Reading Rainbow: Canada by Richard Ford

In an effort to catch up on things around here, I'm going to throw this quick entry up.

The first time I read Richard Ford, I was smitten. His prose was revelatory. The Sportswriter and Independence Day were breathtaking. Sure, one could fault Ford for being self-indulgent in his wallowing in the late-20th Century mid-life malaise that Frank Bascombe wades through in the Bascombe Trilogy, but the journey is completely arresting.

Ford's newest novel, Canada, is a fairly significant departure from his best-known series which contained a Pulitzer Prize Award winner and a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award. This time we follow Dell Parsons, a 15-year-old whose parents in a moment of desperation go across the Montana/North Dakota border to rob a bank to get out from under the debt from a black market meat deal gone bad. Split into halves, the first section of Canada centers on the home as the Parsons clan is torn apart by the robbery. The second takes the reader along as Dell is absconded away to stay with the mysterious brother of a family friend across the border in the Saskatchewan.

Taking place in the late summer and fall of 1960, the tale of Dell Parsons is set just as America is seeming to lose its innocence. As his mismatched parents make their erred final stab at keeping their nuclear family together, Dell is finding nearly everyone around him to be of dubious judgment and make-up. Dell, allegorically, is America.

While it might be lacking in the depth of color and flourish by way of Ford's feel for the English language that imbues particularly the Bascombe Trilogy, the less evolved prose makes sense from a stylistic and thematic standpoint. Even though the novel is written from a point much later in Dell's life, the powers of observation and insight that a 15-year-old can be capable of, even in retrospect, has to be a bit limited. It only makes sense that the voice of the narrator would be slightly less evolved than that of Frank Bascombe, modern man adrift.

Though this authorial choice makes sense, it is a shame that the force of Ford's prose is sacrificed, even if just a bit. The reader gets a fair trade-off in the form of a more action-driven plot, but the difference in prose is noticeable. In Canada, one is not swept away, awash in awe at the way Ford pieces words together in sequencing that fill me with equal parts envy and joy. It is still a fine novel, but one cannot help but wonder what could have been.

Reading Rainbow: Independence Day by Richard Ford

Despite the fact that nearly three months passed between when I began and completed reading this book, Independence Day was every bit the masterwork that the first in the Frank Bascombe series, The Sportswriter, was. As I have surely stated before, there may not be a writer out there whose prose is as consistently awe-inspiring as Richard Ford's. The release of his newest novel, Canada (less than $19.00 brand new in hardcover), this week has me brimming with excitement because there is more Richard Ford--new Richard Ford--out there for me to read.

Returning to Independence Day, Ford's Pulitzer Prize and PEN/Faulkner Award winning fifth novel, Ford drops in on protagonist Frank Bascombe on another holiday weekend, this time on the titular weekend in 1988. Just over four years (if my memory of when The Sportswriter takes place is correct; I believe it was in 1984, but it could have been 1982) have passed since the reader last got a glimpse into the life of Frank Bascombe. The death of his son and the near completeness at which his old life had been torn from him have left Frank to live in his self-termed Existence Period, marked by ambivalence and characterized by his goal to simply be. Decisiveness, at least as it relates to life-altering choices, is not a trait that Frank is displaying at this juncture in his life. As the weekend progresses, the people in his life, both in the short- and long-term act with widely varying degrees of respect as pertains to Frank, and it all just happens to him with little [re]action from our hero.

What makes Frank Bascombe so compelling his his voice. Imbued with the natural predisposition of a philosopher, it is often how he reads a situation--sometimes in completely divergent ways within the span of mere seconds--that sets this book and Ford's protagonist apart from others. The first-person narrative construct allows for Frank to quizzically look upon the situations that present themselves, his voice ringing out with equal parts poetry and clarity. Ford's deftness at which he captures the essence of the Everyman beset by indecision while blessed with an innate critical eye that allows him to observe without acting leaves the reader with a book that is breathtaking even with the simplicity that lies at the surface. Independence Day is a much richer novel than one could ever expect given the events that occur and is absolutely deserving of the mountains of praise heaped upon it.

But don't take my word for it...

Reading Rainbow: The Sportswriter by Richard Ford

Full disclosure: I finished this book two months ago. I'm not sure why it has taken me this long to get around to this post, but it has. Do not take the fact that it has taken me roughly 10 weeks to get around to this as a reflection of how I felt about the book in any way.

In short, I loved this book. This was my first venture into the writings of Richard Ford, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Independence Day (the sequel to The Sportswriter). He had come pretty highly recommended from a few friends whose literary tastes I trust. Their recommendations are going to be more highly regarded going forward.

The novel follows Frank Bascombe, a writer who has abandoned being a novelist for writing about sports, a subject he is largely indifferent to. It is set against Easter weekend, the weekend marking the anniversary of his son's death at the age of nine and the point at which his life was thrown into a tailspin. Frank is essentially detached in every way imaginable. He even seems to be detached from himself. As he visits his son's grave, heads to Michigan with his girlfriend on a work-related weekend getaway, returns to nondescript suburban New Jersey to have an unhinged friend drop in on him, and his relationship with Vicki disintegrates at a family dinner, Frank Bascombe wanders dreamily through these episodes. Luckily, Ford toes a line that keeps Frank from erring into a territory in which he could come across as irritating or frustrating.

To say that I simply loved this book would be doing a disservice to how I really felt. While reading, I became engulfed in the book. His style floored me. I continuously marveled at his ingenuity in turning a phrase, in the unpredictable ways that his sentences would twist and turn. There seems to be nothing tethering him to the standard usage patterns of the English language. Reading his prose was, quite simply, awe-inspiring. For me to actually want to sit back, take some time, and savor the style of a writer is rare, yet that is precisely what I found myself doing while reading The Sportswriter.

To put it another way, I was so taken by The Sportswriter that I went out and bought four other Ford books as soon as I finished it.

But you don't have to take my word for it...