The Sportswriter

This is the second time I have delved into this book. I first read it five or six years ago when a book about a divorced sportswriter held a certain allure for me. Since then, I have perused Ford's recent short story collection, “A Multitude of Sins,” and numerous other short stories published in The New Yorker.

The Sportswriter, which unfolds over an Easter Weekend, marks a significant turning point in writer Frank Bascomb’s life. The narrative commences with his early morning encounter with his ex-wife at the grave of their young son. The quiet, introspective, and somber tone that Ford establishes during this meeting accompanies Frank on a series of adventures. He travels to Detroit to interview a former athlete, has Easter dinner with his girlfriend’s family, visits the residence of a quasi-friend who has committed suicide, and takes a late-night train to New York.

Amidst and between the first-person depictions of these diverse scenarios, Frank oscillates back and forth through his life. He reminisces about meeting his ex-wife, his early triumph with a short story collection, his failed endeavors at writing a novel, and his marital indiscretions. In his late 30s, Frank is a morally ambiguous womanizer who somehow manages to elicit sympathy. I'm not entirely certain why. He appears to be adrift, sluggishly seeking meaning that he never quite seems to grasp. However, there are intimations at the end that he might be on the right path.

As the story progresses, we see Frank grappling with his past and present, trying to make sense of his life. His journey is often depressing, yet it also offers moments of clarity and self-discovery. Ford's writing is both lyrical and poignant, painting a vivid picture of one man's experiences. What makes this book truly remarkable is the authenticity with which Ford presents Frank's inner thoughts and emotions. It's a powerful exploration of love, loss, and the search for meaning in life.

In conclusion, The Sportswriter is a captivating and thought-provoking novel that delves deep into the human psyche. It's a story that will stay with you long after you've turned the final page.

There are certain books that possess a unique ability to forge a profound connection with readers. They do so within their own specific time, when the readers are in a particular frame of mind, and at a crucial juncture of their lives. These books are not intended for everyone; rather, they hold the power to become everything for a select few.

For instance, Olive Kitteridge immediately comes to mind. Some individuals may have found this book to be rather dull. However, for others, it strikes a particular chord, captivating them and moving them deeply, almost to the point of being haunted.

Similarly, The Sportswriter had a profound impact on me. It was precisely the right book that I encountered at the perfect time. I simply adored it.

On a more lighthearted note, I recently participated in a book event at the diminutive library in Chinook, Montana. I did this because I have a penchant for supporting rural libraries. Little did I know that Richard Ford resided in Chinook while he was penning The Sportswriter. At the library, people inquired, "Are you related?" They were relieved to discover that I was not. I'm certain there's another interesting story lurking beneath the surface there.

I've been enthusiastically recommending this book for months, mainly because of its opening chapters. For me, they were an unprecedented exploration in art (and such beautiful art, indeed) of the value of the ordinary, unheralded life. It's something I often desperately need to be reminded of, as I frequently feel like a failure. Curiously enough, it's also one of the things I hope to remind others of in my future writing career. Maybe not right now - my first two books deal with the issues of someone who (perhaps wrongly?) believes themselves to be exceptional.

I think "The Sportswriter" is a book that every adult should read, even those like me who don't have an affinity for sports. It's a truly mature book, the kind that I find comforting in my early thirties. I know I would have detested it in my teens, as it offers no escape into fictional worlds. But that's precisely the point: "The Sportswriter" is about accepting where you are in life, which is likely to be somewhat of a letdown for you, yet still full of charm because, after all, this is what life is and it's all you have.

As much as I adore this book, I must confess that I lost interest several times while reading it. The initial impact of hearing the ordinary lauded so beautifully couldn't quite sustain the entire book. There is an exciting afternoon of disaster towards the end, a very bad day that the hero, Frank Bascombe, endures with remarkable grace. However, aside from this, the later sections lack a narrative drive that pulls you along - or at least, that can hold my attention when my mind is easily distracted. It's a testament to the quality of "The Sportswriter" that I consider this as much my shortcoming as the book's.

I'm not finished with this book yet, but I'm really enjoying it.

I don't know exactly what it is about it, but I think I could read sad, slightly maudlin, and slightly angst-ridden tales like this for years.

Particularly when they're written by someone as talented as Richard Ford.

