"The Lay of the Land" by Richard Ford, a reading journal (7)

Marriage: the writer's wink

Funny that when Ford introduces his first wife, the whole weight of the meaning of marriage, as it used to be ("just like people do in movies"), presses on the reader. As if the old Frank of the "Sportswriter" makes his appearance and the present Frank is thrown off-balance. The past is coming and the physical and phsycological unwanted reactions are not pleasant.

The whole marriage "scene" starts when, at the end of a meaningful conversation, the daughter Clarissa spurts out, out of the blue (p. 199): "Marriage is a strange way to express love, isn't it? Maybe I won't try it." Whatever chain of thought the reader was pursuing, it gets totally blasted by this sentence. In a very uncharacteristic manner, Ford winks at you in the next paragraph, playing you around, pausing belief: "Writers, though, like to juice these moments to get at you while you're vulnerable." And goes on describing the moment when Frank's second wife tells him she is going to leave him. The reader going through the motions of thick feelings, a roller coaster [for some very odd reason I could not remember the word "roller coaster" but I did remember "Six Flags"] of emotions, rolling alongside Frank. In the following chapter, Frank meets his first wife who will unexpectedly tell him she loves him.

And soon enough, in page-time, Ford winks again when Frank nonchalantly says: "And of course I don't have anybody to share perceptions with anyway. (Clarissa would be bored to concrete)." I, the reader inside of Frank's brain for about 200 pages at this point, sharing all his perceptions, laugh uneasily; Clarissa seems a rather bright person.



Other reading journals: an index