'all boats are looking for a place to sink'

RICHARD FORD: ... don't stop reading now, keep on reading.

 It's kind of like the old notion of all boats are looking for a place to sink. I think readers are looking for a place to get out of the book. And so it's my job to get them to the end. Somebody wrote me a letter not long ago and said that she didn't like my book at all. She thought it was bad, it was terrible.

JEFFREY BROWN: She thought she'd tell you about it.

 RICHARD FORD: Yes. She thought she would bring that piece of news to me. And I said, lady, I said, that's fine, I said, but you seem to have read it all, so for me it's win-win.

- -
Richard Ford em entrevista.
está tudo estranho. o calor excessivo quando queria já estar no inverno, o assentar difícil no novo ano, as rotinas on the verge of collapse, a tortura televisiva e a guerra de palavras, o incerto, a velhice e a doença. o medo, talvez. amanhã. The Lay of the Land foi para mim há cinco anos, para o escritor imagino que tenham sido seis anos de permeio entre um livro e o outro. refiro-me ao enorme Canada, que vi [quero!] na Shakespeare & Co., um pouco antes de comer aquela baklava. não sei se todas as células do meu corpo se renovaram entre aquele momento e este, não sei o que resta de mim,  na verdade, sou a mesma e sou outra. voltar à América de Ford é como um retorno nostálgico à infância em que os objectos e as casas nos parecem de repente tão pequenos. como se o retorno fosse possível.

(Montana gothic)

Canada (no Montana) parece ser, para o seu autor, uma obra de consagração.

Tim Adams entrevista Richard Ford (2)

Na Granta.
Tradução minha, o original aqui.
1ª parte aqui.

---
TA - Sabe sempre como soa uma frase de Richard Ford?

RF - Não acho que as minhas frases tenham assinatura. Já ouvi algumas pessoas que acham que sim, mas isso é apenas um gesto para me lisongear. Porque eu tenho a certeza de que não. O estilo ou o modo de uma frase, ou um livro cheio de frases com estilo ou modos, são uma resposta a uma variedade de forças que operam no escritor: a sua relação sensual, instintiva com o próprio material; o acumular de material que precede a escrita; a história do escritor com outros livros que podem ou não ter referido o mesmo assunto, ou livros que o escritor simplesmente admira; as mudanças de maré diárias que acontecem nas energias e estado de espírito de qualquer pessoa. E muito mais. Todas estas coisas afectam como as frases são escritas—quantas palavras têm, a sua complexidade sintática, a sua dicção e todas as escolhas de palavras, o que elas pretendem elucidar. E no decurso de um livro, estas características estilísticas podem mudar e mudam muitas vezes ou modulam-se. É certo que no decurso da vida de um escritor o seu controle sobre as palavras também se altera—ou de livro para livro, assunto para assunto, ou simplesmente à medida que se envelhece. Penso que o Lay of the Land tem frases mais longas e complexas porque a minha mente (a minha cabeça de homem mais velho) estava mais cheia de coisas que me interessam, e eu não queria perder muitas dessas coisas. Então arranjei frases onde coubesse tudo isso e usei-as. Pode dizer que isso foi ambicioso, ou pode dizer que foi mau julgamento ou incapacidade para discriminar. Eu diria que foi ambição porque eu gosto muito do livro—gosto da sua meticulosidade. As pessoas podem preocupar-se com aspectos estilísticos como a "voz": ter uma "voz" consistente, uma "voz" verdadeira, a sua própria "voz". Esta concepção de voz pode ter algo a ver com a tal assinatura do escritor. Mas para mim isso não é muito importante. Para mim, a "voz" é provavelmente apenas a música da inteligência da história, como soa quando está a ser esperta, ou quando está a guiar o leitor. E essa música, como o estilo de uma história, pode mudar e muda. Uma frase do Richard Ford é escrita de modo diferente de uma obra para outra. O que para mim está óptimo.

TA - Conhecia Eudora Welty na sua juventude?

