Morality, Identity and Narrative in the Fiction of Richard Ford. (Costerus NS, 176)

369 Pages·2008·4.4 MB·English

by  Brian Duffy

Morality, Identity and
Narrative in the Fiction
of Richard Ford
Costerus New series 176
Series Editors:
C.C. Barfoot, Theo D’haen
and Erik Kooper

Morality, Identity and
Narrative in the Fiction
of Richard Ford

Brian Duffy
Amsterdam-New York, NY 2008
Cover photo: Le Jardin du Luxembourg, Paris. By Brigitte Le Juez
Cover design: Aart Jan Bergshoeff
The paper on which this book is printed meets the requirements of
“ISO 9706:1994, Information and documentation - Paper for
documents - Requirements for permanence”.
ISBN: 978-90-420-2409-0
©Editions Rodopi B.V., Amsterdam - New York, NY 2008
Printed in the Netherlands
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Most of this book was written during a year’s sabbatical leave in
2006. I am grateful to Dublin City University for granting me this
research time, but particularly to the School of Applied Language and
Intercultural Studies in DCU. I would also like to acknowledge the
travel grant I received from the Research Travel Programme of DCU’s
Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, which allowed me to
travel to the United States to interview Richard Ford.
I am very grateful to my editor, Cedric Barfoot, for his meticulous
editing and advice; his experience and guidance were invaluable to me
throughout the editing of the manuscript. And I would also like to
thank Esther Roth of Rodopi for her patience and assistance during the
latter stages of bringing the book to publication. I greatly appreciated,
too, the technical assistance of Shelly Barron in DCU.
There are, of course, personal debts that I am glad to be able to
acknowledge. The reader’s gratitude I felt towards Richard Ford took
a more personal form when I had the opportunity to meet him and,
later, to interview him. In all my contacts with him he has been
courteous, attentive and exceptionally obliging in his responses. And
my gratitude for this easy personal contact extends fully to Kristina
Ford. Both of them welcomed me warmly into their home, where the
interview with Richard Ford was conducted, a generosity that has
extended well beyond the professional business of this book
I am grateful to Douglas Smith for his encouragement, and to my
colleague Marnie Holborow for her support over a number of years.
This book is dedicated to Brigitte Le Juez, the person to whom I
owe most.

CONTENTS

Introduction 9

1. The Sportswriter I: Fleeing the Past 17

2. The Sportswriter II: Impermanence and the Present 35

3. Independence Day I: From Unity to Fragmentation 59

4. Independence Day II: Laissez-faire and Isolation 83

5. The Lay of the Land I: America Divided 113

6. The Lay of the Land II: The Return of the Past 141

7. “The Womanizer”: Identity and the Good 175

8. “Occidentals”: Americans in Paris 205

9. A Multitude of Sins: Acts and Consequences 231

10. “Calling”: The Narrative Cure 245

11. “Reunion”: Time and Narrative 259

12. “Charity”: Marriage and Identity 273

13. “Abyss”: The Fall 293

Conclusion 313

Interview with Richard Ford 321

Bibliography 359

Index 363

INTRODUCTION

Since the publication of The Sportswriter in 1986 Richard Ford has
been recognized as one of America’s leading writers of fiction. He has
been awarded the Pulitzer Prize, the PEN/Faulkner Award and the
PEN/Malamud Award for short fiction. His work has been celebrated
by critics and fellow writers alike, and he has won the loyalty of a
large and international readership. Yet, for such an important writer,
there is relatively little scholarly work available on his novels and
stories. At the time of writing, only three books devoted exclusively to
his work have been published (a monograph, a book of essays and a
collection of interviews), along with a limited number of articles in
academic publications. The relative scarcity of scholarly work leaves
Richard Ford’s fiction seriously under-researched, not only in terms of
general commentary but also with respect to important recurring
themes in his writing. A new book on Ford’s fiction, then, might hope
to have a small contribution to make.
Richard Ford is most immediately identified with the trilogy of
novels devoted to his character, Frank Bascombe. One of the
objectives of this book is to provide a wide-ranging and integrated
commentary on the trilogy, recently completed with the publication of
The Lay of the Land (October 2006). Why “wide-ranging”? The Frank
Bascombe novels are long novels, each successive book longer than
its predecessor, with the final one not far short of five-hundred pages.
The novels present us with a man and a nation, and take their leisurely
time to explore both at three different moments, two in the 1980s and,
finally, in the year 2000. Character and country are examined from a
variety of perspectives. Frank features in his various roles as ex-
husband, father (of two living children and one dead child), divorcee,
lover, husband, abandoned husband, friend, sportswriter, real estate
agent, suburbanite, citizen and, in the role that gives his narrative
voice its great distinctiveness, inveterate philosopher of his own life.
Frank’s life is, in exemplary fashion, the examined life. But Frank,
as first-person narrator, also turns his inquiring mind to his country,
and delivers himself of a rich stream of opinions on contemporary
America, be it the experience of living in the suburbs, the influence of