The Sportswriter

Mar 19, 2013 Wendy rated it 2 of 5 stars

The Sportswriter started out really strong for me - seemed thoughtful and familiar and American, a bit like Stegner's Crossing to Safety.

But after a while, say about 250 pages, I stopped finding the character thoughtful and subtle and started thinking he was kind of a boorish self-serving windbag. It didn't help that I'd rather have spent more time with his ex wife and children, who seemed charming, funny and smart, than his ditzy and unappealing girlfriend or his sadsack friends. I think I als...more

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Apr 14, 2013 Mike rated it 4 of 5 stars Recommends it for: Folks who don't mind good writing about a guy you don't like

Recommended to Mike by: Group Read On The Southern Literary Trail

Shelves: 2013, 20th-century, family, divorce, group-read, infidelity, loss, love, marriage, on-the-southern-literary-trail, sex, richard-ford, time-best-novel-2005

The Sportswriter: Richard Ford's Bleak View of the American Dream

photo RichardFord_TheSportswriter_zps27b18424.jpg

The Sportswriter, 1st Edition, Vintage, 1986

"My name is Frank Bascombe. I am a sportswriter.

For the past fourteen years I have lived here at 19 Hoving Road, Haddam, New Jersey, in a large Tudor house bought when a book of short stories I wrote sold to a movie producer for a lot of money, and seemed to set my wife and me and our three children--two of whom were not even born yet--up for a good life.

Just exactly what that good lif

...more

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Apr 23, 2011 Kemper rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: 100, plain-old-fiction, modern-lit

There was hardly any sports in this book at all. What a rip-off....

Frank Bascombe craves a 'normal' suburban existence the way a junkie craves heroin. Once an up-and-coming writer living with his wife in New York, Frank quit fiction writing and fled to the 'burbs in Jersey when offered a sports writing job for a weekly magazine. Frank's efforts to be a plain old suburbanite with zero introspection of his own life haven't exactly worked out, though. His young son died of a wasting disease and hi...more There was hardly any sports in this book at all. What a rip-off....

Frank Bascombe craves a 'normal' suburban existence the way a junkie craves heroin. Once an up-and-coming writer living with his wife in New York, Frank quit fiction writing and fled to the 'burbs in Jersey when offered a sports writing job for a weekly magazine. Frank's efforts to be a plain old suburbanite with zero introspection of his own life haven't exactly worked out, though. His young son died of a wasting disease and his wife left him with his other children when she found evidence that he cheated on her during one of his trips to cover a sporting event.

The book takes place over an Easter weekend that begins with Frank meeting his ex-wife (that he refers to only as X) at their son's grave on the anniversary of his death, and most of the book deals with Frank's inner monologue about the way things should be.

Frank claims to love the solid suburban lifestyle he still clings to even after his divorce and has nothing but thinly veiled contempt for academics and other artsy types, even though he used to be one. He prides himself on being a literalist who deals only with what's in front of him and doesn't waste time on 'dreaminess' like he used too.

Frank is so square that ninety degree angles are jealous of him. His idea of a romantic weekend with his new girlfriend, Vicki, is a few days in Detroit on one of his sports writing assingments, and when a male friend confesses a homosexual encounter, Frank thinks of it as 'monkeyshines'. Frank would probably live inside a Norman Rockwell painting if he could.

However, despite all of his claims of literalism and suburban tranquility, Frank is quietly having a meltdown. He prides himself with dealing with life as it is, but he's disappointed and ill equipped to cope when things go off the rails. For example, he had hoped to write an uplifting story on a former football player paralyzed in an accident about how the player had overcome adversity. When he finds that the man is actually devastated, Frank thinks only of how he can make the guy fit into the story he planned to write, not of how he could honestly tell how the man's life has fallen apart.

Very well-written, but I had a hard time dealing with Frank. Maybe it's because as a male suburbanite looking down the barrel of middle-age myself, I had little patience for Frank's self-deceptions and fairy tales of suburban life being the best place to live to keep one 'normal' and 'happy'. I like my 'burb, but it's just a quiet place to live. As I close in on 40, quiet has become very important to me. Now get off my lawn, you kids!

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Mar 27, 2009 David rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: fiction

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. The first striking element of this novel is Ford’s use of present tense throughout. Indeed, it is impressive a 375 page novel be rendered in first person and only covers 3 days’ worth of events. Bascombe’s floating narration, however, is the charm in this novel. He editorializes everything that happens over the weekend to psychoanalytical depths, without once admitting that he himself is profoundly depressed. Dreaminess is used in lieu of depression, and Ford renders this condition superbly beli...more The first striking element of this novel is Ford’s use of present tense throughout. Indeed, it is impressive a 375 page novel be rendered in first person and only covers 3 days’ worth of events. Bascombe’s floating narration, however, is the charm in this novel. He editorializes everything that happens over the weekend to psychoanalytical depths, without once admitting that he himself is profoundly depressed. Dreaminess is used in lieu of depression, and Ford renders this condition superbly believable.
Frank is mostly absent from everything that occurs in this novel. He withdraws into himself and tends only to interact with characters using the impetus of what is unspoken or undone. He believes he is direct and honest with people when he is, in fact, elusive and dishonest with himself. He seems to long for profound connections in the wake of his son’s death and separation from his wife (spoken of only as “X”).
He self medicates with women. Eighty percent of the novel concerns his relationship with women, whether it be his ex-wife, his current girlfriend, Vicki, or the handful of past relationships he’s had. In the final 15 pages of the book, Frank seems to bounce back from his relationship with Vicki, and he begins a new relationship with a woman twice his age (although, in the last section entitled “The End” when the reader is pushed ahead with Frank a few months after Easter weekend has ended, he is skeptical about their relationship having any lasting prospect).
His relationship with men are abysmal, as he keeps them at arms length, even as tries to convince himself that all he needs is some good male bonding (he fantasizes about fishing with Vicki’s father and brother; the divorced men’s club he’s in provides little in the way for comfort, and though he admits his lukewarm feelings for the institution, he somehow thinks it’s good for him and that he needs it). The only (arguably) real relationship he has with another man is Walter, a pushy and depressed member of the divorced men’s club who more or less forces his friendship onto Frank and ends up killing himself.
The most impressive aspect of this novel is the way that Ford is able to write a thoroughly convincing and sympathetic narrator, whom I trust completely, while at the same time cannot admit, or somehow cannot realize, that not only is he depressed, but he’s more or less okay with it. A paradox of reliability.
I enjoyed his long winded musings; Frank Bascombe’s way of thinking is thoroughly unique while being as ordinary as home, sometimes spot on in regards to such elusive qualities of feelings like whiffs of something familiar but unexplainable.