RF - Bem, eu conhecia o seu nome. Em Jackson, conhecia-se. A sua sobrinha era minha colega de escola, a Elizabeth. Mas Eudora tinha crescido mesmo à frente da minha casa, do outro lado da rua Congress e eu não soube disso até bem mais tarde, já adulto. Também não li nada escrito por ela (ou qualquer outra coisa) até estar na universidade e ela estar no currículo de uma disciplina. A Eudora vivia—em Pinehurst Street—não muito longe de nós quando eu crescia. Dava para ir a pé. Mas era num outro bairro da "velha Jackson", melhor do que o nosso. A minha mãe uma vez apontou para a Eudora na mercearia—devia eu ter oito anos. E disse: "Richard, aquela é a Eudora Welty, ali. É uma escritora". Eu percebi pelo tom de voz da minha mãe que ela achava que ser um escritor é uma coisa boa.

TA - Ela escrevia alguma coisa, a sua mãe?

RF - Interessante [a pergunta], pelo menos para mim. Quando eu passava em revista os haveres da minha mãe, depois da sua morte em 1971, eu encontrei um caderno que tinha escrita apenas uma linha, na primeira página, e na letra elegante da minha mãe. Dizia "Les, uma vida". A minha avó, mãe da minha mãe, chamava-se Les—uma versão do seu nome verdadeiro, que era Essie. A minha mãe tomou conta da minha avó durante os últimos anos da sua vida. E não foi uma passagem fácil. A minha avó era capaz de ser terrível e muito agressiva. E sei que a minha mãe sofria bastante com isso. Nós todos sofremos de um modo ou de outro. Mas deve ter parecido à minha mãe que um qualquer acto de escrita—ficcional ou não—era a melhor maneira de registar ou imaginar a sua própria experiência. Penso que também seria por ter um filho que era escritor que isto deve ter começado a parecer possível para ela. Mas nunca o fez—o que está bem. Não queria fazê-lo o suficiente.

TA - Acha que as histórias são criadas ou descobertas?

RF - Isso é fácil: as histórias são criadas. Não é como se elas estivessem ali à espera nalgum hiper-espaço platónico como emails por ler. Não estão. Os escritores inventam as histórias. Pode acontecer que quando as histórias são boas então adquiram uma qualidade de inevitabilidade, de parecer que existiu um espaço anterior e importante onde elas pertenciam antes. Mas isso não acontece. Tenho a certeza. Uma história faz o seu próprio espaço e depois enche-o. Os escritores não encontram as histórias—embora alguns digam que o fazem. Isto para mim significa apenas que eles têm um vocabulário que é inadequado para ilustrar o que eles fazem na realidade. São como o Hemingway—sempre a fugir da complexidade como se estivesse a fugir ao fogo num celeiro.

TA - Eu sempre pensei em si como um escritor do Sul, mas tem insistido em migrar para o Norte na sua ficção. Porquê?

RF - É uma história longa e pouco interessante. O primeiro romance que eu escrevi, A Piece of My Heart, passa-se no Sul porque eu pensava que é isso que fazem os escritores do Sul. Mas eu queria que o meu romance, embora tivesse lugar no Sul, irradiasse as suas preocupações para qualquer pessoa que o lesse—do Sul ou não. Por outras palavras, eu queria usar o modelo sulista para um romance maior do que o Sul. Eu suponho que Faulkner e Flannery O'Connor e Welty eram os meus modelos para isto. Mas quando o meu livro foi publicado e lido, mencionavam-no apenas como o "Romance do Sul". E isso frustrava-me muito, e fazia-me pensar que eu precisava de escrever romances que não fosse vítimas desta categorização. Então, escrevi um romance que se passava no México, e depois comecei a trabalhar no Sportswriter, que se passa em New Jersey e no Michigan. E para além destes livros eu escrevi livros que se passavam em Montana e na França. E assim todo aquele assunto do Sul ficou para mim em repouso. Com isto quero dizer que todo o Sul ficou para mim em suspenso. Mais tarde vim a pensar—mas não quando eu estava literalmente a fazer esta separação—que eu devo ter intuído que todos estes grandes escritores do Sul (Welty, O'Connor,Percy, Faulkner, Styrin, Price, Barry Hanah) já tinham feito o que eu ia tentar fazer e tinham-no feito melhor do que eu era capaz.

(continua)

Tim Adams entrevista Richard Ford

Na Granta. Tradução minha, o original aqui.
(em construção)

---

TA - Quando acabou o romance The Lay of the Land, deu a entende que nunca mais escreveria um romance longo. Ainda pensa assim?

