"The Lay of the Land" by Richard Ford, a reading journal (3)

Character vs. Author

"I'm forty-five, and wonder how I managed to fritter so much of my life away. (...)
Life-lived-over-again dreams, these are" (p.108)

Most mid-lifers believe they have wasted a substancial part of their lives doing nothing relevant. Such could well be life as it is, a no-thrills deal. What's the deal with leading an exciting existence anyway? Waking up, dinner, TV with kids and the house mortgage is life as perfect as it could ever be. Or not.

Frank Bascombe's mid-life crisis at forty-five comes with separation and cancer. His realtor existence is somewhat obscured by the intimacy of a first person voice. As I read, I always keep in the back of my mind the ideia of excusing Frank because he is a well-known writer, not just a property salesperson. Suspension of belief suspended itself by the extreme realism of Frank's voice.

The "could-have-been" also caught my attention. I never really knew of this dream category. Jumping over that cliff's edge inside the warm safety of your own mind, re-enacting life, taking the second chance, remodeling, as if life was a stage and you could go back and repeat the scene to exhaustion until it is as pure as you dreamt it would be. The impossibility of the awaken compensated by the contradictory vital energy of sleepers. But also the impotence of acting only when asleep.



Other reading journals: an index