν τη διάρκεια του βιβλίου να ζήσεις με την λογική ότι στην πραγματικότητα δεν συμβαίνει τίποτα το ιδιαίτερο ενώ στην πραγματικότητα ο κόσμος του ήρωα μας είχε γυρίσει ανάποδα. Εδώ αρχίζει η ένσταση μου. Πολλές φορές ένιωσα ότι πάω να συνδεθώ με τον ήρωα ενώ δε μπορώ να πω ότι συμφωνούσα πάντα με τις κινήσεις του, ή τα λεγόμενα του για την ακρίβεια έλεγα από μέσα μου ρε φίλε μας δουλεύεις, τι ζόρι τραβάς έλα να σου πω τα δικά μου να δούμε ποιος θα κερδίσει αλλά τελοσπάντων εκεί που πάλευα να τον καταλάβω μου άρχιζε μια ακατάσχετη φλυαρία που άλλοι θα την έβρισκαν πολύ γοητευτική εμένα όμως αναγνωστικά με παίδεψε πολύ γιατί ένιωθα ότι έχανα την οποία σύνδεση προσπαθούσα να αποκτήσω με τον ήρωα. Υπήρχαν πραγματικά κάποιες τόσο μα τόσο ενδιαφέρουσες μεμονωμένες στιγμές που μου τραβούσαν το ενδιαφέρον που όμως χάνονταν και αποδυνάμωναν στα μάτια μου πάντα το κείμενο από την τόσο λεπτομερή περιγραφή καταστάσεων. Δηλαδή εντάξει μη γελιόμαστε η θεματική είναι σπουδαία. Όλοι μας τουλάχιστον εγώ προσωπικά έχω βιώσει το ίδιο υπαρξιακό κενό με τον ήρωα, εχω αναρωτηθεί εξίσου για αποφάσεις σημαντικές που χρειάστηκε να πάρω στη ζωή μου και ναι προσπάθησα να βρω απαντήσεις σε ερωτήματα για να μπορέσω να πάω παρακάτω. Αυτό όμως ήταν και συνεχίζει να είναι μια δική μου προσωπική μάχη στα πλαίσια της αυτοβελτίωσης μου όταν όμως προσπαθείς όλο αυτό να το βγάλεις σε ένα βιβλίο θα περίμενα ιδίως όντας τόσο καλός γραφιάς να περνάς αυτή τη μάχη, αυτή την αγωνία για να ξαναβρείς ένα νόημα ύπαρξης και στον αναγνώστη και εμένα προσωπικά δε μου το πέρασε στο βαθμό που θα ήθελα. Ένα συνολικά ενδιαφέρον βιβλίο που όμως δε με άγγιξε στο βαθμό που ήθελα και περίμενα.
Διαβάζοντας τα παραπάνω λόγια στην αρχή του βιβλίου λέω ώπα εδώ είμαστε ο τύπος έχει πολλά και ενδιαφέροντα να μας πει. Φαινόταν να έχει μελετήσει καλά την ανθρώπινη ψυχοσύνθεση και όλα έδειχναν ότι θα ήταν ένα πολύ ενδιαφέρον βιβλίο για τη ζωή και τις δυσκολίες της και για το πώς αγωνιζόμαστε για να τις ξεπεράσουμε και να την κάνουμε λίγο πιο υποφερτή. Όλα καλά μέχρι εδώ αλλά εδώ κάπου ξεκινάνε και τα προβλήματα και άρχισαν τα ζόρια. Δύσκολο βιβλίο. Δύσκολο γιατί πρέπει σε όλη σχεδόν τη διάρκεια του βιβλίου να ζήσεις με την λογική ότι στην πραγματικότητα δεν συμβαίνει τίποτα το ιδιαίτερο ενώ στην πραγματικότητα ο κόσμος του ήρωα μας είχε γυρίσει ανάποδα. Εδώ αρχίζει η ένσταση μου. Πολλές φορές ένιωσα ότι πάω να συνδεθώ με τον ήρωα ενώ δε μπορώ να πω ότι συμφωνούσα πάντα με τις κινήσεις του, ή τα λεγόμενα του για την ακρίβεια έλεγα από μέσα μου ρε φίλε μας δουλεύεις, τι ζόρι τραβάς έλα να σου πω τα δικά μου να δούμε ποιος θα κερδίσει αλλά τελοσπάντων εκεί που πάλευα να τον καταλάβω μου άρχιζε μια ακατάσχετη φλυαρία που άλλοι θα την έβρισκαν πολύ γοητευτική εμένα όμως αναγνωστικά με παίδεψε πολύ γιατί ένιωθα ότι έχανα την οποία σύνδεση προσπαθούσα να αποκτήσω με τον ήρωα. Υπήρχαν πραγματικά κάποιες τόσο μα τόσο ενδιαφέρουσες μεμονωμένες στιγμές που μου τραβούσαν το ενδιαφέρον που όμως χάνονταν και αποδυνάμωναν στα μάτια μου πάντα το κείμενο από την τόσο λεπτομερή περιγραφή καταστάσεων. Δηλαδή εντάξει μη γελιόμαστε η θεματική είναι σπουδαία. Όλοι μας τουλάχιστον εγώ προσωπικά έχω βιώσει το ίδιο υπαρξιακό κενό με τον ήρωα, εχω αναρωτηθεί εξίσου για αποφάσεις σημαντικές που χρειάστηκε να πάρω στη ζωή μου και ναι προσπάθησα να βρω απαντήσεις σε ερωτήματα για να μπορέσω να πάω παρακάτω. Αυτό όμως ήταν και συνεχίζει να είναι μια δική μου προσωπική μάχη στα πλαίσια της αυτοβελτίωσης μου όταν όμως προσπαθείς όλο αυτό να το βγάλεις σε ένα βιβλίο θα περίμενα ιδίως όντας τόσο καλός γραφιάς να περνάς αυτή τη μάχη, αυτή την αγωνία για να ξαναβρείς ένα νόημα ύπαρξης και στον αναγνώστη και εμένα προσωπικά δε μου το πέρασε στο βαθμό που θα ήθελα. Ένα συνολικά ενδιαφέρον βιβλίο που όμως δε με άγγιξε στο βαθμό που ήθελα και περίμενα.
January 17, 2008
Like Frank Bascombe, Ford's protagonist, I'm middle-aged and sometimes given to contemplation. And while I wouldn't consider Frank a role model, I do give top marks to the book. I give it bonus points for:
- Inner thoughts that are meaningful and articulate--the kind that make you say, "Wish I'd thought of that, had I the brainpower to do so."
- Ford's wonderful writing style--descriptive without being obtrusive.
- Taking on a tough topic: the plodding years of middle age--what he calls the Existence Period.
- An undercurrent of empathy despite it all.
