The incomparable Mississippian Richard Ford is a great writer, no question about that. More importantly, he is a great American writer. Throughout his novels and short stories, as well as his astute critical reading of literature, he has fulfilled the main objective of art: the exploration of the self. He has also consistently chiselled away, ever closer to the heart of the United States.
There is no disputing that his finest work, for all the intended irony of the title, is the novel called Canada. Published in 2012, it is a masterpiece, a sublimely human narrative about the lasting damage inflicted by wilful action. Again, more importantly, it is Ford's masterpiece – and that in itself is saying something. He is a writer who has nailed exactly what it is to be alive – no mean feat – and to be alive in the US. In addition to that is his grasp of the fundamental turmoil of daily life.
How can anyone, even Ford, hope to better Canada? You don't; you don't even attempt to follow it. So instead of moving on to something new beyond the heartbreaking solemnity of Dell's bewilderment as he looks back over a chasm of some 50 years to the moment his parents became unlikely bank robbers and destroyed their family, Ford has summoned an old friend, Frank Bascombe.
It is risky, returning to the field of glory. In this case the glory is three major novels: The Sportswriter (1986), Independence Day (1995) and the life-affirming finale, The Lay of the Land (2006). Bascombe's journey has been a testing one, from the death of a child and, with it, the bitter end of a first marriage, accompanied by a farewell to ambition. Bascombe had published a first collection of stories and had planned on a novel. That never happened. Relinquishing it all, he turned to real estate. Having spent much of his time looking inwards, his new career made him peer more closely at humanity.
In this quality of forensic observation resides Bascombe's – and Ford's – essential genius, which is an ongoing wonderment at the ways in which humans muddle along. Bascombe's experiences have been mixed: grief, reinvention. He got divorced, remarried and underwent a minor crisis. He moved home a few times; he even got himself shot. By the close of The Lay of the Land he was delighting in having left hospital and in the weather having "turned ice-cream nice . . . The low noon sun made the Atlantic purple and flat, then suddenly glow as the tide withdrew. And once again I was lured out, my pants legs rolled and in an old green sweatshirt, barefoot, to where the soaked and glistening sand seized my soft feet bottoms and the frothing water raced to close around my ankles like a grasp. And I thought to myself, standing there: Here is necessity. Here is the extra beat – to live, to live, to live it out."
Majestic odyssey
It is a defining statement, and it served as a fitting farewell to a majestic odyssey. In Bascombe, Ford has his Harry Angstrom. Both of these characters live through the history of the contemporary United States. Yet there are many differences, a significant one being that John Updike’s Rabbit is not a thinker: he is a reactor, and at times a rather mindless one. Updike’s prose soars around Rabbit’s muddled thoughts. Bascombe ponders everything; his mind
is
the narrative. And never forget: before he took to selling houses Bascombe was a writer.
In this new book, a slight one by Ford's standards, consisting of four short stories, Bascombe contemplates the damage caused by the ferocious Hurricane Sandy, which devastated the eastern United States. Only he has moved back from Sea-Clift to Haddam, the fictional composite of Princeton, Hopewell and Pennington where it all began, at least for Ford's readers, in The Sportswriter, with Bascombe, then 38 and about to climb over the cemetery wall at dawn on Good Friday to visit his son Ralph's grave.
Many years, and books, have passed. Bascombe is now 68 and retired. He and his second wife, Sally, have sold the beautiful house with the sea views and have moved inland. In the first of the stories, I'm Here, he is in conversational mode: "Strange fragrances ride the twitchy, wintry air at the Shore this morning, two weeks before Christmas. Flowery wreaths on an ominous sea stir expectancy in the unwary." The most prevailing smell is of the materials that householders are using to repair storm damage.
All is relatively well for Bascombe, and he quickly strikes the reader as slightly more cranky, slightly more smug and increasingly the personification of the know-it-all neighbour who tells it as it is. He is opinionated and not overly fond of mankind. He is also older and very aware of his age and of death.
The whiff of mortality hangs over this collection, as do illness, vulnerability and a fear of falling, as well as the multiple emotional wounds and ancient resentments that continue to fester throughout the several intense encounters Bascombe has with various people from his past, including his first wife, Ann.
Sally, her successor, is this time only a shadowy presence. She has very little to say, as she is busy elsewhere, counselling hurricane victims, many of whom have lost their homes. One such victim, although he has other resources to draw on, is Arnie Urquhart, once a college mate of Bascombe. Now he too is older, having lived a life and accumulated various experiences as well as property. Among those possessions was Bascombe’s former residence in Sea-Clift, a prime bolthole Bascombe recalls as being “a tall, glass-and-redwood, architect-design beach palace, flush up against what seemed to be a benign and glimmering sea. Anybody’s dream of a second home.” Alas, it is no more, having been uprooted and tossed on its side by the mighty gales.
Arnie is furious. It is as if he is about to blame Bascombe for the loss. He has also changed, and appears to have had extensive cosmetic surgery, the effects of which, including “his strange, half-woman face”, are vividly described by Bascombe. A sense of threat hangs over the meeting. “You’re taller than you used to be, aren’t you Frank?” says Arnie, who may just be about to hug him. Bascombe replies with one of his many caustic one-liners: “I have the personality of a shorter man, Arnie.”
Ford writes in long, reflective sentences. These stories are sharp; Bascombe is brisk and rarely reveals the old tenderness that so brilliantly counters the vivid exasperation of the Bascombe trilogy. Yet there is a deliberate cohesion, consolidated by references to the previous books – the reader is safely and securely in Bascombeland. Even the individual titles are cleverly worked from sentences in the narratives that read as part of one central work. These stories feature many set pieces; they have stories within them. The second story, Everything Could Be Worse, sees Bascombe for once not quite in control. A stiltedly prim woman appears on his doorstep, asking if she can look around his house, as she had once lived there. It is awkward, at times, unconvincing.
Trademark humour
The New Normal
is an update on Ann, his first wife. She has returned to Haddam and settled in an expensive rest home. He visits her. It is all very queasy, a forced closeness. Old scores are settled and there is no easy sympathy. Bascombe, dispensing with his trademark humour, sums it up most effectively and affectingly as he leaves, stinging from an unexpectedly vicious parting comment she makes, musing: “There was no urge to touch, to kiss, to embrace. But I do it just the same . . . Love isn’t a thing, after all, but an endless series of single acts.”
The final and finest story, Deaths of Others, brings Frank to the bedside of a dying friend, Eddie, who announces that he too, like Frank, is busy. "Busy getting dead. If you want to catch me live, you better get over here." There are further revelations.
Bascombe sees everything and has the time to ponder it well, give an opinion and think up some more. Admittedly this is a small book from a huge talent. There is no denying that Frank Bascombe is in ripping form, and reading this makes you want to return to the trilogy and back to Rock Springs (1988) and Wildlife (1990) – because that's how good Richard Ford is.