I absolutely loved "Independence Day," and I knew I had to check out the Bascomb trilogy. This one is not disappointing at all. He seems to really get inside the situations, not only the character psychology, but also the landscapes, the atmosphere of the locale, and middle age (as far as I can imagine it, at least). But it's also his sheer evocative capability. Meeting the parents, snooping through your lover's purse when they're fast asleep, a sudden and painful and absurd crisis that an acquaintance might drop on you out of the blue, the Zen of athletics...

Everything he's writing is so vivid in such a classy, understated way that I just listen to the audiobook for hours after I had been planning to go to sleep.

People bring up his whole "dirty realism" distinction, but I don't really see it. Frank is comfortably middle-class, at a job he appreciates and enjoys. It doesn't seem like what I'd call dirty realism at all, though that term might have applied more directly to some of his other work.

I have a hunch that Ford might be (or have been at the time of writing these things) a big Saul Bellow fan. I catch a whiff of Bellow's phrasing, some of his descriptive power, and maybe a bit of his tone and humor. This isn't to knock Ford in any way, of course. It's merely to enhance his value with a happy comparison.

I'm only giving it three stars because I'd like to be a little more severe with my rankings generally, and because though I love it, it's not so unalterably, shatteringly profound that it knocks on the door of the supreme 5-star designation.

It might get 4 stars, though, depending on how the rest of the story shakes out....

Richard Ford's 1986 novel, The Sportswriter, is part of the Vintage Contemporaries Series. It tells the story of a divorced 38-year-old suburban New Jersey writer who experiences the American dream turning sour. In some ways, it reminds one of Camus's The Stranger. The first-person narrator and main character, Frank Bascombe, is particularly disturbing. He constantly projects motives, backgrounds, ideas, and futures onto everyone he meets, whether they are family, friends, or strangers. It doesn't matter who you are; if you come within his view, you are categorized. He even categorizes neighborhoods, towns, cities, regions, and countries. This is a kind of poison. Another disturbing aspect of Frank is that he always tells the reader that what he says to people is not what he really feels or thinks. In other words, he is incapable of being honest. It's like living in a hell. At one point in the novel, Frank admits that the divorced men's club he belongs to is full of Babbitts, including himself. This makes one wonder: Is life so suffocating that people can't escape their current situation, even when they recognize it as a trap? It's a commentary on modern life. Frank Bascombe, a modern-day Babbitt, seems incapable of change. To me, this sounds like a life sentence.

Photo of the American novelist - Richard Ford

Sartre's Existentialism in Practice: Frank Bascombe is a 38-year-old divorced sports reporter who lives on the outskirts of New Jersey. Even though I'm not one of them, Bascombe embodies all my fears about my own future.

Bascombe writes sports reports, although his first novel was very successful and he sold the film rights to it. But then he got stuck on the second one and received an offer to write about fallen football stars and their lives after sports. So he never returned to the book. He does his job just to do something and because he can write. Just like me and spreadsheets in Excel! Coincidence?

Besides that, he chases younger women so as not to be alone, his best friend tries to smoke marijuana in his weaker moments, and his attempts to return to his ex-wife fizzle out because life is simply complicated and things can't be fixed so easily. Frank tries to cope with everything, sometimes he succeeds, sometimes he doesn't.

No significant event, no happy ending, actually no proper ending, since there is a continuation for which the author won the Pulitzer. I'm looking forward to it like a cake.

POTREBBE ANDARE PEGGIO

This is the bookmark postcard I found in my copy of the book.

Frank Bascombe makes his first appearance here at thirty-eight years old. He is, so to speak, what Nathan Zuckerman is to Philip Roth, or Antoine Doinel to François Truffaut… or going a little lower, Michele Apicella to Nanni Moretti: an alter ego, the literary (or cinematic) character who returns, whom we follow throughout his life. In some way, he becomes a mirror and reflection of us, the readers (and viewers).