- Hints that though Frank is smart, Ford himself is even smarter. It's almost like Ford has an omniscient meta-voice backing Frank's 1st person account. Readers get clues that Frank's self-awareness extends only so far, and he's more human because of it.
Thanks to my friend Robert for recommending it to me.
- Inner thoughts that are meaningful and articulate--the kind that make you say, "Wish I'd thought of that, had I the brainpower to do so."
- Ford's wonderful writing style--descriptive without being obtrusive.
- Taking on a tough topic: the plodding years of middle age--what he calls the Existence Period.
- An undercurrent of empathy despite it all.
- Hints that though Frank is smart, Ford himself is even smarter. It's almost like Ford has an omniscient meta-voice backing Frank's 1st person account. Readers get clues that Frank's self-awareness extends only so far, and he's more human because of it.
Thanks to my friend Robert for recommending it to me.
April 14, 2018
- Κονσταντέν, τι περίπου υπόθεση έχει πάνω-κάτω ;
- Το δράμα της ύπαρξης και του θανάτου
- Συγγνώμη ρε Κονσταντέν, πάθανε τίποτα, γιατί δεν μιλάνε ;
- Είναι ατμοσφαιρικό...
- ΚΑΛΕ ! ΚΑΛΕ ΑΥΤΟΙ ΚΟΚΑΛΩΣΑΝΕ !
- Σώπα, κουνιέται ο ένας, για κάτσε μπορεί και να μιλήσει, θα μας τρελάνει τώρα
- Σταματήστε, σας είπα είναι υπαρξιακό το δράμα...
- Το δράμα της ύπαρξης και του θανάτου
- Συγγνώμη ρε Κονσταντέν, πάθανε τίποτα, γιατί δεν μιλάνε ;
- Είναι ατμοσφαιρικό...
- ΚΑΛΕ ! ΚΑΛΕ ΑΥΤΟΙ ΚΟΚΑΛΩΣΑΝΕ !
- Σώπα, κουνιέται ο ένας, για κάτσε μπορεί και να μιλήσει, θα μας τρελάνει τώρα
- Σταματήστε, σας είπα είναι υπαρξιακό το δράμα...
July 6, 2014
I wouldn't say this is a book for all readers or all occasions, but it really was the perfect book for a rainy Fourth of July weekend when I was stuck at home alone with my dog, laid up and non-ambulatory after some improperly stacked firewood fell and crushed my toes.
I liked this better than The Sportswriter, though I did find some characters and conversations tiresome and can see how lots of people wouldn't get into this book. I got deeply into it, though, because it's one of those long novels in which not a whole lot happens but which allows you to occupy totally another person's life and mind. So instead of lying glumly on the couch all weekend with my foot wrapped in towels and ice while America joyfully celebrated its birthday outside, I got to tour New Jersey, Connecticut, and New York State, and rather than just being an immobilized, bored, and crabby version of me, I got to see what it was like to be Frank Bascombe for a change.
Not that there's anything particularly fabulous about being Frank Bascombe, but sometimes it's nice to be someone else. In Independence Day, we pick up a bit later than we left off with Bascombe the last time we saw him, at the end of The Sportswriter. It's now Independence Day weekend in 1988, and Bascombe has entered what he calls his "Existence Period," drifting through his forties while working as a real estate agent in his beloved Haddam, NJ. Basombe is a basically good-natured poster child for easy American privilege: straight, white, well-off, and more or less content in his suburban idyll, despite a few bumps in the road -- a deceased child, the divorce he hasn't been able to recover from, a brutally murdered ex-girlfriend. He's existing, quite nicely, doing mostly fine.
But... Okay, there is no "but" here. This isn't a novel about conflict or rupture or surprising and unexpected turns of events. For me it really was just about living inside someone else while he goes about a more interesting weekend than the one I'd had planned for myself. Instead of icing his purple toes and limping pathetically around the dog park, Bascombe has to show a house to a difficult couple of clients, run a few Haddam business errands, visit his girlfriend on the Jersey Shore, and take his troubled adolescent son on a bonding trip to the basketball and baseball halls of fame. The majority of the book is Bascombe driving around the Northeast in his Crown Vic and having conversations with various characters, with whom he generally tries to share moments of meaningful human connection, with varying degrees of failure.
It's really plain to me that I would've hated this book had I tried to read it at most earlier stages of my life, which I wouldn't have, because it's about a divorced realtor living in suburban New Jersey, and that's not the kind of novel I ever used to want to read. Note that there are no tricks here: you shouldn't read Independence Day if that thumbnail description sounds awful to you! This was one of those novels that made me realize I've officially become a boring grownup with interest in and empathy for boring grownup concerns: there were pages in here that were the main character's thoughts about real estate, and I found them fascinating. Ditto his thoughts on parenting, aging, mortality, and divorce. This book is not for the spritely or young at heart, and my enjoyment of it marks some yet-unnamed midlife Period of my own.
Without worrying too much about irresponsibly sweeping gender essentialism, I'll say that this book's representation of masculinity and being male was really interesting to me. Bascombe reminds me in certain ways of my father (who's from New Jersey) and my husband (who loves sports), and there was a lot about his character that seemed to represent and partly explicate some of what I find opaque and mysterious about many men. So I did get a kick out of that.
I also loved all the landscapes and descriptions of place. I can't remember the last book I read that transported me with such vividness to places I almost knew but didn't -- I'm pretty familiar with that part of the country, but I haven't been to Cooperstown (really hope to go, someday) or to Haddam (which doesn't exist), though now I definitely feel that I've seen them and the other places in here as well. And I hugely appreciated that on this homebound July Fourth weekend, which otherwise could have been an even more depressing wash.
I liked this better than The Sportswriter, though I did find some characters and conversations tiresome and can see how lots of people wouldn't get into this book. I got deeply into it, though, because it's one of those long novels in which not a whole lot happens but which allows you to occupy totally another person's life and mind. So instead of lying glumly on the couch all weekend with my foot wrapped in towels and ice while America joyfully celebrated its birthday outside, I got to tour New Jersey, Connecticut, and New York State, and rather than just being an immobilized, bored, and crabby version of me, I got to see what it was like to be Frank Bascombe for a change.
Not that there's anything particularly fabulous about being Frank Bascombe, but sometimes it's nice to be someone else. In Independence Day, we pick up a bit later than we left off with Bascombe the last time we saw him, at the end of The Sportswriter. It's now Independence Day weekend in 1988, and Bascombe has entered what he calls his "Existence Period," drifting through his forties while working as a real estate agent in his beloved Haddam, NJ. Basombe is a basically good-natured poster child for easy American privilege: straight, white, well-off, and more or less content in his suburban idyll, despite a few bumps in the road -- a deceased child, the divorce he hasn't been able to recover from, a brutally murdered ex-girlfriend. He's existing, quite nicely, doing mostly fine.
