The Sportswriter by Richard Ford


My rating: 3 of 5 stars


52/100


While the merits of the book lie mostly in Ford's ability to write believable, interesting dialogue and pages-long conversation, I found it incredibly difficult to connect, or even really like the protagonist, Frank Bascombe. He is a man emotionless, or at least purposely emotionally distant from events and the people around him. "I don't think I have any ethics at all, really. I just do as little harm as I can," Bascombe tells Walter Luckett, both members of The Divorced Men's Club. Here is a man of wanton convictions, and to me, someone who lets life lead them instead the other way around. But it wasn't always like that for Frank, who took chances and gave up dreams prior to the beginning of the novel, which we are dealt in musing flashbacks. The events which carry the greatest opportunity for a profound link between the reader and writer (Ralph, his eldest son's death, and the consequential divorce from his wife) are all given to us from Frank's disconnected present, a narrative of little action and mostly retrospection. And this makes for a slow, dolorous read, which I questioned to abandon. But I guess one could argue this structuring was entirely Ford's purpose. As he writes towards the beginning, "All we really want is to get to a point where the past can explain nothing about us and we can get on with life."




View all my reviews