RF - Ainda penso dessa maneira, penso ainda mais. The Lay of the Land foi para mim um grande esforço e, como qualquer esforço, inteiramente único. E requer uma devoção comensurável (se não exactamente igual) por parte do leitor. Para além de não me imaginar a escrever um romance tão longo novamente (e não me imagino), também não me imagino a querer escrever uma coisa que exija do leitor qualquer coisa como a mesma energia intensa - extensão, complexidade e grandeza em geral. Eu gostava de escrever outro romance, sim. Eu gostava de escrever muita coisa. Mas não consigo imaginar outro empreendimento como o Lay of the Land. Algumas coisas simplesmente não precisam de ser feitas duas vezes - especialmente quando penso que a primeira vez correu bem.

TA - Enquadra o livro por altura da tão disputada primeira eleição presidencial de Bush. Pensa que essa eleição definiu o destino da América?

RF - Definiu o destino da América. Sem dúvida. Tendo em conta que a eleição foi roubada pelos Republicanos, e tendo em conta que o eleitorado americano estava suficientemente desinspirado para permitir uma corrida tão renhida, e tendo em conta que o sistema bi-partidário (particularmente os Democratas inúteis) permitiu que um homem com a extraordinária incompetência e desonestidade de George Bush se tornasse o líder do nosso país - tendo em conta que todas estas coisas são verdadeiras e tiveram lugar no coração da eleição em 2000, então esse conjunto de acontecimentos pode ser visto como a causa directa das circunstâncias impensáveis no Iraque de hoje, a causa da perda de muitas vidas inocentes, e a causa do papel quase obliterado da América enquanto poder potencial para o bem na política internacional. É este o destino final da América? Eu espero bem que não. É a situação em que estamos hoje. E eu espero que tenhamos um destino melhor e mais saudável do que este. Mas não há dúvida quanto ao evento inicial na cadeia de eventos que nos fez aterrar nesta confusão.

TA - Porque é que pensa que tantos romancistas americanos - alguns surpreendentemente, com John Updike, outros menos, como Don DeLillo - se sentiram obrigados a enfrentar o 11 de Setembro de um modo tão directo na ficção?

RF - Eles ficaram sensibilizados por estes acontecimentos. Não é muito complicado. No caso do DeLillo e do Updike, eles são ambos escritores muito realizados que têm uma confiança fora do comum nas suas capacidades de tornar seu um qualquer assunto. O facto de eu não o fazer, não o ter feito, significa provavelmente que eu não estou no mesmo patamar deles em qualquer frente. De outro modo, tê-lo-ia certamente feito. Não é?

TA - Grande parte do sentido de estar fora do sítio de Frank Bascombe e da sua dor vêm da morte do seu filho. Toda a sua escrita parece ter esta atmosfera de perda. Onde é que julga estar a fonte dessa perda na sua própria vida?

RF - Em primeiro lugar, não penso que seja necessário que um escritor que escreva sobre a perda (se eu o faço) tenha sentido perda ele próprio. Nós podemos imaginar a perda. Esse é o trabalho do escritor. Enfatizamos, projectamos, fazemos muito do que pode ser uma experiência pequena. Hemingway (como sempre, cheio de bravado) disse "escreve apenas sobre aquilo que conheces". Mas isso não pode significar que só se deva escrever sobre o que se fez ou experimentou. Uma regra como essa que sem qualquer objectivo amarra a imaginação, que confina a curiosidade, a capacidade para enfatizar. Afinal, um romance (se assim o desejar) pode fazer com que o leitor sinta sensações, emoções, que reconheça comportamentos que ele leitor nunca antes viu. O escritor terá de ser capaz de fazer isso também. Alguns assuntos causam simplesmente o que Katherine Anne Porter chamou "uma comoção in the mente". Essa comoção pode ou não ser uma resposta ao que nós fizemos na realidade. Dito isso, eu provavelmente não senti mais perda perda do que qualquer pessoa. Eu fui o filho de um pais mais velhos que eu estava sempre à espera que me morressem. E as velhas tias e tios-avôs do Arkansas que começaram a partir desta vida quando eu ainda era uma criança. Uma das minhas memórias de criança mais vívidas é a do funeral da minha tia Lizzie—no Arkansas—e dela estendida no caixão. Vívida, sim; mas também de uma vida bastante normal. E então o meu pai morreu quando eu tinha dezasseis—morreu nos meus braços, em casa. Isso podia com certeza ser considerado "imprinting". Nós éramos uma família de três pessoas, muito chegada e carinhosa. Por isso senti a perda da sua morte; e provavelmente, também de um modo significativo, eu senti a perda que a minha mãe sentiu—do seu grande amor na vida. O que sentimos o que sentimos é uma coisa complexa.

