"The Lay of the Land" by Richard Ford, a reading journal (1)

Settling down with Frank Bascombe: the geography of the Land

Frank Bascombe's life has been better. Divorced once, abandoned twice, being treated for prostate cancer and going through the "Permanent Period", when "we try to be what we are in the present" (p.41), Frank stumbles upon happy memories every now and then. When it happens, the narrative feels like it would if the sun had suddenly hit the page, the change in tone is notorious, from sarcastic crude to warm and apeased:

"Sally and I would drive up from New Jersey on Wednesday night, sleep like corpses, stay in bed under a big thick comforter until we were brave enough to face the morning chill, then scramble around for sweaters, wool pants and boots, making coffee, eating bagels we'd brought from home, reading old Holidays and Psychology Todays before embarking on a moderately strenuous hike to the French-Canadian massacre site halfway up Mount Deception, after which we took a nap till cocktail hour.
We watched moose in the shallows, eagles in the tree tops, made comical efforts to fish for trout, watched the outfitter's seaplane slide onto the lake, considered getting the outboard going for a trip out to the island where a famous painter had lived. Once, I actually took a dip, but never again." (p.36)

I like to see how Ford dodges the names of places: Lake Laconic takes the place of Lake Winnipesaukee by Laconia, New Hampshire, but Mount Deception is the real thing.

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"Think Think Thinky Think" , a review in the "Far Corner Reader"
"Getting Ford's «Lay of the Land»", na NPR



Other reading journals: an index