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Jun 13, 2012 Scott Porch rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This is the second time I have read this book, having first read it five or six years ago when a book about a divorced sportswriter had a certain currency to me. I read Ford's recent short story collection, “A Multitude of Sins,” and have read a number of his other short stories in The New Yorker. I have the follow-up to this novel, the 1995, Pulitzer Prize-winning Independence Day (which I have not read) on the shelf, and the third book in the occasional series, The Lay of the Land, was publish...more This is the second time I have read this book, having first read it five or six years ago when a book about a divorced sportswriter had a certain currency to me. I read Ford's recent short story collection, “A Multitude of Sins,” and have read a number of his other short stories in The New Yorker. I have the follow-up to this novel, the 1995, Pulitzer Prize-winning Independence Day (which I have not read) on the shelf, and the third book in the occasional series, The Lay of the Land, was published two years ago.

The Sportswriter, which takes place over an Easter Weekend, represents something of a turning point in writer Frank Bascomb’s life. The story begins with his early morning meeting with his ex-wife at the grave of their young son. The quiet, reflective, somber tone that Ford sets during this meeting follows Frank on a trip to Detroit to interview a former athlete, Easter dinner with his girlfriend’s family, a visit to the residence of a not-quite friend who has committed suicide, and a late-night train to New York.

During and between the first-person descriptions of these various set pieces, Frank weaves back and forth through his life. He talks of meeting his ex-wife, his early success with a short story collection, his failed attempts at a novel and his marital dalliances. In his late 30s, Frank is a morally challenged lech that manages to come off sympathetic anyway. And I’m not exactly sure why. He seems to be adrift – with a sluggish pursuit of meaning he never quite seems to find. There are hints, though, at the end that he may be on the right track.

I realize I have told all this because unbeknownst to me, on that Thursday those months ago, I awoke with a feeling, a stirring, that any number of things were going to change and be settled and come to an end soon, and I might have something to tell that would be important and even interesting.  And now I am at the point of not knowing the outcome of things once again, a frame of mind that pleases me. I sense that I have faced up to a great empty moment in life but without suffering the usual terrible regret – which is, after all, the way I began to describe this.

It is lyrical and poignant and other flowery things, but I think what Ford succeeds with more than anything else is the authenticity of one man’s experiences told from deep within his own head. The journey was largely depressing – though probably more as a snapshot than a reflection of his life on the whole – but that’s life. No bed of roses but occasionally, remarkably, clear.
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Mar 26, 2008 Roderick rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This book is way more depressing than the title has any right to lead you to expect. And it feels a lot like Updike's Rabbit series. It's interesting, if not at all important, that while the Rabbit series begins with Rabbit actually playing a sport, basketball, the Frank Bascombe series concerns itself with someone who isn't much of an athlete at all but who specializes instead in observing and writing about sports. Maybe Frank needs some exercise?

In any event, yes, it's really kind of depressin...more

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Jun 26, 2007 Gerry rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

There’s a scene in the first chapter of The Sportswriter that lays bare the novel’s heart. Frank Bascombe and his ex-wife—referred to as X throughout—arrive home from a night out to find their house ransacked. In making a list of the missing items for the police, X finds letters from another woman and demands to know who she is. Frank remains silent, and X, releasing the trapped fury created by the death of her son, her deteriorating marriage, and now the apparent infidelity of her husband, tear...more There’s a scene in the first chapter of The Sportswriter that lays bare the novel’s heart. Frank Bascombe and his ex-wife—referred to as X throughout—arrive home from a night out to find their house ransacked. In making a list of the missing items for the police, X finds letters from another woman and demands to know who she is. Frank remains silent, and X, releasing the trapped fury created by the death of her son, her deteriorating marriage, and now the apparent infidelity of her husband, tears apart her hope chest and burns it in the fireplace.

“The burglars had left Polaroid pictures of the inside of our empty house scattered about for us to find when we got back from seeing The Thirty-Nine Steps at the Playhouse, plus the words, 'We are the stuffed men,' spray-painted onto the dining room wall. Ralph had been dead two years. The children were with their grandfather at the Huron Mountain Club, and I was just back from my teaching position at Berkshire College, and was hanging around the house more or less dumb as a cashew, but otherwise in pretty good spirits. X found the letters in a drawer of my office desk while looking for a sock full of silver dollars my mother had left me, and sat on the floor and read them, then handed them to me when I came in with a list of missing cameras, radios and fishing equipment. She asked if I had anything to say, and when I didn't, she went into the bedroom and began tearing apart her hope chest with a claw hammer and a crowbar. She tore it to bits, then took it to the fireplace and burned it while I stood outside in the yard mooning at Cassiopeia and Gemini and feeling invulnerable because of dreaminess and an odd amusement I felt almost everything in my life could be subject to. It might seem that I was within myself then. But in fact I was light years away from everything.”

The Sportswriter begins on Good Friday with Frank and X paying a graveside visit to their son Ralph and ends late Easter Sunday with Frank hitting on a college girl in his Manhattan office. The novel is the kind where not much happens, but everything that does rings of failure. There’s X burning her hope chest; Frank’s aborted interview with a paraplegic former footballer who believes he’s still on the team; Frank’s Easter day visit to his girlfriend’s parents’ house, where the father has assembled an entire car in the basement; the post office losing the only copy of Frank’s first novel. Then there’s Easter itself, a day in the real world where miracles never happen, no one rises from the dead, and sins remain unforgiven. Characters bump and jangle him, but Frank drifts on a lazy current he’s created, unaware of its source. It’s a careful look at a shell-shocked man who can fill hundreds of pages with insightful descriptions but never knows what to say to those who need him to say something, anything that will demonstrate his awareness of them.