But... Okay, there is no "but" here. This isn't a novel about conflict or rupture or surprising and unexpected turns of events. For me it really was just about living inside someone else while he goes about a more interesting weekend than the one I'd had planned for myself. Instead of icing his purple toes and limping pathetically around the dog park, Bascombe has to show a house to a difficult couple of clients, run a few Haddam business errands, visit his girlfriend on the Jersey Shore, and take his troubled adolescent son on a bonding trip to the basketball and baseball halls of fame. The majority of the book is Bascombe driving around the Northeast in his Crown Vic and having conversations with various characters, with whom he generally tries to share moments of meaningful human connection, with varying degrees of failure.
It's really plain to me that I would've hated this book had I tried to read it at most earlier stages of my life, which I wouldn't have, because it's about a divorced realtor living in suburban New Jersey, and that's not the kind of novel I ever used to want to read. Note that there are no tricks here: you shouldn't read Independence Day if that thumbnail description sounds awful to you! This was one of those novels that made me realize I've officially become a boring grownup with interest in and empathy for boring grownup concerns: there were pages in here that were the main character's thoughts about real estate, and I found them fascinating. Ditto his thoughts on parenting, aging, mortality, and divorce. This book is not for the spritely or young at heart, and my enjoyment of it marks some yet-unnamed midlife Period of my own.
Without worrying too much about irresponsibly sweeping gender essentialism, I'll say that this book's representation of masculinity and being male was really interesting to me. Bascombe reminds me in certain ways of my father (who's from New Jersey) and my husband (who loves sports), and there was a lot about his character that seemed to represent and partly explicate some of what I find opaque and mysterious about many men. So I did get a kick out of that.
I also loved all the landscapes and descriptions of place. I can't remember the last book I read that transported me with such vividness to places I almost knew but didn't -- I'm pretty familiar with that part of the country, but I haven't been to Cooperstown (really hope to go, someday) or to Haddam (which doesn't exist), though now I definitely feel that I've seen them and the other places in here as well. And I hugely appreciated that on this homebound July Fourth weekend, which otherwise could have been an even more depressing wash.
August 22, 2019
Bascombe, run (*1)
Sei anni, tanti son quelli che ho aspettato la digitalizzazione de “Il giorno dell’indipendenza” in italiano, poi mi sono arreso. Dopo dodici pagine
Il modo in cui manchiamo la vita è la vita stessa
Frank Bascombe da giornalista sportivo (nel prequel Sportswriter) si è trasformato in agente immobiliare. Ha cambiato professione ma non il modo di scrivere. Con lui funziona così: vegeti per dieci pagine, poi leggi
La cosa peggiore di essere genitore è quindi il mio destino: essere adulto. Non possedere il linguaggio giusto, non temere le stesse eventualità […] il destino di conoscere molto eppure dover stare come un lampione con la lampadina accesa, sperando che mio figlio veda il suo bagliore..
e ti chiedi: ma cosa stavo leggendo fino ad ora?
Richard Ford non ha avuto figli, l’ho scoperto in “Tra noi” dove racconta la storia dei suoi genitori. Eppure questo libro è incentrato sul rapporto fra Frank e suo figlio Paul nei giorni che precedono quello dell’indipendenza (4 luglio festa nazionale in USA). Paul è un adolescente autodistruttivo che ha sofferto la separazione dei suoi genitori e non ha un buon rapporto con il patrigno. In luglio dovrà essere sottoposto ad un processo per furto. Frank per recuperare il rapporto con lui gli propone la visita a due Hall of fame in due città differenti. La prima è un museo dei campioni del basket, l’altro, che non riusciranno a visitare, riguarda il baseball. Visitare questi musei significa spostarsi, vi assicuro che sembra di essere in auto con Ford, di rivedere l’America dal finestrino con qualcuno che ti spiega di cosa si tratti senza lasciarti far affidamento sulle tue speculazioni. Mi rendo conto che molta dell’America che ho introiettato con i libri è quella che gli scrittori hanno visto dai finestrini delle loro auto. Nella maggior parte dei romanzi americani si viaggia per route e interstatali. Spostarsi per il grande paese è un’esigenza letteraria e psicologica. L’inizio del capitolo 6 mi ha fatto pensare a “Luci nella notte” di Simenon. È un po’ come leggere la brutta copia dello scrittore belga prima che egli lasci solo l’essenziale. L’essenziale in Ford occorre ritagliarlo da soli, lui non fa il lavoro di editing in cui Simenon eccelle. Nel libro di Simenon erano descritti i giorni a cavallo del Labour Day, altri giorni di festa e di spostamenti, altri giorni in cui l’America brulica.
Siamo nel 1988, in piena campagna presidenziale, quella che metterà il culo di George Bush sulla poltrona dove era assiso quello di Ronald Reagan. Ford mi ha fatto ricordare del reverendo nero e del candidato democratico che aveva un cognome da tuffatore, politici macchietta paragonati a Jefferson e Adams, prima redattori della dichiarazione d’indipendenza e successivamente presidenti, qua e là evocati durante la narrazione.
Personaggi minori ma comunque importanti per tratteggiare l’americanismo fine anni ’80 sono i coniugi Markaham in cerca di un’abitazione, Ted, colui che dovrebbe vendergliela e poi Irv, fratellastro di Frank. Le donne protagoniste sono tre, una di esse finirà barbaramente uccisa e a Ford ciò servirà per far percepire un altro aspetto saliente del suo paese: l’insicurezza. In America si può essere uccisi anche da dei ragazzini se ci si trova nel posto sbagliato.
Leggere Ford è spossante ma pure appagante, anche se non nell’immediato. Per me è come andare a correre: non vedo l’ora di arrivare, poi sotto la doccia apprezzo quanto il sacrificio mi abbia giovato.
Colonna sonora
Cinderella - Gypsy Road
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6j7E7...
Jon Bon Jovi - Blaze Of Glory
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MfmYC...
(*1) Voluto rimando alla saga del Coniglio di Updike e alla corsa (sotto la doccia)
Sei anni, tanti son quelli che ho aspettato la digitalizzazione de “Il giorno dell’indipendenza” in italiano, poi mi sono arreso. Dopo dodici pagine
Il modo in cui manchiamo la vita è la vita stessa
Frank Bascombe da giornalista sportivo (nel prequel Sportswriter) si è trasformato in agente immobiliare. Ha cambiato professione ma non il modo di scrivere. Con lui funziona così: vegeti per dieci pagine, poi leggi
La cosa peggiore di essere genitore è quindi il mio destino: essere adulto. Non possedere il linguaggio giusto, non temere le stesse eventualità […] il destino di conoscere molto eppure dover stare come un lampione con la lampadina accesa, sperando che mio figlio veda il suo bagliore..
e ti chiedi: ma cosa stavo leggendo fino ad ora?
