Perspectives on Richard Ford

Perspectives on Richard Ford PDF Author: Huey Guagliardo
Publisher: Univ. Press of Mississippi
ISBN: 9781604736526
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 200

Get Book Here

Book Description
At a time when Richard Ford was considering giving up writing fiction, suddenly he was hailed in Newsweek as "one of the best writers of his generation." Then Ford's The Sportswriter (1986), the story of suburbanite Frank Bascombe's struggle to survive loneliness and great loss, was published to great acclaim. Its sequel, Independence Day (1995), was the first novel to win both the Pulitzer Prize and the PEN/Faulkner Award. With three other novels, a well-received volume of short stories, and a trilogy of novellas to his credit, Ford was firmly established as a major literary figure. The nine essays in this volume demonstrate that Ford, like few other writers of his time, powerfully depicts what it feels like to live in the secular late-twentieth-century world, a dangerous and uncertain place where human relationships are impoverished and human existence is empty and alienated. Perspectives on Richard Ford, the first book-length examination of Richard Ford's fiction, is a reader's essential companion for studying the works of one of America's most outstanding contemporary writers.

Perspectives on Richard Ford

Perspectives on Richard Ford PDF Author: Huey Guagliardo
Publisher: Univ. Press of Mississippi
ISBN: 9781604736526
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 200

Get Book Here

Book Description
At a time when Richard Ford was considering giving up writing fiction, suddenly he was hailed in Newsweek as "one of the best writers of his generation." Then Ford's The Sportswriter (1986), the story of suburbanite Frank Bascombe's struggle to survive loneliness and great loss, was published to great acclaim. Its sequel, Independence Day (1995), was the first novel to win both the Pulitzer Prize and the PEN/Faulkner Award. With three other novels, a well-received volume of short stories, and a trilogy of novellas to his credit, Ford was firmly established as a major literary figure. The nine essays in this volume demonstrate that Ford, like few other writers of his time, powerfully depicts what it feels like to live in the secular late-twentieth-century world, a dangerous and uncertain place where human relationships are impoverished and human existence is empty and alienated. Perspectives on Richard Ford, the first book-length examination of Richard Ford's fiction, is a reader's essential companion for studying the works of one of America's most outstanding contemporary writers.

The Sportswriter

The Sportswriter PDF Author: Richard Ford
Publisher: A&C Black
ISBN: 1408835118
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 455

Get Book Here

Book Description
Frank Bascombe has a younger girlfriend and a job as a sportswriter. To many men of his age, thirty-eight, this would be a cause for optimism, yet Frank feels the pull of his inner despair and especially of his recent losses - his preferred career has ended, his wife has divorced him, and a tragic accident took his elder son. In the course of this Easter weekend, Frank will lose all the remnants of his familiar life, though he will emerge heroic with spirits soaring. This is a magnificent novel that propelled Richard Ford into the first rank of American writers.

The Lay of the Land

The Lay of the Land PDF Author: Richard Ford
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0307267121
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 496

Get Book Here

Book Description
NATIONAL BESTSELLER • NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD FINALIST • The Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Independence Day and The Sportswriter brings back the unforgettable Frank Bascombe in this astonishing meditation on modern-day America. A sportswriter and a real estate agent, husband and father—Frank Bascombe has been many things to many people. His uncertain youth behind him, we follow him through three days during the autumn of 2000, when his trade as a realtor on the Jersey Shore is thriving. But as a presidential election hangs in the balance, and a post-nuclear-family Thanksgiving looms before him, Frank discovers that what he terms “the Permanent Period” is fraught with unforeseen perils. An astonishing meditation on America today and filled with brilliant insights, The Lay of the Land is a magnificent achievement from one of the most celebrated chroniclers of our time. Also available in the Bascombe Trilogy: The Sportswriter and Independence Day

Perspectives on Richard Ford

Perspectives on Richard Ford PDF Author: Huey Guagliardo
Publisher: Univ. Press of Mississippi
ISBN: 149680015X
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 232