Haddam doesn't exist in New Jersey, where instead there is Haddon, but it can be found in Connecticut. Here, in 1986, thirty-eight-year-old Frank, a writer with a well-received collection of stories to his credit, has abandoned narrative writing to dedicate himself to sports writing, a paid job with less risk and more stability. As a sports journalist, Frank Bascombe does mainly what Emanuela Audisio does here: rather than covering sports events, Frank tells stories of sports, which are first and foremost human stories. He has gone to live in Haddam, New Jersey, in a Tudor house, at a reassuring distance from New York: reassuring to be able to reach it by train in a reasonable time and reassuring not to suffer its chaos. Haddam is that kind of suburb where all the women can be friends of your wife: perhaps not the right place to have extramarital affairs, perhaps the right place to be consoled by a separation.

And so, Frank seemed ready for a quiet bourgeois married life, pleasantly lazy and moderately stimulating. The choice came with marriage, which produced three children. But the eldest, Ralph, died at nine years old from a rare disease. And in the inevitable subsequent emotional and sentimental crisis, the couple split up and separated.

What is written above more or less summarizes the entire plot of the novel, temporally contained in an Easter weekend, during which Frank and his wife – who remains always unnamed, always indicated as X – not only is the process of dealing with grief at stake, but also that of separation (The pain, the real pain, is relatively short, but grief can be long.) - Frank and his wife, as usual, meet in front of the grave of their deceased eldest son. The very intimate commemoration coincides with the son's birthday.

Ford is good at stretching time, expanding it over dozens and hundreds of pages, seemingly telling little or nothing. Unless one wants to consider not events, but at least happenings like the lunch at the parents' house of the current girlfriend (this one does have a name, Vicky), a lunch that is not a triumph, a boat fishing trip with some members of the divorced club, if not exactly friends at least good acquaintances, the sight of the ex-father-in-law, the interview with a former football champion who an accident has left paraplegic, the visit of a divorced man who gradually reveals he has homosexual designs on Frank but which he does not reciprocate.

But if it's true that little seems to happen, a lot has happened. And also the chit-chat and conversations and phone calls and epistolary relationships say and tell a lot, even without making anything happen. Frank seems little interested and involved in everything he does. Although the same cannot be said for his attitude towards life in general: he is well aware that “everything could go much worse”. For example, it could rain: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mC4Vf... The only spark of emotional and sentimental interest would seem to be his ex, the dead son, the lost, broken family, by extension the life before.

The American edition is illustrated with a ball and a baseball bat: both because Frank practices it at the divorced club (even if mostly they go fishing), and because X, the ex-wife, wants to embark on a professional career. Frank's journey will continue with a new novel for a decade, that is: in 1995 with The Sportswriter, in 2006 with Lay of the Land, to conclude, at least for now, in 2014 with Let Me Be Frank with You which is not a novel, but four novellas dedicated to the same character, one of which has the title used in the Italian edition, while the English one is Let Me Be Frank With You, with the play on words between Franco and franco/frank/honest.

The day is dripping: we are in that deep well of shadows and half-light of spring, when late afternoon becomes early evening and all we desire is to get comfortable in a leather armchair near the open window, drink something in the company of someone we love or who is dear to us, read the sports news and maybe soak up the sun for a moment.

On these around 400 pages, we follow the life during an accelerated weekend of a (former) writer and sports journalist, Frank Bascombe. He is divorced, approaching his forties, lives in New Jersey in a typical American suburb, has a family tragedy (the death of his son) in his past, but has the desire to continue living full of life (although, I would say, he is rather inert).

Although a lot of things happen during the described weekend, a large part of the book is also the main hero's own thoughts, his introspection, which is, in fact, the best part of the book.

Regarding the style, there are no stylistic bravuras, the language is very simple, not burdened with excessive decorations.

It is interesting that the translation was done by our writer Vule Jurić. And, since we are on the topic of translation, I must say that details like the word "dreary" and similar bothered me a few times. I know that it is sometimes difficult to find an equivalent for some dialectal or jargon expression, but this sounded rather archaic to me.

Also, another detail - some of the comparisons bothered me a lot. OK, I understand that sometimes one wants to emphasize something, but there are 2 - 3 comparisons on each page, which are often very strange or inaccessible to us who are not very familiar with the regional characteristics of the inhabitants of the US. As if Americans cannot do without those comparisons.

In any case, while reading, I was struggling with how I was experiencing this book, but in the end, I still caught myself that I quite liked it. Frank Bascombe seems like a rather real, vivid character.

I hope that Drita will also publish the other two parts of "Bascombe's Trilogy".