Richard Ford non ha avuto figli, l’ho scoperto in “Tra noi” dove racconta la storia dei suoi genitori. Eppure questo libro è incentrato sul rapporto fra Frank e suo figlio Paul nei giorni che precedono quello dell’indipendenza (4 luglio festa nazionale in USA). Paul è un adolescente autodistruttivo che ha sofferto la separazione dei suoi genitori e non ha un buon rapporto con il patrigno. In luglio dovrà essere sottoposto ad un processo per furto. Frank per recuperare il rapporto con lui gli propone la visita a due Hall of fame in due città differenti. La prima è un museo dei campioni del basket, l’altro, che non riusciranno a visitare, riguarda il baseball. Visitare questi musei significa spostarsi, vi assicuro che sembra di essere in auto con Ford, di rivedere l’America dal finestrino con qualcuno che ti spiega di cosa si tratti senza lasciarti far affidamento sulle tue speculazioni. Mi rendo conto che molta dell’America che ho introiettato con i libri è quella che gli scrittori hanno visto dai finestrini delle loro auto. Nella maggior parte dei romanzi americani si viaggia per route e interstatali. Spostarsi per il grande paese è un’esigenza letteraria e psicologica. L’inizio del capitolo 6 mi ha fatto pensare a “Luci nella notte” di Simenon. È un po’ come leggere la brutta copia dello scrittore belga prima che egli lasci solo l’essenziale. L’essenziale in Ford occorre ritagliarlo da soli, lui non fa il lavoro di editing in cui Simenon eccelle. Nel libro di Simenon erano descritti i giorni a cavallo del Labour Day, altri giorni di festa e di spostamenti, altri giorni in cui l’America brulica.
Siamo nel 1988, in piena campagna presidenziale, quella che metterà il culo di George Bush sulla poltrona dove era assiso quello di Ronald Reagan. Ford mi ha fatto ricordare del reverendo nero e del candidato democratico che aveva un cognome da tuffatore, politici macchietta paragonati a Jefferson e Adams, prima redattori della dichiarazione d’indipendenza e successivamente presidenti, qua e là evocati durante la narrazione.
Personaggi minori ma comunque importanti per tratteggiare l’americanismo fine anni ’80 sono i coniugi Markaham in cerca di un’abitazione, Ted, colui che dovrebbe vendergliela e poi Irv, fratellastro di Frank. Le donne protagoniste sono tre, una di esse finirà barbaramente uccisa e a Ford ciò servirà per far percepire un altro aspetto saliente del suo paese: l’insicurezza. In America si può essere uccisi anche da dei ragazzini se ci si trova nel posto sbagliato.
Leggere Ford è spossante ma pure appagante, anche se non nell’immediato. Per me è come andare a correre: non vedo l’ora di arrivare, poi sotto la doccia apprezzo quanto il sacrificio mi abbia giovato.
Colonna sonora
Cinderella - Gypsy Road
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6j7E7...
Jon Bon Jovi - Blaze Of Glory
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MfmYC...
(*1) Voluto rimando alla saga del Coniglio di Updike e alla corsa (sotto la doccia)
September 2, 2008
Really a Virtuoso performance. Ford, in this book does right what I have always felt that Delillo fails at, which is the endless and minute description of events exactly as they unfold from within the subjective consciousness of the protagonist. It's a technique which, in this case, renders the main character overwhelmingly human by virtue of the flood of details corresponding, in quality, quantity, and pace, with my own experience of how events unfold. Ford's artifice disappears under the flood of particularities, and only a second reading of one detail or other makes clear that the author is more than talented in his description, he is a virtuoso, capable of avoiding repetition and cliche while flooding the reader with image after image and thought after thought. At the end of the book one realizes that the 3-day Independence Day structure has, in fact, been tightly woven around a set of ideas about independence, one's connection to the world, and the question of one's own innate value, as referenced to contemporary (1980s) politics and the thoughts of the founding fathers...
July 22, 2017
Ένας μεγάλος συγγραφέας κι ένα σπουδαίο βιβλίο.
September 5, 2007
I'm already getting ready for the brickbats on this one, but after reading more than one glowing review of Richard Ford's work, I tackled this one first, and I found that I disliked the main character so much that no amount of storytelling finesse about real estate in New Jersey and other exigencies of modern life could change my mind. And in this case, I had the feeling that Ford is a lot like his central character, so that gave me the kind of bad taste that has just put me off him permanently.
July 31, 2007
Glutten for punishment that I am, after reading (and strongly disliking!) Ford's first Bascombe novel I soldiered on with the hope that "Independence Day" was, indeed, worthy of the Pulitzer Prize. After just a few chapters I realized that Ford had a formula: several chapters of Bascombe's narcissistic ramblings coupled with (surprise!) a life-changing event that shocks Bascombe into engaging with his family and the world around him about 60 pages from the end. I'm not on the Pulitzer panel, but in my opinion they made a huge mistake by awarding this hack this highly-coveted prize.
January 31, 2021
ΤΗΝ ΠΑΤΗΣΑ! Ιδού γιατί: "Τίποτε λιγότερο από την ιστορία του ίδιου του 20ου αιώνα. Μια πρωτόγνωρη εποποιία"! Ε δεν σε εξιτάρει ένας τέτοιος χαρακτηρισμός; Και ποια λέτε να είναι η εποποιία;
Οι ανησυχίες ενός μικροαστού μεσίτη στις ΗΠΑ όπου εκτυλίσσεται μια άνευ προηγουμένου φλυαρία. να με συγχωρέσετε αλλά το παράτησα στη μέση (έχει και η υπομονή τα όρια της) και το έβαλα στη λίστα με τα ΜΙΣΟΔΙΑΒΑΣΜΕΝΑ.
Οι ανησυχίες ενός μικροαστού μεσίτη στις ΗΠΑ όπου εκτυλίσσεται μια άνευ προηγουμένου φλυαρία. να με συγχωρέσετε αλλά το παράτησα στη μέση (έχει και η υπομονή τα όρια της) και το έβαλα στη λίστα με τα ΜΙΣΟΔΙΑΒΑΣΜΕΝΑ.
February 12, 2008
I read this one after a tumultuous breakup and I completely connected with it. You know how after a big breakup you feel like a middle aged, lonely, sadly contemplative semi-loser who just wants to feel....uh...vital again?
Well, I did.
I woke up early (something I never do) to read this. I savored it. Frank whines, he whinges, he bemoans.
But Ford writes in a shimmering, smooth, Saul Bellow-y kinda a way that lets you (me) take in the sensations and the situations in an easy sip. I pictured every single moment he describes in this story, something that is usually kind of hard for me. But I was there with him, Frank I mean, as he mopes and wallows and tries to reconnect with his son.