Get Book Here

Book Description
This is the first book-length examination of the fiction written by Richard Ford, who gained critical acclaim for The Sportswriter, the story of suburbanite Frank Bascombe's struggle to survive loneliness and great loss. That novel, published in 1986, struck a chord with readers and reviewers alike, and Ford, a little-known writer who had for a time considered giving up the writing of fiction, was suddenly hailed in Newsweek as “one of the best writers of his generation.” The Sportswriter, along with its 1995 sequel Independence Day, which became the first novel to win both the Pulitzer Prize and the PEN/Faulkner Award, made Ford's Frank Bascombe as much a part of the American literary landscape as John Updike's Rabbit Angstrom. With three other novels, a well-received volume of short stories, and a trilogy of novellas to his credit, Ford is now firmly established as a major figure among writers of the post-World War II generation. Perspectives on Richard Ford is the first collection of essays to study the body of Ford's fiction. The nine essays demonstrate that Ford, like few other writers of his time, powerfully depicts what it feels like to live in the secular late-twentieth-century world, a dangerous and uncertain place where human relationships are impoverished and where human existence is often characterized by emptiness, solipsism, and, above all, by a sense of alienation. The contributors tend to view Ford's narratives of alienation in a broad cultural context. His works dramatize the breakdown of the institutions of marriage, family, and community. His protagonists often typify the rootlessness and the nameless longing pervasive in a highly mobile, present-oriented society in which individuals, having lost a sense of the past, relentlessly pursue their own elusive identities in the here and now. The collection, which concludes with a compelling conversation between Ford and the editor, will prove to be an essential companion to the work of one our most intriguing contemporary writers.

Between Them

Between Them PDF Author: Richard Ford
Publisher: HarperCollins
ISBN: 0062661906
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 84

Get Book Here

Book Description
From American master Richard Ford, a memoir: his first work of nonfiction, a stirring narrative of memory and parental love How is it that we come to consider our parents as people with rich and intense lives that include but also exclude us? Richard Ford’s parents—Edna, a feisty, pretty Catholic-school girl with a difficult past; and Parker, a sweet-natured, soft-spoken traveling salesman—were rural Arkansans born at the turn of the twentieth century. Married in 1928, they lived “alone together” on the road, traveling throughout the South. Eventually they had one child, born late, in 1944. For Ford, the questions of what his parents dreamed of, how they loved each other and loved him become a striking portrait of American life in the mid-century. Between Them is his vivid image of where his life began and where his parents’ lives found their greatest satisfaction. Bringing his celebrated candor, wit, and intelligence to this most intimate and mysterious of landscapes—our parents’ lives—the award-winning storyteller and creator of the iconic Frank Bascombe delivers an unforgettable exploration of memory, intimacy, and love.

Let Me Be Frank With You

Let Me Be Frank With You PDF Author: Richard Ford
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1408853507
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 194

Get Book Here

Book Description
Richard Ford returns with four deftly linked Christmas stories narrated by the iconic Frank 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 countless lives unmoored, are the perfect backdrop 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.

Independence Day

Independence Day PDF Author: Richard Ford
Publisher: A&C Black
ISBN: 1408835088
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 467

Get Book Here

Book Description
Frank Bascombe, in the aftermath of his divorce and the ruin of his career, has entered an 'Existence Period' - selling real estate in 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 extraordinary empathy and perception.

Rock Springs

Rock Springs PDF Author: Richard Ford
Publisher: A&C Black
ISBN: 1408835096
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 258

Get Book Here

Book Description
In these ten stories, Ford mines literary gold from the wind-scrubbed landscape of the American West - and from the guarded hopes and gnawing loneliness of the people who live there. A refugee from justice driving across Wyoming with his daughter; an unhappy girlfriend and a stolen Mercedes; a boy watching his family dissolve in a night of tragicomic violence; two men and a woman swapping hard-luck stories in a frontier bar as they try to sweeten their luck. Rock Springs is a masterpiece of taut narration, cleanly chiselled prose, and empathy so generous that it feels like a kind of grace.

Wildlife

Wildlife PDF Author: Richard Ford
Publisher: Vintage Canada
ISBN: 0307363724
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 170

Get Book Here

Book Description
Great Falls, Montana, is where the Rockies end and where, in 1960, the Brinson family hopes to find a better life. Instead, sixteen-year-old Joe Brinson watches his parents discover the limits of their marriage and, at the same time, the unexpected depths of dignity and courage that remain even when love dies.

Dress Codes

Dress Codes PDF Author: Richard Thompson Ford
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1501180088
Category : Crafts & Hobbies
Languages : en
Pages : 464

Get Book Here

Book Description
A law professor and cultural critic offers an eye-opening exploration of the laws of fashion throughout history, from the middle ages to the present day, examining the canons, mores and customs of clothing rules that we often take for granted