TA - Olhou, ou olha, para trás, para os anos anteriores à morte do seu pai, quando eram os três, como uma época dourada?

RF - Não, não uma época dourada. Eu desconfio das "épocas douradas". Penso que neste momento neste minuto é era melhor que fosse a época dourada, porque é o que temos. Eu tive uma infância feliz porque os meus pais me amavam e tratavam bem de mim. Mas o meu pai sofreu um ataque de coração sério quando eu tinha oito anos e ele quarenta e oito. E isso coloriu muito a minha vida, porque o assustou de morte e ele nunca se sentiu totalmente bem depois disso—provavelmente não estava bem. E ele estava muito ausente. O seu emprego como vendedor faziam com que viajasse de carro cinco dias por semana, e a minha mãe e eu ficávamos em casa juntos. E nós os dois tínhamos personalidades muito voláteis. E eu nunca fui muito bom na escola; à medida que o tempo passava, um miúdo com tendência para se envolver em problemas—roubar, envolver-se em lutas. Eu era disléxico e nunca li bem. Por isso, não. Não foi "dourada". Mas foi boa.

TA - Roubar teve consequências—foi apanhado?

RF - Não estamos aqui a falar de desviar um camião Brinks ou de ser um ajudante da família Manson; era só roubar um carro ocasionalmente, alguns arrombamentos fortuitos, e outras ofensas menores. E fui apanhado, levado para a frente de um juiz de juvenis, posto em liberdade condicional—o que foi um bocado horrível mas também era uma condecoração de honra. Isto tudo assustava a minha mãe, estristecia-a muito, de facto. E no que diz respeito a consequências, suponho que eu via as consequências do meu comportamento nela - o que era mau. Eu estava em liberdade condicional na altura em que o meu pai morreu; a minha mãe fez-me sentar e disse-me que não ia poder tomar conta de mim da mesma maneira que tinha até aí - porque tinha de arranjar um emprego e não ia estar em casa - e que o melhor era eu não ir preso ou para o tribunal de menores de novo porque ela não me ia safar. Isto teve um grande impacto em mim e foi uma espécie de consequência. Mas eu não era um criminoso por compromisso. Era mais um idiota.

TA - Pensa que a dislexia alterou o seu modo de ler?

RF - Absolutamente. Eu leio lentamente, e o resultado disso é não ter lido tantos livros como deveria ter lido - para se considerar que eu tenho uma boa formação. Mas o que eu li - porque leio devagar e com atenção - parece que li bem. E, mais importante, quando se lê devagar também se fica disponível para aquelas qualidades da linguagem diferentes das qualidades cognitivas. Fica-se sensível ao que se pode chamar as qualidades poéticas - rimas, repetições, sonoridades, síncopes, a eficácia da escolha de uma determinada palavra - essas qualidades. São importantes - pelo menos são para mim. Isto teve consequências não só sobre o meu modo de leitura mas sobre os meus objectivos enquanto escritor de frases.

"The Lay of the Land" by Richard Ford, a reading journal (15)

Are you ready to meet your maker?

As the novel unfolds and runs its course, Frank is coming closer to shore, his quest resolved or merely uncovered. The title phrase unveiled little by little, let the dead lie. Getting ready to close the circle, full and alive and coming back to the first question.

"What have I now accepted that visits me in my stale bedroom, where I'm warm and dank beneath the covers, my stack of unread books beside me, and at an unknown but indecent hour? What is it that rocked me like an ague, turned me loose like a flimsy ribbon on a zephir? All these years and modes of accomodation, of coping, of living with, of negotiating the world in order to fit in - my post-divorce dreaminess, the long period of existence in the early middle passage, the states of acceptable longing, of being a variablist, even the Permanent Period itself - these now seem not to be forms of acceptance the way I thought, but forms of fearful nonacceptance, the laughing/grimacing masks of denial"(...) (p. 532)

What better question to ask on the 31st of December of a redeeming year when, at last, the good icicles have outnumbered the other ones, on the brink of life, having walked on water, on the very edge of the abyssal zone. Floodgates about to open, let the better one win.

