Be Mine

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That’s one of those things I’ve been preoccupied with all my life: how you say the things you don’t have language for. Frank, for all his imperfections in affairs of the heart over the course of his life, is committed to showing up for his dying son, and given the limitations of what is available given the time of year and his sons precarious health, he creates a road trip as a form of a Valentine's gift. John Banville, I say, commented that it doesn’t matter if you don’t read reviews, because your friends will show you the worst ones anyway. The relationship between father and son is both touching and a little rowdy, but as with all Bascombe books, the relationship of Frank to the universe is what it's all about. He is thinking about what happiness means, and of possibilities of new relationships with women and is partly disappointed in these and partly satisfied or reconciled.

Be Mine by Richard Ford review – America, the fool’s paradise

Bascombe’s son Paul is dying and ALS fractures and distorts his every gesture and attempt at raillery. Reflecting several weeks later, I’d say Richard Ford’s uncomplicated prose gave a far greater depth of meaning than his everyday simple language should have delivered. If that seems a bit on the nose, well, neither Frank Bascombe nor Richard Ford have ever shied away from the obvious – the obvious being, like everything else, part of the job. The smarmy soft focus is unusual for Ford, but less disappointing than the safe, generic description that accompanies those occasions when Betty—“for reasons I never anticipate”—decides to strip naked for the massage session: “Undressed, she is as tiny as she seems clothed, but unexpectedly curvy and fleshy where you wouldn’t expect.

Lots of summer books traditionally invite readers on a road trip, but when literary masters like Richard Ford and Lorrie Moore are in the drivers' seats, the only thing we readers can count on is that we'll travel far beyond the range of GPS. Premium Digital includes access to our premier business column, Lex, as well as 15 curated newsletters covering key business themes with original, in-depth reporting. Roosevelt faced two daunting tasks: to pull the country out of the Depression and, in the face of Nazism’s rise, to overcome U.

Richard Ford: ‘I just make up shit to worry about at 3am’

He’s a southern boy at heart, born in Jackson, Mississippi, a mere 200 miles from New Orleans – “I go up there just for dinner sometimes” – so really, this represents coming home. There is a wizardry in the way Ford captures the patient humorous tone of Bascombe and the patent distress often repressed by wacko attempts at sly wit on the part of his son. She keeps seeing her as she travels around Europe, teaching young students and reuniting with musicians from her past.

Han Kang is back with Greek Lessons (Hamish Hamilton, April), beautifully translated by Deborah Smith and Emily Yae Won. Frank takes Betty on dinner dates; afterward, “inside my still-frozen car … we’ve kissed and embraced sweetly a time or two. It is perpetually surprising about an impossibly sad subject matter, but it is done with an extraordinary imaginative spirit and a constantly diverting patter that deepens and does not deflect the extremity it explores so masterfully against all odds. He sees America’s “industrial genius”—factories producing everyday items were enlisted to make armaments—as central to the defeat of fascism, arguing that American workers were war heroes, too.

Be Mine: A Frank Bascombe Novel by Richard Ford | Goodreads Be Mine: A Frank Bascombe Novel by Richard Ford | Goodreads

You know you’re carrying all the time because that weight is another possible way of thinking about the nervous world around you. The latest is somewhat more focused and linear, though the usual digressions and flashbacks give it the haphazard feel cherished by Frank’s fans. The following year he publishes his first short story collection, Rock Springs, leading Grantaeditor Bill Buford to categorise Ford’s writing as “dirty realism”, focusing on life’s mundanity.

Then came the Pulitzer Prize-winning Independence Day (1995), The Lay of the Land (2006) and the four novellas collected in Let Me Be Frank With You (2014). The two of them decide to take a trip together to Mount Rushmore even as Paul's body is suffering more and more from the devastating impacts of ALS.

Be Mine’ Shows the Trump Era Through Frank Bascombe’s Eyes ‘Be Mine’ Shows the Trump Era Through Frank Bascombe’s Eyes

Familiarity with these previous incarnations is in no way necessary, though it does add to the illusion of depth, an accretion of sedimentary layers. If you do nothing, you will be auto-enrolled in our premium digital monthly subscription plan and retain complete access for 65 € per month. I've been a fan of Ford's Frank Bascombe for decades, but this one was a little too unrelentingly glum for me. The New Yorker may earn a portion of sales from products that are purchased through our site as part of our Affiliate Partnerships with retailers.He really has gone far from where he started: Ford is one of the most celebrated of living American novelists, both a bestseller and winner of big prizes. Comparisons have been drawn between Ford's work and the writings of John Updike, William Faulkner, Ernest Hemingway and Walker Percy. We try our best to steward what comes out of our mouth, but once those words leave our mouth, the other person has to then find a logic for a reply. The Bee Sting (Hamish Hamilton, June) is the tale of a dysfunctional family trying to hold things together.