Among its greatest virtues is its examination of the alien world of male friendship, one in which not even the natives fully understand the customs. Through The Divorced Men's Club, men linked by their inability to maintain close relationships, Frank meets Walter Luckett. Walter confides in Frank, hoping his confession will uncover a like mind. "He would like me to ask him a good telling question, something that will then let him tell me a lot of things I don't want to know," Frank says. "But if I have agreed to listen, I have also agreed not to ask. This is the only badge of true friendship I'm sure of: not to be curious."

Later, Frank is at the police station because of his tangential relationship to a crime. Speaking of the sergeant, Frank says, "He extends both his legs and crosses them at the ankles. It is his way of inviting conversation between menfolk, though I'm stumped for what to say. It's possible he would understand if I said nothing." And nothing is exactly what Frank is looking for in a friend.(less)

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Aug 20, 2007 Mike rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: men

this book is basically a very introspective tale of an average middle aged man who is just as confused about the secrets of life as nearly anyone else out there. The main character is Frank Bascombe and in recent years his marriage has failed, his first son has passed away and his career as a novelist has fizzled. He now is a sportswriter and claims it to be his calling, but still, something is missing in frank's life and he doesn't know what it is.
Throughout the novel frank struggles with women...more

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Jun 12, 2008 Julia rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: males

I lost this poor book under my bed back in '07 and just uncovered it. I think it goes to show how much I was enjoying it initially that I let it lie there for a good half year without trying to retrieve it.

But when I returned to the trials and tribulations of a near-forty year-old sportswriter in the 1980s, all of a sudden his dreamy, midwest-meets-Jersey language and sensitive yet overly-mysogynistic way of thinking really resonated with me and I enjoyed every last page. Yet I still wouldn't re...more

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Mar 13, 2009 Marius rated it 4 of 5 stars

...everyone trusts everyone here. And why not? No one's ever up to anything that could cause harm to anyone but themselves.

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Dec 09, 2011 Gloriagloom rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: americani

Al termine della lettura del primo tomo del serial letterario più seguito d'america: le avventure di Frank Bascombe e il suo ombelico parlante, mi sono risvegliato nel retro di casa Van Pelt a elemosinare in cambio di 5 cent alla tagliente Lucy un frasetta da incorniciare, un periodo da trascrivere sul diario e un pat pat sulla spalla.
E pensare che all'inizio Ford - e chi più di lui con quel cognome che si ritrova potrebbe essere adatto alla produzione in serie - apparecchia ben bene il suo pran...more Al termine della lettura del primo tomo del serial letterario più seguito d'america: le avventure di Frank Bascombe e il suo ombelico parlante, mi sono risvegliato nel retro di casa Van Pelt a elemosinare in cambio di 5 cent alla tagliente Lucy un frasetta da incorniciare, un periodo da trascrivere sul diario e un pat pat sulla spalla.
E pensare che all'inizio Ford - e chi più di lui con quel cognome che si ritrova potrebbe essere adatto alla produzione in serie - apparecchia ben bene il suo pranzo pasquale con una teoria di banalissimi (immagino e spero, volutamente) topoi drammaturgici - un figlio morto, un rapporto ondivago con la ex moglie, un'ambientazione sfacciatamente simbolica: il regno di tutte le suburbie quale il New Jersey (anche se immaginavo, speravo, che dopo la strage fatta da Springsteen con la sua enfatica epopea di quelle lande suburbane l'ONU avesse posto un veto ad ambientare una qualsivoglia produzione dell'immaginario a quella latitudine) e via via massimizzando- a far da limite e da angoli acuti dove far rimbalzare l'incessante solliloquio pasquale -dal venerdì santo a pasquetta- del giornalista per caso Frank Bascombe alle prese con le sue paturnie esistenziali. Romanzo pardigmatico verrebbe da dire, gioco di specchi di un'epoca -il romanzo è dei tardi '80 - dove il mal de vivre e il suo paesaggio esteriore non sono altro che una conseguenza, una estensione della miseria esistenziale, sociale e politica della Reagan's way of life. Potrebbe essere. Il problema è che Ford gettate solide basi sembra avanzare nella costruzione con materiali di scarto, più che dalle parti di Bellow - riferimento ineludibile e irraggiungibile nel genere povero cristo solliloquiante- qui siamo dalle parti innocue della Tyler e del suo Turista Per Caso, nessuna solida struttura romanzesca a reggere l'infinito srotolamento di luoghi comuni partoriti dall'osservazione Bascombiana, righe e righe di indimenticabili frasi da trascrivere sul diario, da appendere nelle versioni adulte delle camerette adolescenziali e da rimirare quando il sole tramonta e tua moglie ha fatto i bagagli (e non stento a indovinarne le ragioni). E' così semplice e comodo alla fine sentirsi tutti un po' Bascombe e consolarsi all'idea. Come un protofilm finto indipendente con la facciona rassicurante di Seymour Hoffman e desolato paesaggio suburbano alle spalle. Visto, letto e sentito mille volte. E come dicevano cantavano i Rolling Stones, perdonate ma sono ancora immerso nell'estasi post lettura della biografia Richardsiana, chi li vuol leggere i giornali di ieri?

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Jan 18, 2009 Susan rated it 4 of 5 stars