"The Lay of the Land" by Richard Ford, a reading journal (14)

Book 2: A Parade of human weaknesses

As we are taken into Book 2 / Day 2 of Frank Bascombe's life, we the readers realize this is a totally different frame of mind. The intimist, almost warm atmosphere gives place to a parade of not-so-nice characters, grotesque, old and physically worn out, their views sarcastic and unbelieving, locked in their own little worlds and mostly in the second half of life, if not the fourth quarter: the Feensters; unforgettable Wally Caldwell (his wife's supposedly dead husband brought back into existence); Thom (the funniest page I read in this book, extremely embarrassing if you - like I did - took the book to the café); the first appearance of Paul's girlfriend Jill who doesn't have a hand; Clare Suddruth, the old man who wants to give his wife a house, and Wade Arsenault. What a crowd.

If people are different, style has changed too. A bit like John Coplans, the naked body: " I stare glumly in at his inflatable hemorrhoid donut". (p. 439) [why would you ever write a sentence such as this one?].

"The Lay of the Land" by Richard Ford: a reader's journal (13)

On survival

My wishes for this Season, the Xmasey Season, the best-wishy, the warm-hearted, mulled wine and eggnoggy. Sometimes cruel, sometimes generous. If we are able to elude the sarcastic underlying streak, we could even take this for what it says (still the words of a man searching for meaning).

"(...) banish fear, think that instead of having suffered error and loss, he's survived them (but won't survive them indefinitely), that today could be the first day of his new life, then he'd be fine. In other words, accept the Permanent Period as your personal savior and act not as though you're going to die tomorrow but - much scarrier - as though you might live." (p.423)


(Norwegian Butter Cookies, survival weapons)

"The Lay of the Land" by Richard Ford: a reader's journal (12)

Happiness (2)

"Life (...), real life, is different and can't even be appraised as simply "happy", but only in terms of "Yes, I'll take it all, thanks," or "No, I believe I won't." Happy, as my poor father used to say, is a lot of hooey. Happy is a circus clown, a sitcom, a greeting card. Life, though, life's about something sterner. But also something better. A lot better. Believe me." (p. 380)

I could probably bring other quotes from different authors, all of them searching for happiness the elusive definition, flick of the light instant. Frank sought it as everybody else does, and got it, a few "one shiny moment(s)", that he can now look back into. A man about to die.

Interesting to compare and contrast with an earlier moment of happiness.
And I guess I could make these words mine.

Other reading journals: an index

"The Lay of the Land" by Richard Ford: a reader's journal (11)

Love as communication

...Which view I share at present. Could be the outcome of many miscommunication years or
the consequence of e-smooching. But it's where I stand these days.

Ford/Frank will give us his take on love, contradictory and candid at times, mostly sarcartic, much like anybody else. This is not a love novel, none of Ford's books are. Love is what got lost in suburban America. The love that is - is a tame affair, a matter of furniture arranging, co-existence, peaceful disposition of days and the writing of a coherent line of words that accounts for the agreement at the base of the relationship. We are made to be together, but we can never be together. The best deal possible comes by communicating: if there is enough of an honest exchange, then nothing more could be asked for. When the big D day comes, we are all alone.

I don't exactly believe this, or at least I live as if I didn't. "Let’s not worry about what tomorrow will amass. Fill my cup again, this night will pass, alas." (Rubaiyat, Omar Kayyam) Frank Bascombe, sitting heavily on his "Permanent Period" will not for his life fill his cup. Happy for sipping.

"It's the kind of shock that makes you realize that life only happens to you and you alone, and that any concept of togetherness, intimacy, union, abiding this and abiding that is a hoot and a holler into darkness." (p. 336)

"Which is to say we practiced the sweet legerdemain of adulthood shared. We formally renounced our unmarried personalities. We generalized the past in behalf of a sleek second-act mentality that stressed the leading edge of life to be all life was. We acknowledged that strong feelings were superior to original hapiness, and promissed never to ask the other if she or he really, really, really loved him or her, in faith that affinity was love, and we had affinity. We stressed nuance and advocated that however we seemed was how we were. We declared we were good in bed, and that lack of intimacy was usually self-imposed. (...)