The dopey couple Frank tries to sell a house to (one of the major subplots) has the same last name as the girl who had left me (yeah, it was like that) so that was a nice sort of synchronistc pleasure....hee hee hee...
O and I might be wrong but this also had a thin vein of political criticism running through it. His kid getting hit in the eye by a baseball in Cooperstown, his sullen and defiant black tenants, the jovial fat broke Republican hot dog vendor, Frank's fruitless attempt at getting some Emerson under his son's eyes, there's a bunch else I forget. I liked this stuff, subtle and telling without being too over the top.
I'm not sure I'll read it again, but it definitely came to my aid randomly in a time of crisis. For that, I'm giving it tons of love and respect.
anyway, I came to find out it was part of a trilogy so now I've got to get to the other two sometime.
Well, I did.
I woke up early (something I never do) to read this. I savored it. Frank whines, he whinges, he bemoans.
But Ford writes in a shimmering, smooth, Saul Bellow-y kinda a way that lets you (me) take in the sensations and the situations in an easy sip. I pictured every single moment he describes in this story, something that is usually kind of hard for me. But I was there with him, Frank I mean, as he mopes and wallows and tries to reconnect with his son.
The dopey couple Frank tries to sell a house to (one of the major subplots) has the same last name as the girl who had left me (yeah, it was like that) so that was a nice sort of synchronistc pleasure....hee hee hee...
O and I might be wrong but this also had a thin vein of political criticism running through it. His kid getting hit in the eye by a baseball in Cooperstown, his sullen and defiant black tenants, the jovial fat broke Republican hot dog vendor, Frank's fruitless attempt at getting some Emerson under his son's eyes, there's a bunch else I forget. I liked this stuff, subtle and telling without being too over the top.
I'm not sure I'll read it again, but it definitely came to my aid randomly in a time of crisis. For that, I'm giving it tons of love and respect.
anyway, I came to find out it was part of a trilogy so now I've got to get to the other two sometime.
Read
March 12, 2017Okay, it's high time I gave up on this [terribly smug] masterpiece of an American novel.
March 16, 2010
There are isolated moments of real insight here and it's a shame they're lost in such a meandering, pointless story. The book is strongest when it shows the impact that a realtor has on the lives of his clients -- something I hadn't really considered previously. The story of the Markhams, how the compromises they must make in settling for the home they can afford instead of the one they really want is a powerful metaphor for the lives of these two people, for the choices they've made and how they will live out their remaining years. It's about making tough decisions and being honest about yourself and your situation in life. I would have loved to see this as a short story. Unfortunately, the novel has little else to offer. The protagonist's insights into his own life are fairly shallow and repetitive (if I had to read the term "Existence Period" one more time I was going to put the book down for good). Pulitzer prize? Come on.
April 19, 2011
I first saw this book during one of my religion classes in college. My seatmate, who is now a good friend of mine, brought it with him. I asked him if a certain movie was adapted from the book, and he firmly answered "no". This was also the first time I got interested with books that have won the Pulitzer. Now Ford is, no doubt, a good writer. I love every minute Bascombe spent with his son. I can feel the tension between them, and Bascombe's want to make it work, the relationship. It saddened me because as far as I could remember, during his "sportwriter" days, they had a connection. Then a death in the family sort of changed everything. Plus the divorce. When I think about the book, what would always comes to mind was the last scene, when Bascombe received a call from someone he wasn't sure who. The other party didn't talk and was making weird noises. He talked to the person still, telling the other party he was all right. That broke my heart for reasons still unclear to me, even to this day.
August 3, 2007
Eh. I'm torn about this book. There's no denying Ford is a good writer but I never really connected to the story. I just didn't feel much of anything for any of the characters, they all felt flat and one dimensional despite the overwhelming amount of detail he writes about them. This novel is like a song that is technically perfect but fails to inspire any real feeling.
May 30, 2015
Richard Ford’s Pulitzer Prize winning novel Independence Day, in my eyes, officially marks the author as the last and possibly greatest GMN* of the twentieth-century. I was impressed but not blown away by the first novel in his trilogy, The Sportswriter, in which we meet Frank Bascombe, a complicated and difficult-to-pin-down ex-marine and failed novelist who turns to sportswriting after the devastating death of his son and his subsequent divorce. The Sportswriter is indebted to Updike’s Rabbit franchise in all the right ways--most notably for its elevation and near religious worship of the quiet, mundane banalities of suburban American life. Like most of Updike’s heroes, Ford’s protagonist Frank Bascombe is manly and solipsistic, but also open-minded and deeply introspective. He is a liberal, though one who will neither censor his thoughts nor succumb to political correctness. In his thoughts Frank is something of a chauvinist, but by his actions he reveals himself to be basically a big softie. Where Ford diverges from Updike, however, is in his creation of intelligent, strong-willed female characters who are fierce and intransigent, providing important counter-points to Frank’s limited outlook and perspective.
Independence Day is a departure in many ways from The Sportswriter in that it deals with the complexities and entanglements of a changing United States approaching the millenium. Although Frank’s interaction with this change--which includes race and class tensions, divorce, and fear of an approaching housing-market correction (Frank is now a realtor in Haddam, New Jersey)--is somewhat awkward and forced, the novel feels less claustrophobic and certainly less solipsistic for Ford’s efforts. In this way, Ford evades Franzen’s famous criticism of Updike in the Paris Review--claiming that the author fails to deal with “the bigger postwar, postmodern, socio-technological picture,” rendering him “a classic self-absorbed sixties-style narcissist.” To me, this charge has always seemed a bit unfair. For dealing with rapid and violent change by clinging to stability and escaping into a kind of dreamy, reflective solipsism seems a natural and fairly innocent reaction to new and overwhelming realities. Frank, despite his quiet dreaminess and searching nature, has come a long way since the death of his son Ralph and his divorce, as well as his resignation from sportswriting. He is now determined to right the mistakes of his past, and decides that this should come in the form of helping his delinquent son Paul right his own sagging path. Thus the plot of Independence Day centers on an epic weekend road trip between a flawed father and his troubled son, first to the Basketball Hall of Fame in Springfield, MA, then to the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, NY.
The first half of Independence Day, however, focuses on the days leading up to this trip, as we are introduced to “Frank the realtor.” Getting involved with realty is one of the ways Frank, in his mid-life, decides he can “give back” to the community. In an effort to change perceptions and enlighten the WASPish residents of Haddam, New Jersey, Frank even begins buying and fixing up houses in “colored” neighborhoods and recommending them to his closed-minded clients. In fact, realty works as a superb metaphor, and one which Frank uses as a vehicle for examining America and his own community. In The Sportswriter, Frank inhabits a world that, as Barbara Ehrenreich puts it, is “just large enough for his personal tragedies and philanderings and not an iota of anything else.”** In Independence Day, one gets the overwhelming sense that Frank is trying to make room--not for anyone or anything in particular, but for something nonetheless. Despite its preoccupation with social engagement and “making room,” Independence Day is also a kind of hazy, leaf-blown meditation on independence and self-reliance, both in the individual and larger historical sense. Frank even goes so far as to bring Becker’s The Declaration of Independence and Emerson’s “Self-Reliance” along on the Hall of Fame road trip, hoping his son will be inspired enough to soak up some wisdom. But things don’t go at all as planned and both books end up sadly relegated to the back seat of the car.