I bought Independence Day some time ago and was considering The Lay of the Land when a friend said I should read the whole trilogy in order so I started on The Sportswriter. I was initially drawn in by the writing style: informal, slightly comic, completely honest. This is one of the most interesting novels of “everyday life” I can think of; it’s also a novel that gives me real insights into how men think. I’ve never got into Updike’s Rabbit novels, figured they must appeal primarily to men, but...more I bought Independence Day some time ago and was considering The Lay of the Land when a friend said I should read the whole trilogy in order so I started on The Sportswriter. I was initially drawn in by the writing style: informal, slightly comic, completely honest. This is one of the most interesting novels of “everyday life” I can think of; it’s also a novel that gives me real insights into how men think. I’ve never got into Updike’s Rabbit novels, figured they must appeal primarily to men, but this one did interest me.
Frank Bascombe became a sportswriter when he reached a point in his writing career—he’d published one book of stories—when he decided he didn’t have enough to say. It was a compromise that he accepted whole-heartedly. He’s not exactly gung ho, but he takes his job seriously. He also doesn’t let it define him, preferring to live in a small New Jersey town rather than in New York, to choose the sports he writes about, and not be defined by his job.
The action takes place on an Easter weekend, when he meets his ex-wife to visit the grave of their son, and plans to have Easter dinner with his girlfriend, a divorced nurse named Vicki. He also meets with a man from his divorced men’s group, someone he doesn’t know well but who adopts him as his “best friend”. The guy is stressed out because, while his ex-wife went to Bimini with her man friend, he went home with another man and had sex with him and can’t reconcile himself to what he did. There are some flashbacks: Frank’s divorce, the death of his son, college in Ann Arbor where he met his wife, conversations with a palmist, a Detroit trip with Vicki to interview a ballplayer now confined a wheelchair. Throughout Frank is self-effacing, philosophical, warm, decent and humane.
By the end of the weekend Vicki has dumped him (after punching him out) and his friend from the divorced men’s group has committed suicide and left the note for him. At loose ends on Easter night he boards the train on a whim and goes to his Manhattan office where a young female intern turns up in his office and he starts a relationship with her. In the weeks following everything changes, but Frank seems still the same decent guy.
Now I’m definitely going on to Independence Day and The Lay of the Land. This is one interesting guy.
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Apr 20, 2013 Ajay R rated it 3 of 5 stars

When we first meet Frank Bascombe, a sportswriter living in 'Haddam' a fictional suburb of New York early morning on Good Friday he is at his son Ralph's grave as it would have been Ralph's thirteenth birthday. We meet his wife, referred only as 'X", learn that they have been divorced some time after their son pass away and she is living separately with their other two kids in the same suburb. We see the gray morning with the fog just lifting, get a whiff of the sudden smells one gets This is ou...more When we first meet Frank Bascombe, a sportswriter living in 'Haddam' a fictional suburb of New York early morning on Good Friday he is at his son Ralph's grave as it would have been Ralph's thirteenth birthday. We meet his wife, referred only as 'X", learn that they have been divorced some time after their son pass away and she is living separately with their other two kids in the same suburb. We see the gray morning with the fog just lifting, get a whiff of the sudden smells one gets This is our introduction to Frank one of the more memorable fictional characters, a person who as this trilogy begins is aspiring to be in a state of expectation, in an air of mystery because as we all knows facts tend to bring us down while expectation keeps our hopes alive, even if it is for just a little while and one knows that bad things are just round the corner. He has also a trip to Detroit with his current girl friend (business cum pleasure trip for an interview) and an Easter lunch planned for the weekend. But over the course of the weekend, his aspiration is put to the strictest test, situations change, mysteries change into brute facts which offer no succor, all the while Frank trying to get back the air of expectation.

This is a novel of minutely detailed moments of the present and memories (which are moments of the past) which are intertwined with rather than a linear novel moving from point 'a' to 'b' to 'c'. This could be initially disconcerting to the reader as a card drive from Frank's home to the his girl friend's (Vicki) home could take more than 20 pages, which are filled with Frank's ruminations of moments from the past. One could get antsy from all the waiting for any 'action' (as used in conventional fictional terms) to happen but this technique serves the purpose of slowly drawing us into Frank's world without us even being aware of it. We get know about his parents (briefly), his short lived writing career his marriage, his son's death, it's aftermath and the slow dissolution of the marriage towards it's inevitable end. The present too is not too good for Frank, as relationships flounder, his interview doesn't go well and his life undergoes another series of changes.

Coping with a loss and coming to terms with it is very difficult things. Lives can go completely spiral out of control, families get torn asunder and the life one has known before changes into something completely unrecognizable. After his son's death, Frank too takes this route, goes on a bike road trip, takes a sabbatical from his job to teach at a distant college, has affairs. It's not something particularly likable, as we see his wife coping with their loss all alone while Frank goes off on a tangent. Even in his relationships, he is concerned about ensuring that his carefully developed ways of coasting in his relationships is not affected any other thing, even if it means blocking out the feelings of others. But what redeems Frank is that there is no justification from him about his activities. Selfish he may be, but he is not a hypocrite (though he feels a pang of jealousy when he suspects that his ex-wife could be in a relationship). And he is a big softie at heart in-spite of all the posturing, as is evidenced from the long trip he at the end to honor a acquaintance's last letter to him, though he himself is at very low point personally as well as professionally. The trip though has a positive effect on him and seems to set him up for the future which will be seen in the next books.

It would have been easy for Ford to create a scenario where Frank's son's death is what sets him up in this path of dreaminess and expectation. It would have been simplistic and reductive.But no, Ford adds another layer to his very nature, which as gleaned from the past, is one where it is very difficult for him to open up as much as possible to another person (completing opening up to another being just a pipe dream). The death just tipped him of the edge of his inherent fear of impermanence and drives from one career to another, one place to another and one woman to another, all the while aware that end of the current situation could be near. In the present, we see that Frank has somewhat come to terms with the impermanence, knows that it cannot be avoided and evolved a different method to see it to. It's not defeating impermanence, but to stare it down, take the blow, get up for the count and start again.

Frank's philosophy to get through life could be both a curse and a blessing, for the greatest illusion that most human beings have is that they are unique in their suffering and grief, when the fact is that every other person has his own cross to bear and each one bears it in his way. Throughout the novel, we meet people who have suffered their own losses and are trying to somehow come to terms with it. It's not just Frank, his lover Vicci is under some emotional turmoil, you see the ex-football player, who after an accident has lost the use of his legs and is wheelchair bound and seems to be suffering from mood swings, a casual friend of Frank whose wife has left him and who has had a gay encounter and is unsure how to handle it. So many people, so many problems, problems that are different, problems that are similar, but the irony is that for all the shared sorrow in the world, for all the consoling one expects and indeed receives (if lucky) from others, he or she soon finds out that it cannot be shared to the extent that it alleviates your pain permanently, at the most what one gets is a temporary relief. Frank is a person who is aware of this and hence is not interested in shared confidences, he has enough on his own plate without getting too much into the turmoil of others. His idea is to have easy going relationships, with no major secrets shared, no major expectations from each other and to let the relationship run it's course all the while awaiting new and unexpected things to happen. But not all are like Frank, people do tend to believe in sharing their sorrows and expect others to reciprocate and this contradiction, rather the difference in wavelength causes most of Frank's relationship's to be short lived and end with recriminations, mostly from the other side, not Frank's. He has a stoic disposition, trying to live in the moment and always with an expectation. This ensures that the grudges are not held for too long, the relationship remains at least civil and both parties can move to other things without too much of a guilt.

