Bascombe
4 primary works
Book 1
As a sportswriter, Frank Bascombe makes his living studying people--men, mostly--who live entirely within themselves. This is a condition that Frank himself aspires to. But at thirty-eight, he suffers from incurable dreaminess, occasional pounding of the heart, and the not-too-distant losses of a career, a son, and a marriage. In the course of the Easter week in which Ford's moving novel transpires, Bascombe will end up losing the remnants of his familiar life, though with his spirits soaring.
Book 2
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.
Book 3
With "The Sportswriter," in 1985, Richard Ford began a cycle of novels that ten years later--after "Independence Day"--won both the Pulitzer Prize and the PEN/Faulkner Award. Now, Frank Bascombe's story resumes, in the fall of 2000, with the presidential election still hanging in the balance and Thanksgiving looming before him with all the perils of a post-nuclear family get-together.
Book 4
In his trio of bestselling novels – The Sportswriter, Pulitzer Prize and PEN/Faulkner-winning Independence Day, and The Lay of the Land – Richard Ford set out the zeitgeist of an entire generation, through the divining and wit of his now-famous literary chronicler, Frank Bascombe, one of the most indelible, provocative and anticipated characters in modern American literature.
In Let Me Be Frank With You, Ford returns with four deftly linked Christmas stories narrated by the iconic Bascombe. Now sixty-eight, Frank resides again in the New Jersey suburb of Haddam, and has thrived – seemingly but not utterly – amidst the devastations of Hurricane Sandy. The desolations of Sandy, which left houses, shorelines and countless lives unmoored and flattened, are the perfect backdrop and touchstone for Ford – and Bascombe. With a flawless comedic sensibility and unblinking intelligence, these stories range over the full complement of universal subjects: ageing, race, loss, faith, marriage, the real estate debacle – the tumult of the world we live in.
Through Bascombe – funny, profane, touching, wise, often inappropriate – we share the aspirations and sorrows, longings, achievements and failings of American life in the morning of the new century. With his trademark candour and brimming wit, Richard Ford brings Bascombe back in all his imperfect glory to say (often hilariously) what all of us are thinking but few will voice aloud.
In Let Me Be Frank With You, Ford returns with four deftly linked Christmas stories narrated by the iconic Bascombe. Now sixty-eight, Frank resides again in the New Jersey suburb of Haddam, and has thrived – seemingly but not utterly – amidst the devastations of Hurricane Sandy. The desolations of Sandy, which left houses, shorelines and countless lives unmoored and flattened, are the perfect backdrop and touchstone for Ford – and Bascombe. With a flawless comedic sensibility and unblinking intelligence, these stories range over the full complement of universal subjects: ageing, race, loss, faith, marriage, the real estate debacle – the tumult of the world we live in.
Through Bascombe – funny, profane, touching, wise, often inappropriate – we share the aspirations and sorrows, longings, achievements and failings of American life in the morning of the new century. With his trademark candour and brimming wit, Richard Ford brings Bascombe back in all his imperfect glory to say (often hilariously) what all of us are thinking but few will voice aloud.