With Independence Day, it is important not to allow the overt themes of independence, self-reliance, change, and civic virtue to cloud the novel’s prodigious aesthetic virtues. Ford, more a poet than a novelist, is able to capture delicate and seemingly mundane nuances with painterly precision and psychological acuity. In language that is almost musical, Ford captures what it sounds like to be stuck in a drab hospital waiting room in Oneonta, New York, as the nurses are changing shifts; what it feels like to be waiting for a response in a phone booth at midnight after telling your partner you love them for the first time; or what it smells like to march in a sweaty Independence Day parade in Haddam, New Jersey. But it’s not just external details. As Frank’s subconscious mind wanders, the reader feels content to follow along gleefully. For example, as Frank sells a home to Phyllis and Joe Markham, a boring and frumpy middle-aged couple, he muses:
"I gaze in puzzlement at her ill-defined posterior and have a sudden, fleeting curiosity about, of all things, her and Joe’s sex life. Would it be jolly and jokey? Prayerful and restrained? Rowdy, growling and obstreperous? Phyllis has an indefinite milky allure that is not always obvious--encased and bundled as she is, and slightly bulge-eyed in her fitless, matron-designer clothes--some yielding, unmaternal abundance that could certainly get a rise out of some lonely PTA dad in corduroys and a flannel shirt, encountered by surprise in the chilly intimacy of the grade-school parking lot after parents’ night."
The narrative, though not exactly stream-of-consciousness, is delivered in the first-person present. Frank’s voice, no matter what he is doing or relating, is always intimate, but tends to drift in between levels of conscious and sub-conscious thought--in other words, between the stuff not realized, the stuff only discreetly realized, and the stuff that has been fully realized and is therefore fashioned self-consciously to please.
Frank, throughout the novel, is engrossed in a new life phase he calls “the existence period,” which sounds rather deep but is really no more than a mature phase, the resigned acknowledgement that there are things in his life he cannot control. All efforts to look backward or forward in life during this period are substituted for an overriding imperative to simply be, to "exist." What we learn in the end is that Frank is becoming an adult. He is looking both inward and outward at the things he may be able to influence and giving these things a sincere effort. In this way, Independence Day gives us a mere slice--a weekend, in fact--of Frank’s breezy, wandering, introspective existence. However, just as independence and a sense of “the mystery of things” are important to Frank, so these qualities seem to matter doubly to Richard Ford; and although we come to share an intimate weekend with Frank Bascombe, there is, as with all great literary protagonists, a kernel of mystery regarding the man’s inner life that is left fully intact, and which the reader can never quite bring into focus.
*Coined by the late David Foster Wallace, the term Great Male Narcissist (GMN) has come to signify a class of talented, if mostly self-absorbed post-war writers--including Roth, Mailer, Updike, and sometimes even Franzen--whose novels fixate shamelessly on sex, work, death, and their own self-consciousness.
**Not that her review of Independence Day was in any way negative! Ehrenreich, who was critical of The Sportswriter, had this to say about Independence Day:
"Most reviewers of Independence Day have concluded that Richard Ford is one of the great American writers of our time. Surely they underestimate him. Anybody who can keep the reader going through 451 pages about a holiday weekend in the life of a New Jersey realtor—a weekend in which nothing much happens except for some pitstops at the Baseball Hall of Fame, the Vince Lombardi Rest Stop on the New Jersey Turnpike, and other locations that I experience, even in literary form, as personal hell—is more than a great writer of our time. He may be the greatest writer of all time."
Independence Day is a departure in many ways from The Sportswriter in that it deals with the complexities and entanglements of a changing United States approaching the millenium. Although Frank’s interaction with this change--which includes race and class tensions, divorce, and fear of an approaching housing-market correction (Frank is now a realtor in Haddam, New Jersey)--is somewhat awkward and forced, the novel feels less claustrophobic and certainly less solipsistic for Ford’s efforts. In this way, Ford evades Franzen’s famous criticism of Updike in the Paris Review--claiming that the author fails to deal with “the bigger postwar, postmodern, socio-technological picture,” rendering him “a classic self-absorbed sixties-style narcissist.” To me, this charge has always seemed a bit unfair. For dealing with rapid and violent change by clinging to stability and escaping into a kind of dreamy, reflective solipsism seems a natural and fairly innocent reaction to new and overwhelming realities. Frank, despite his quiet dreaminess and searching nature, has come a long way since the death of his son Ralph and his divorce, as well as his resignation from sportswriting. He is now determined to right the mistakes of his past, and decides that this should come in the form of helping his delinquent son Paul right his own sagging path. Thus the plot of Independence Day centers on an epic weekend road trip between a flawed father and his troubled son, first to the Basketball Hall of Fame in Springfield, MA, then to the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, NY.
The first half of Independence Day, however, focuses on the days leading up to this trip, as we are introduced to “Frank the realtor.” Getting involved with realty is one of the ways Frank, in his mid-life, decides he can “give back” to the community. In an effort to change perceptions and enlighten the WASPish residents of Haddam, New Jersey, Frank even begins buying and fixing up houses in “colored” neighborhoods and recommending them to his closed-minded clients. In fact, realty works as a superb metaphor, and one which Frank uses as a vehicle for examining America and his own community. In The Sportswriter, Frank inhabits a world that, as Barbara Ehrenreich puts it, is “just large enough for his personal tragedies and philanderings and not an iota of anything else.”** In Independence Day, one gets the overwhelming sense that Frank is trying to make room--not for anyone or anything in particular, but for something nonetheless. Despite its preoccupation with social engagement and “making room,” Independence Day is also a kind of hazy, leaf-blown meditation on independence and self-reliance, both in the individual and larger historical sense. Frank even goes so far as to bring Becker’s The Declaration of Independence and Emerson’s “Self-Reliance” along on the Hall of Fame road trip, hoping his son will be inspired enough to soak up some wisdom. But things don’t go at all as planned and both books end up sadly relegated to the back seat of the car.