Frank's journeys take him through what could be called the by-lanes of America, the places that go unnoticed and even if noticed not dwelt upon much. There is this inexplicable (but temporary) high that we get as we walk down a street on an evening and catch glimpses of the other house via the covered but well lit windows, hear some murmuring, wonder about what is going in each house and in general feel at home (to use a cliche). For a brief moment the street itself becomes a sanctuary from all our problems, though we may only know most of our neighbor's by sight. This similar cozy feeling of recognizing a place and feeling comfortable in it's environment is what we get throughout the novel, where we feel that we could be and are/were part of such suburbs, whether it be the smell of early morning dewy grass, the run down houses in the suburbs of a dying industrial city which has seen better times (Detroit), the remote eateries which are open even on Easter (waiting for whom?), the sound of distant train screeching, a car starting in the street, the sound of a song or the smell of cooking wafting out from a neighbor's house, Ford does all this seemingly effortlessly, he never lingers for too long on a landscape or a moment which is not directly related to Frank's thought process at that moment, but still making sure that an image has been registered in our mind. Ford also brings in the societal mores and behavior pattern in the suburbs like if it is a divorce, the man is to be blamed and having close knit divorcee clubs (separate for both men and women) which contact 'X' right on the day of the divorce.

When one reads a book, he has to be careful in ascribing motives to the events, theme etc of the novel on the author as it is difficult to make a distinction between when an author speaks and when the character speaks and we could easily go wrong in our understanding. And in this age of heightened political correctness, we tend to lose our sense of humor and as a result there is a great possibility of even random, harmless references to be considered as in bad taste. After taking this into account and also ensuring that political correctness doesn't impair our reading, one has to say that there are some places in this novel which are plain disturbing, even more so because they are so evidently in contrast with the fluid grace of the other parts. There is this character of a pastor from an African country who is a tenant in Frank's house. He is referred to as a 'Negro boy', a kind of valet by Frank's friend, Frank's himself makes some disparaging remarks about it and also stereotyping Africans. (polygamy, big pricks etc). Through the novel, the words 'Negro', 'Black' are used in all places to refer Afro-Americans. Add to this the character of Salma, an Arab with whom Frank has an affair. It is hinted that she was part of some terrorist organization, did kill someone etc. All the other white characters do not have any such extraneous attributes, life stories, behavior attributed to them. Could it be that Frank is a closet racist but there are no indications to the same?. Contrast this with what another character says. This is a new-age person, some one who is supposed to look at the whole world as one, but makes a condescending comment of the sort "blacks too have to live". Here Ford shows the paradox of someone who is supposed to treat everyone as equal being patronizing and hence the reference to 'black' is not jarring here and indeed is necessary to show the hypocrisy of the character.

Loss, grieving, recovery, beyond all this what Frank is looking for in this novel is the sudden moment which occurs, a moment at which we are finally at peace with oneself, a moment which seems to be both happy and sad at the same time, a moment which we want to stretch for eternity. A feeling like, in Ford's words "of wind on your cheeks and your arms, of being released, let loose, of being the light-floater." Is it too much to ask, a moment where a person feels to be one with the universe, but the laws of nature mandate that these moments are far and in between and when they occur they soon pass, leaving one longing for it's next arrival. What Frank does in the novel is not just searching for the moment, but also trying to make sure that the moment persists as long as possible, so that it can be his sustenance until it's next occurrence. "Is life itself an illness or a syndrome?" is a query asked by Frank which he himself replies "Who knows". The book may sound pessimistic but is not, neither is it some kind of manifesto of living the so called "holistic" life, the trilogy is about a simple "everyman" just trying to get through everyday life. It is this trying to make sense of things, somehow plodding along , with no deep rooted rancor towards the cards dealt to him which is due to his resignation that such bad cards cannot be avoided than any 'Zen' like nirvana, having an almost childish expectation that a gentle breeze is just around the corner which is contrasted with the cynical view that the breeze may soon turn into a storm, but ready to face both them with either lightness or fortitude as is required, that makes him such an enduring character for all his warts and makes one follow him through the next books of the trilogy. Those however are for another day and post.(less)

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Apr 17, 2013 Sean Condon rated it 5 of 5 stars

Last year (2012) I was lucky enough to interview Richard Ford onstage in Melbourne. This is my (spoken) introduction to the event:

Richard Ford has been hailed as “one of the finest curators of the great American living museum.” In setting, types of characters, plots, point of view and, perhaps most importantly, in ever broadening sympathy, he has consciously kept moving on. From the funny, wise and immensely likable Frank Bascombe from The Sportswriter and its sequels, to the drifters and dreame...more

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Feb 11, 2013 Ben Hourigan rated it 4 of 5 stars

I've been raving about this book for months, chiefly on the basis of its opening chapters, which for me were an unprecedented exposition in art (and such beautiful art, at that) of the value of the ordinary, uncelebrated life. It's something I was am often deep need of being reminded of, so often do I feel myself a failure, and curiously enough, it's one of the things I hope to remind others of later in my writing career. Maybe not just now—my first two books deal with the issues of one who (fal...more

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Jan 31, 2013 Alex rated it 1 of 5 stars

I like sports, I like writing, so I figured I'd like The Sportswriter, written by acclaimed author and Pulitzer winner Richard Ford. After about 25 pages I realized that I disliked this book, and I hate-read the rest of the thing because I have a weird inability to give up on a book.

Ford comes from the Richard Russo school of writing, in that he seems to think that inundating the reader with detail will somehow make the book more real, or authentic (I call it that because Russo's Empire Falls w...more I like sports, I like writing, so I figured I'd like The Sportswriter, written by acclaimed author and Pulitzer winner Richard Ford. After about 25 pages I realized that I disliked this book, and I hate-read the rest of the thing because I have a weird inability to give up on a book.

Ford comes from the Richard Russo school of writing, in that he seems to think that inundating the reader with detail will somehow make the book more real, or authentic (I call it that because Russo's Empire Falls was the first book I read that I felt that way about). Case in point: all 375 pages of the novel take place over the course of one weekend. I knew I was in trouble when the opening scene, taking place over the course of maybe twenty minutes, lasted 25 pages. We get backstories and multiple-paragraph descriptions about people and places that never crop up again! Which makes me wonder why the hell I'm reading about them. I suspect Ford was going for some sort of point about the intimacy of suburbia or something, but I was just bored out of my mind. It makes me appreciate all the more writers that only include the essential and trim the fat that serves only to show off the vocabulary of the author.

The second reason I disliked this book was that the main character, Frank Bascombe, suffers from the Thomas Mcguane/Julian Barnes Lack of Sack issue (more specifically, this issue should be attributed to the narrators of Driving on the Rim and Sense of an Ending, respectively). Bascombe, like those characters, is a complete and utter pushover. He wrote a successful short story collection, then moved to the suburbs and became a sportswriter. Fine, that isn't the issue. The issue is the endless descriptions of how dreamy and content Bascombe is with the suburbs. God he loves Jersey, and Michigan, and safety, and wants to kiss and marry everyone, and be polite, and go to church sometimes, and he wants you to know how okay he is with everything. It seemed like no matter what happened, he'd think, golly gee I just need a little pick me up and everything will be a-okay. Part of the reason he quit writing fiction was that he felt that fictional character's issues were unrealistic in their intensity and simplicity, and that real life is much more complex and occurs in shades of gray. And I think Ford was trying to prove that a character, or a fictional world, could also exist in those shades of gray, and still be compelling. Which I agree with in principle, but not when said character is so dreamy and vanilla all the time.

It's not a good sign when your narrator keeps describing all the women he's bedded and you think, "Who would sleep with this chump?" The final nail in the coffin occurred when, in the same day that he (spoiler alert) gets punched in the face by his girlfriend for repeatedly proposing at awkward times, and attempts to make love to his ex-wife on the bed of a friend who JUST COMMITTED SUICIDE, he then seduces a 19 year old intern at his magazine (bear in mind he is a 38 year old divorced father of three). I'm supposed to root for this guy!? (less)

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Jan 04, 2013 Paul rated it 1 of 5 stars

It took me almost a month to finish Richard Ford's "The Sportswriter." I couldn't stand reading more than 5-10 pages at a time. Why? Well, I'd say that reading "The Sportswriter" is like being at a cocktail party, stuck listening to a bore whom you ordinarily avoid. But that analogy is generic enough for Ford to appreciate it, so I'll attempt the intensity he appears to loathe: reading "The Sportswriter" is like being stuck in a urologist's waiting room with a logorrheic -- boredom and irritatio...more It took me almost a month to finish Richard Ford's "The Sportswriter." I couldn't stand reading more than 5-10 pages at a time. Why? Well, I'd say that reading "The Sportswriter" is like being at a cocktail party, stuck listening to a bore whom you ordinarily avoid. But that analogy is generic enough for Ford to appreciate it, so I'll attempt the intensity he appears to loathe: reading "The Sportswriter" is like being stuck in a urologist's waiting room with a logorrheic -- boredom and irritation while anticipating nothing but pain.

It's not surprising that one of this novel's biggest fans is Walker Percy, since in "The Moviegoer" (suspiciously similar title) Percy created the same kind of protagonist who inhabits (but does not live in) the pages of "The Sportswriter" - the impulsive dullard. Frank Bascombe, the eponymous Sportswriter, spends 350 pages doing stupid things like stalking his ex-wife, proposing to a girlfriend whom he doesn't like very much, and jumping random trains to New York, with no forethought or afterthought. This would be tolerable if the stream of consciousness that constitutes the narrative portrayed Bascombe as recognizably disturbed or even human, but it doesn't -- the man seems to think in platitudes and offers some trite lesson on every other page (" . . . is the best that any of us can hope for"). Similarly unhelpful is Ford's predictable prose style. The length and rhythm of his sentences almost never vary, they're mostly two-clause, semi-complex sentences that cluster into mid-length paragraphs of no particular point or direction. Is Ford trying to portray anomie, or is he just a lousy writer? There's reason to believe that he's making a conscious attempt to portray a man who is detached from his own emotions, since Bascombe divorced his wife after the death of their oldest son. There's also reason to believe that Ford is just a very limited writer, since on the night Bascombe's wife discovers his infidelities, she sets fire to her . . . oh, Jesus . . . hope chest. It would be sledgehammer symbolism if Ford could summon enough energy to wield a sledgehammer. There is also Bascombe's curiously dated, borderline racist language. I don't remember much unironic use of the word "negro" in the 1980s, but it's how Bascombe describes every black character. Is Ford depicting an anachronistic way of thinking, or is he just a tin-eared jerk? I'm too willing to believe the latter, since his characters don't speak like normal human beings, they speak like overly self-aware literary cliches ("you're an awful man, Frank! You weren't awful when we were married, but you've gotten much worse").

"The Sportswriter" proves, through negative example, the maxim that novelists should avoid the word "all," since Ford uses it in, well, all the worst ways, including lazy descriptions ("like all hometown suburbs") and obnoxious generalizations ("all writers want this"). Regarding the latter, Bascombe, and by extension Ford, jumps to conclusions about every single person he sees, reducing them to two-dimensional sketches ("she's named either Jan or Kate and reads Roosevelt biographies") with no interiority whatsoever. These presumptions are studded with assumptions about social status and geographic origin that are supposed to be economical storytelling but are just lazy crutches. Plus, I'm predisposed to hate books in which the protagonist is an ex-fratboy who seems familiar every other male character's former Greek status. I mean, who the f--k cares? I sure as hell didn't. Damn, I hated this book.(less)

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Sep 22, 2012 Dan Varley rated it 5 of 5 stars