With Independence Day, it is important not to allow the overt themes of independence, self-reliance, change, and civic virtue to cloud the novel’s prodigious aesthetic virtues. Ford, more a poet than a novelist, is able to capture delicate and seemingly mundane nuances with painterly precision and psychological acuity. In language that is almost musical, Ford captures what it sounds like to be stuck in a drab hospital waiting room in Oneonta, New York, as the nurses are changing shifts; what it feels like to be waiting for a response in a phone booth at midnight after telling your partner you love them for the first time; or what it smells like to march in a sweaty Independence Day parade in Haddam, New Jersey. But it’s not just external details. As Frank’s subconscious mind wanders, the reader feels content to follow along gleefully. For example, as Frank sells a home to Phyllis and Joe Markham, a boring and frumpy middle-aged couple, he muses:
"I gaze in puzzlement at her ill-defined posterior and have a sudden, fleeting curiosity about, of all things, her and Joe’s sex life. Would it be jolly and jokey? Prayerful and restrained? Rowdy, growling and obstreperous? Phyllis has an indefinite milky allure that is not always obvious--encased and bundled as she is, and slightly bulge-eyed in her fitless, matron-designer clothes--some yielding, unmaternal abundance that could certainly get a rise out of some lonely PTA dad in corduroys and a flannel shirt, encountered by surprise in the chilly intimacy of the grade-school parking lot after parents’ night."
The narrative, though not exactly stream-of-consciousness, is delivered in the first-person present. Frank’s voice, no matter what he is doing or relating, is always intimate, but tends to drift in between levels of conscious and sub-conscious thought--in other words, between the stuff not realized, the stuff only discreetly realized, and the stuff that has been fully realized and is therefore fashioned self-consciously to please.
Frank, throughout the novel, is engrossed in a new life phase he calls “the existence period,” which sounds rather deep but is really no more than a mature phase, the resigned acknowledgement that there are things in his life he cannot control. All efforts to look backward or forward in life during this period are substituted for an overriding imperative to simply be, to "exist." What we learn in the end is that Frank is becoming an adult. He is looking both inward and outward at the things he may be able to influence and giving these things a sincere effort. In this way, Independence Day gives us a mere slice--a weekend, in fact--of Frank’s breezy, wandering, introspective existence. However, just as independence and a sense of “the mystery of things” are important to Frank, so these qualities seem to matter doubly to Richard Ford; and although we come to share an intimate weekend with Frank Bascombe, there is, as with all great literary protagonists, a kernel of mystery regarding the man’s inner life that is left fully intact, and which the reader can never quite bring into focus.
*Coined by the late David Foster Wallace, the term Great Male Narcissist (GMN) has come to signify a class of talented, if mostly self-absorbed post-war writers--including Roth, Mailer, Updike, and sometimes even Franzen--whose novels fixate shamelessly on sex, work, death, and their own self-consciousness.
**Not that her review of Independence Day was in any way negative! Ehrenreich, who was critical of The Sportswriter, had this to say about Independence Day:
"Most reviewers of Independence Day have concluded that Richard Ford is one of the great American writers of our time. Surely they underestimate him. Anybody who can keep the reader going through 451 pages about a holiday weekend in the life of a New Jersey realtor—a weekend in which nothing much happens except for some pitstops at the Baseball Hall of Fame, the Vince Lombardi Rest Stop on the New Jersey Turnpike, and other locations that I experience, even in literary form, as personal hell—is more than a great writer of our time. He may be the greatest writer of all time."
December 26, 2019
Εξαιρετικά επιτηδευμένη γραφή ώστε το στιλ να κυριαρχεί επί της ιστορίας και κάπου να χάνεται ο προσανατολισμός σε ένα αδικαιολόγητα ογκώδες βιβλίο (700 σελίδες). Αναμφισβήτητος μάστορας του λόγου ο Ford με πολύ βάθος και γνώση δεν αποφεύγει ωστόσο την επίδειξη και κουράζει (τουλάχιστον εμένα).
January 30, 2008
So, I bought this book in California at the Westlake Village Library's "Book Nook", where my Grandmother has been a loyal volunteer for decades and takes me every time I visit --I think because she never remembers that she's already taken me there a million times before. And, believe it or not, I made it all the way to the end of the book only to realize that someone (probably the previous asshole owner) has ripped out the very last page. Who would do that?!!
You might think the suspense of not knowing how this book ends would be agonizing, that I would be running to Powells to pick up the nearest copy and finish the book off as soon as possible. Yet, sadly, I find myself not caring. And it's ironically fitting because this book is sort of all about not caring.
It's not that I didn't try, either. I really, really wanted to like this book. Ford is a great writer and he has moments of total brilliance and even more moments of absolute hilarity. But Frank Bascombe, the novel's main character, has to be one of the most unlikable ever created. He is unfaithful, greedy, lecherous, lying and (worst of all) boring. He reminds me of Updike's Rabbit, only he is wealthier, which I think makes him even less likable. And, while I admire the narrator's honesty (he even admits to checking out the surgeon who is about to deliver news about his son't life-threatening injury) he is ultimately a complete prick. I think we can all identify with the overwhelming apathy of Frank Bascombe, however, at the end of the day, books about people who don't feel anything aren't that interesting. Probably because they don't make you feel anything.
You might think the suspense of not knowing how this book ends would be agonizing, that I would be running to Powells to pick up the nearest copy and finish the book off as soon as possible. Yet, sadly, I find myself not caring. And it's ironically fitting because this book is sort of all about not caring.
It's not that I didn't try, either. I really, really wanted to like this book. Ford is a great writer and he has moments of total brilliance and even more moments of absolute hilarity. But Frank Bascombe, the novel's main character, has to be one of the most unlikable ever created. He is unfaithful, greedy, lecherous, lying and (worst of all) boring. He reminds me of Updike's Rabbit, only he is wealthier, which I think makes him even less likable. And, while I admire the narrator's honesty (he even admits to checking out the surgeon who is about to deliver news about his son't life-threatening injury) he is ultimately a complete prick. I think we can all identify with the overwhelming apathy of Frank Bascombe, however, at the end of the day, books about people who don't feel anything aren't that interesting. Probably because they don't make you feel anything.
January 5, 2008
More morose than his previous incarnation in the "Sportswriter," Frank Bascombe returns as the amazingly well-drawn protagonist with the incredibly compelling inner voice. He never quite connects with the people around him and is always to a degree dissembling to his friends and family. Only the reader understands his rich philosophies and the complex reactions he has to events as they unfold in his life. Kudos to Richard Ford for creating a character so real that I feel as if I've gained an intimate friend.