Let me be upfront with you and say that I'm not going to put-put around with an elaborate description of plot here since Frank Bascombe, the quote-un-quote protagonist of the Sportswriter, has over the course of twenty years entered the pantheon as one of literature's best known White Males Figuring Things Out In Middle Age, just like Updike's Rabbit Angstrom, and whose life events can be filled out pretty quickly with a quick download from Wikipedia. In one long-ish sentence, Frank is a former...more Let me be upfront with you and say that I'm not going to put-put around with an elaborate description of plot here since Frank Bascombe, the quote-un-quote protagonist of the Sportswriter, has over the course of twenty years entered the pantheon as one of literature's best known White Males Figuring Things Out In Middle Age, just like Updike's Rabbit Angstrom, and whose life events can be filled out pretty quickly with a quick download from Wikipedia. In one long-ish sentence, Frank is a former writer (whom we are stressed repeatedly chose to quit writing rather writing quiting him) who now floats contentedly as a sportswriter at a Well Known Glossy Magazine and in the course of an Easter weekend does the following: noodles on the anniversary of his dead son with his ex-wife; shamelessly kowtows to his newish girlfriend as they travel to her parents on Easter weekend; tries to interview a former handicapped NFL player for a Soft Uplifting Profile Piece who turns out to be somewhat manic-depressive (the ex-NFL player) and then returns (Frank, that is) to the Glossy Magazine's offices on Easter night like a moth to a small combustable wick in order to Make Sense Of It All.

In other words, it is a pitch-perfect Realist Novel

I'm employing the whole Caps Thing because Ford here is playing with archetypes of an established genre, a genre that is both respect by him yet also pushed gently at its edges like a worn-in frayed oriental rug found in the foyer of any house in Frank's upper middle class New Jersey town.

Ford uses the events of a weekend (and various unsentimental memories narrated by Frank) to draw out a complete history of Frank's character and arc, a task that require most novelists a far longer timespan within the novel. This technique dovetails quite nicely with Frank's insistence that most Americans dwell too much upon their pasts and need to concatenate that Grecian String of Fate, if you'll indulge me in applying it here, to a continuum of memory.

Employing his archetypes, Ford is writing a firmly realist novel. Personally, my own yardstick for the Upper Middle Class White Male Novel is (here we go!) how many times is an elite Northeastern liberal arts college name-checked and how many pages are devoted to a description of a mail order catalogs that is a stand in for Land's End (twice for Bowdoin and two full pages on the understated prepy-ish catalog, by my count). Yet Frank's character and Ford battle with the presuppositions that we normally assume when cracking the spine of a novel like this. He has multiple affairs with women yet acts like a subservient boy around them. He is someone who wants to forget and is distrustful of self mythologizing yet narrates an entire novel in the first person.

In the end we expect to find him entirely Broken and fallen flat on his maxillofacial region or as happy and fat as Buddha, yet we find that is not the case. He finds himself somewhere in between those two extremes - finding redemption - but only the awareness that it exists in painful brevity. As he says in the penultimate paragraph:

"...I thought that one natural effect of life is to cover you in a thin layer of...what? A film? A residue of skin of all the things you've done and been and said and erred at? I'm not sure. But you ARE under it, and for a long time, and only rarely, do you know it, except that for some unexpected reason or opportunity you come out - for an hour or even for a moment - and you suddenly feel pretty good. And in that magical instant you realize how long it's been since you felt just that way."(less)

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Sep 22, 2012 Rick rated it 3 of 5 stars

Because this book had held special meaning for a friend and that friend had cared enough to share this special book with me, I really wanted to like it. Unfortunately, as is often the case, what was meaningful for one person at one point in their life did not have the same effect on another at a different point in his life. I found the book hard to get into and hard to understand. I felt too removed from the characters and did not understand why they acted as they did in the face of the events i...more

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Sep 19, 2012 Brad rated it 3 of 5 stars

Frank Bascombe explains that he hates the parts of books that detail the main character's history, and he does so at the start of a fairly lengthy chapter detailing his own history. Frank also keeps insisting that he isn't interested in the past, that he wants to live in the present. But the past keeps taking over--chapters that begin in the present are suddenly invaded by the past, weighed down by the weight of what's come before. I think the lesson is that you can't get to 38 and be a blank sl...more

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Sep 16, 2012 Max rated it 3 of 5 stars

Hi, I’m Frank Bascombe entering middle age in a dreamy self-absorbed lethargic marking of the time between birth and death. My wife divorced me after she became disillusioned with me and I turned to other women to reaffirm my value. This change in our relationship and resulting divorce was precipitated by the death of our nine year old son, but I have always avoided any challenge and sought mediocrity. Many years ago I started out to be a novelist but it required a lot of thought so I settled fo...more

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Aug 18, 2012 Robert rated it 4 of 5 stars

A good book--just what I want, is a book about a middle aged guy having a midlife crisis. Basically, our hero, Frank Bascombe, is a failed? (quit, anyway) author who has become a sportswriter--perhaps the lowest form of writing. He is divorced, gets dumped by his girlfriend, and has his best? (he doesn't really have friends) friend commit suicide. Oh yeah, his oldest son died a few years before the novel takes place, and the opening scene has him and his X at the grave of their son on the annive...more

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Jun 09, 2012 Edi rated it 2 of 5 stars

It was my fault that, before I started reading Richard Ford's "The Sportswriter", I've had some pretty big expectations from it. On my edition's back cover were a few favorable reviews, that, amongst other things, were comparing Ford to John Updike. Since I've been a sucker for Updike ever since I read his "Centaur", I thought this was gonna be great. Sadly, I was wrong.
After the first chapter, I was thrown in this small, sad, surreal suburb of New Jersey, where a middle aged melancholic man is...more

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Apr 30, 2012 CC rated it 1 of 5 stars

About ten years ago I read the second book in this triglogy -- Independence Day, for which writer Richard Ford won a Pulitzer, and found his writing quite nice. Reminded of that, I picked this up, the first book in that trilogy. Either Ford's writing changed a great deal from one book to the other, or my tastes have changed, not sure which. But this wasn't the type of writing I remembered.

The book follows Frank Bascombe over an Easter weekend as he drifts around in his own mind, recalling the de...more About ten years ago I read the second book in this triglogy -- Independence Day, for which writer Richard Ford won a Pulitzer, and found his writing quite nice. Reminded of that, I picked this up, the first book in that trilogy. Either Ford's writing changed a great deal from one book to the other, or my tastes have changed, not sure which. But this wasn't the type of writing I remembered.