October 24, 2016
Ωραίος και δεμένος λόγος, ειρωνας εκεί που πρέπει. Το απλώνει ωραία κ αποκρυσταλώνει/αποκαλύπτει την μικροαστική μιζέρια της αμερικάνικης ενδοχώρας των 80'ς....όταν ο Μπους ο πρεσβύτερος αποτελεί επιλογή επειδή δεν υπάρχει κάτι άλλο πιο ενδιαφέρον ... Όσο ωραίος κ να ναι ο πινακας, με τέτοιο θέμα πόσο να σ' αγγίξει δηλαδή;
January 23, 2015
Frank Bascombe 2.0
"...quando si è giovani il proprio avversario è il futuro; ma quando non lo si è più il proprio avversario è il passato e tutto ciò che si è fatto nel passato, e il problema è riuscire a sfuggirgli"
"...quando si è giovani il proprio avversario è il futuro; ma quando non lo si è più il proprio avversario è il passato e tutto ciò che si è fatto nel passato, e il problema è riuscire a sfuggirgli"
January 27, 2020
Seconda puntata della trilogia che inizia con "Sportswriter" e finisce con "Lo stato delle cose", "Il giorno dell'Indipendenza" è un romanzo notevole - con giusto un po' di prolissità discutibile.
A ridosso della Festa dell’Indipendenza, Frank Bascombe - mezza età, agente immobiliare, divorziato, un figlio morto, altri due che vivono con la madre, lontani - passa quattro giorni dividendoli in un breve tempo con Sally, il nuovo amore - forse - e in un tempo più lungo - necessariamente, doverosamente - con Paul, il complicato figlio quindicenne che ha bisogno d’aiuto; qualche momento Frank lo trova pure per altri, è un buono di natura, lui, un generoso, e poi si adatta molto alle situazioni più varie: “Non è vero che ci si possa abituare a tutto - sostiene -, ma ci si può abituare a molto più di quanto si creda, e può arrivare persino a piacere”. Un’adattabilità che viene dal suo relativismo, dalla disposizione a vedere le cose da varie prospettive: “Il mio più grande difetto e la mia più grande forza, come essere umano, è che sono sempre in grado di immaginare qualsiasi cosa - un matrimonio, una conversazione, un governo - differente da com’è, una caratteristica che potrebbe rendere una persona un avvocato, un romanziere o un agente immobiliare di prim’ordine, ma che sembra produrre un essere umano un po’ meno affidabile e moralmente credibile”. Tutto questo produce instabilità, chiaramente, e talvolta Frank Bascombe sogna di “occupare un punto fermo invece di essere in trasformazione”: forse il punto fermo lo troverà con Sally... ma questo lo si saprà solo nell'ultimo romanzo della trilogia, "Lo stato delle cose", che ho letto - sovvertendo la cronologia - e che reputo di livello ancora superiore.
A ridosso della Festa dell’Indipendenza, Frank Bascombe - mezza età, agente immobiliare, divorziato, un figlio morto, altri due che vivono con la madre, lontani - passa quattro giorni dividendoli in un breve tempo con Sally, il nuovo amore - forse - e in un tempo più lungo - necessariamente, doverosamente - con Paul, il complicato figlio quindicenne che ha bisogno d’aiuto; qualche momento Frank lo trova pure per altri, è un buono di natura, lui, un generoso, e poi si adatta molto alle situazioni più varie: “Non è vero che ci si possa abituare a tutto - sostiene -, ma ci si può abituare a molto più di quanto si creda, e può arrivare persino a piacere”. Un’adattabilità che viene dal suo relativismo, dalla disposizione a vedere le cose da varie prospettive: “Il mio più grande difetto e la mia più grande forza, come essere umano, è che sono sempre in grado di immaginare qualsiasi cosa - un matrimonio, una conversazione, un governo - differente da com’è, una caratteristica che potrebbe rendere una persona un avvocato, un romanziere o un agente immobiliare di prim’ordine, ma che sembra produrre un essere umano un po’ meno affidabile e moralmente credibile”. Tutto questo produce instabilità, chiaramente, e talvolta Frank Bascombe sogna di “occupare un punto fermo invece di essere in trasformazione”: forse il punto fermo lo troverà con Sally... ma questo lo si saprà solo nell'ultimo romanzo della trilogia, "Lo stato delle cose", che ho letto - sovvertendo la cronologia - e che reputo di livello ancora superiore.
June 23, 2020
Exclusiv pentru admiratorii lui Ford - romanul ăsta! E o tortură să-l duci la capăt. Cu frazele sale nesfârșite și scrisul mic, meschin, fontul de literă ales de Humanitas în numele zgârceniei tipografice. Să fi avut parte cartea de fontul obișnuit al Humanitas, ar fi numărat cel puțin o sută de pagini în plus. Să fi fost mai bine corectată de cei 3! corectori plătiți degeaba + traducătoarea (prima de care greșelile de culegere, de literă sau de frazare nu ar trebui să treacă)...
Ceva mă ține departe de stilul de a traduce al Iuliei Gorzo. Ar trebui să scriu o carte cât Ziua Independenței ca să-mi argumentez antipatia. Primul meu contact “violent” cu stilul Iuliei Gorzo a avut loc odată cu lectura Teatrului lui Sabbath de Philip Roth (pe care l-a măcelărit cu ticurile ei verbale și cu acel “pe undeva” obsesiv - de negăsit echivalentul său în varianta originală, am căutat! - care în Ziua Independenței e într-un stadiu incipient, abia dacă l-a strecurat de vreo 10 ori).
“Pe undeva” și “la modul” o definesc pentru mine pe Iulia Gorzo. “La modul” trist. Să construiesti toate modalele cu “la modul” ajunge să spele creierii!
Protagonistul romanului este un bărbat de vârstă mijlocie, înlemnit emoțional, căruia compania altor bărbați și a femeilor îi lipsește - de aceea, o caută -, dar care nu e suficient de dispus să dea de la el (să facă concesii) sufletește, considerându-se convenabil (Iulia Gorzo ar fi scris “la modul” convenabil) incapabil de iubire.
Ceva mă ține departe de stilul de a traduce al Iuliei Gorzo. Ar trebui să scriu o carte cât Ziua Independenței ca să-mi argumentez antipatia. Primul meu contact “violent” cu stilul Iuliei Gorzo a avut loc odată cu lectura Teatrului lui Sabbath de Philip Roth (pe care l-a măcelărit cu ticurile ei verbale și cu acel “pe undeva” obsesiv - de negăsit echivalentul său în varianta originală, am căutat! - care în Ziua Independenței e într-un stadiu incipient, abia dacă l-a strecurat de vreo 10 ori).
“Pe undeva” și “la modul” o definesc pentru mine pe Iulia Gorzo. “La modul” trist. Să construiesti toate modalele cu “la modul” ajunge să spele creierii!
Protagonistul romanului este un bărbat de vârstă mijlocie, înlemnit emoțional, căruia compania altor bărbați și a femeilor îi lipsește - de aceea, o caută -, dar care nu e suficient de dispus să dea de la el (să facă concesii) sufletește, considerându-se convenabil (Iulia Gorzo ar fi scris “la modul” convenabil) incapabil de iubire.
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