The book follows Frank Bascombe over an Easter weekend as he drifts around in his own mind, recalling the death of his son a few years prior and his recent divorce, with a woman only known as X. Years earlier he had a collection of stories published, but abruptly quit writing early on to become a sportswriter -- a lot was made of this, it being brought up repeatedly, as I guess he regrets it. For the entire novel he's got no energy, no gumption, no verve. He's got a new girlfriend, and maybe he'll marry her. He meets her parents. That's about as exciting as it gets. Not too much else happens in the way of plot. Maybe that was the point -- life's filled with regret and either shake it off or don't? I haven't a clue, really. So much of it ran together that I simply stopped caring.

I suppose Frank was having an early mid-life crisis, except he was so damn boring I couldn't help but to think it was all of his own making. If you want a life, you should probably, I don't know, act like you do and get involved -- care -- rather than expect everyone to comfort your ass and physically breathe life into you every second of the day. There really wasn't anything but his own wobbly introspective thoughts going on page after page. I'll pass.

By the way, what person in 1986 uses the word Negro? I mean -- what??!! The main character said it five or six times to describe different characters: The Negro boy, the Negro janitor... The book takes place in the (then) present day 1986 New Jersey, not in the 1960's south. I kept wishing the main character would say that to one of their faces so I could witness him being punched in the mouth. But I didn't get the pleasure.(less)

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Dec 29, 2010 Mike Alston rated it 3 of 5 stars

Hard for me to relate to -- mostly about a middle-aged dude who was pursuing fiction writing with some measure of success but has since "settled" as a writer at a "major New York sports magazine you know the name of." But it's not about that at all. It's about his struggle with coming to grips with his past (ex-wife and 2 kids, and the death of a son), to come to terms with his future, and with his current lot in life. All in all, the narrator comes across as too smart and too given to hyperanal...more

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Dec 01, 2010 Lostinanovel rated it 3 of 5 stars

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. Overall an enjoyable read. Wonderful character development of the narrator, Frank Bascombe. Not often that I find a main character as personally dislikeable as Frank but also have sympathy for him. Ford successfully makes you see Frank much as I would imagine his ex-wife may see him. I felt sympathy for him and understand his pain but personally want nothing to do with him.
This is a carefully written book. In the scene where his wife burns her hope chest, Ford cleverly has the “other woman” be s...more Overall an enjoyable read. Wonderful character development of the narrator, Frank Bascombe. Not often that I find a main character as personally dislikeable as Frank but also have sympathy for him. Ford successfully makes you see Frank much as I would imagine his ex-wife may see him. I felt sympathy for him and understand his pain but personally want nothing to do with him.
This is a carefully written book. In the scene where his wife burns her hope chest, Ford cleverly has the “other woman” be someone with whom Frank did not sleep. Initially, its curious that Frank doesn’t just explain this away to his wife but the marriage broke up for larger issues and those letters, evidence of an inner emotional relationship that he no longer shared with his wife, was the real problem. If he had been having a sexual affair with this woman and had been caught, it would have been too easy for the reader dismiss the divorce as driven by infidelity.
The plot is shadowed by the death of Frank’s son, although also cleverly, this topic is largely avoided because Frank himself emotionally avoids it. We are told that Frank’s many infidelities all occurred after the death so we know that he used to be a very different person. Notably, Frank doesn’t gloat about his cheating. He isn’t a “another notch on my belt” type of guy. Instead, he is desperate and flailing. He likes being a loner but at the same time, he constantly reaches out for the presence of others. Who can I call now? Who will talk to me? He even fantasizes about normal relationships with random other people, such as his girlfriend’s father whom he just met. He dreams of intimacy while rigorously avoiding it because to deal with it, he would have to deal with his son’s death. Also notably, its mentioned that his mother helped him avoid dealing with his father’s premature death and even her own death was seemingly a non-event for Frank.
Just to be clear and to quote a character, Frank is an a-hole. His girlfriend punching him makes perfect sense after repeatedly telling her “I love you” and suggesting marriage when he clearly doesn’t mean it or at least there’s no thought behind his offers.
Ford has some written some beautiful sentences as well, which alone make the book worthwhile.
Weaknesses of the book would be an oddly slow pace for a simply written and relatively short book. Also, the characters outside of Frank are too shadowy. Still not sure of the role of his “sometimes-gay” friend Walt.(less)

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Jul 18, 2010 Tony rated it 1 of 5 stars

Shelves: das-nach-fruct-book-club, novels

This is one of those books I've seen sitting on other people's bookshelves for years, and have picked up to look at countless times, only to put it back down and instantly forget the jacket's plot description. So, when my book club picked it to read, it felt somehow both familiar and disappointing at the same time. As I started it, I was momentarily drawn in by the fact that the narrator and I were the same age, and I was reading it over a long Easter weekend, paralleling the timeline of the boo...more

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Apr 19, 2010 Mark rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: time-100

For about the first quarter of this book, while I was imagining that "The Sportswriter" would involve more than a few throwaway anecdotes, I thought to myself, if I read this book when I was 19 it may have affected me in a much greater way. Usually I think, "Maybe I'd get this more if I was older" - and maybe that's still true because it turns out the book is not so much about writing about sports as it is about one man whose current profession happens to be sportswriting. Detached from nearly e...more

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Apr 19, 2010 Ian Mapp rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This book regulary appears on "books to read" reviews and series. There has also been the third of the trilogy released "lay of the land" which resparked debate again.

I was left distinctly non plussed.

The story is set over an easter weekend in the ealry 80s. Frank Bascombe is 38, with a young girlfriend but estranged from almost everything that goes on around him - his male friends and his ex loves/girlfrinds and children.

This is very insular book and there is no narrative/change of events to mo...more

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Feb 08, 2010 Mary Ellen rated it 3 of 5 stars

I love Richard Ford's prose, and I like Frank Bascombe a lot, but by the end of the book -- and it's not all that long a book -- I had gotten a little tired of listening to him. The book opens on the Friday before Easter, as Frank and his ex-wife (referred to throughout as "X," ha ha) meet at their young son's grave. Frank, a sportswriter who doesn't care all that much about sports, then goes to pick up his girlfriend for an overnight trip to Detroit to interview a former football player whose c...more

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The Sportswriter (Frank Bascombe #1)

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