In other words, we put in practice what the great novelist said about marriage (though he never quite had the genome for it himself). "If I should ever marry", he wrote, "I should pretend to think just a little better of life than I do." In Sally's case and mine, we thought a lot better of life that we ever imagined we could. In the simplest terms, we really, really loved each other and didn't do a lot of looking right or left - which, of course, is the first principle of the Permanent Period." (p.340-341)

On another hand, set of cards, this is the "stuff" you muse about at the beginning of your second.
Because after that, well, love gets beat up pretty hard.


Other reading journals: an index

"The Lay of the Land" by Richard Ford, a reading journal Index

Reading "The Lay of the Land" by Richard Ford I ended up with so many reading journals that an index became necessary. And here it is.

1 - Settling down with Frank Bascombe: the geography of the Land
2 - "The Lay of the Land", a title exposed
3 - Character vs. Author
4 - Descriptive greens: the pastel stains of Autumn
5 - Character building: Clarissa
6 - Happiness
7 - Marriage, the writer's wink
8 - Wondering, inner ramblings
9 - "(Why do so many things happen in cars? Are they the only interior life left?)"
10 - Sea-Clift's Elmer Fudds
11 - Love as communication
12 - Happiness (2)
13 - On survival
14 - Book 2: A Parade of human weaknesses
15 - Are you ready to meet your maker?

A few links

"The Lay of the Land" by Richard Ford: a reader's journal (10)

Sea-Clift's Elmer Fudds

By the end of Part I, even the most absent of readers has realised that day one is over, day two is about to start. Not surrounded by the best omens: Clarissa is sleeping with an unknown man, Frank has been awake sleepless part of the night (one of the funniest blank nights I've ever read) and there's the Feensters, regular Elmer Fudds of Sea-Clift.

I sympathize with Bascombe's/Ford's political views so much and I find his writing so undettachedly funny, that it becomes very difficult sometimes to keep an unbiased distance. I just plain love it because I think the same, such a slanted way of reading a piece of fiction.

Being laughable stock, the Feensters are more of a sad issue. Frank, the real estate agent who prefers the "lay of the land", explains and excuses himself, property owner of land by the fragile ocean line: "We (...) all understand that we hold our ground on the continent's fragile margin at nature's sufferance. Indeed, the reason there are only five of us is that the previous fiteen "cottages" - grandiloquent old gabled and turreted Queen Annes, rococo Stick Styles, rounded Romanesque Revivals - were blown to shit and smithereens by Poseidon's wrath and are now gone wihtout a trace. Hurricane Gloria, as recently as 1985, finished the last one." (p.306-7)

Frank's ackowledging his transient presence, the Feensters - newly enriched exhibitionists - holding on to their property as if they will last forever, the saddest illusion of all. "In other wors, none of this, like none of us, is going to last here. We made our deal with the elements when we closed our deal with the bank. Except the Feensters didn't, and don't, see things that way."
And that is when they become regular Elmer Fudds, sticking keep-out-of-my-property signs all over, hating their neighbors, wanting to enclosed and forbid, possessive turned hysterical. Only they're not funny. And, a small revanche, Nick cheats on Drilla, we are told "in a whisper", witnesses standing side by side with Frank the character, as he overhears the incriminating phone talk.

The sinners and the takers, America's distasteful other half: "#5 Poincinet Road - a modern, white-painted, many-faceted, architect's dream/nightmare with metal banistered miradors, copeer roof, decks for every station of the sun, lofty, mirrored triple-panes open on the sea, imported blue Spanish tile flooring (heated), intercoms and TVs in the water closets, in-wall vacuums and sound system, solar panels, a burglar system that rings in Langley, built-in pecky cypress everthings". (p. 305) on the outside, and "This is in the cypress kitchen-cum-vu room - Mexican tile fireplace, facing Sonoran-style, silver-inlaid, hand-carved one-of-a-kind couches, Sub-Zero, commercial Vicking, built-in Cuisinart and a Swiss wine cellar at cabinet level." (p.315), the inside.

Elmer never had it better.

[#1 Kitchen cum area, área de refeições numa cozinha]
[#2 Uma das opções de lingua no Google é "Elmer Fudd"!
Outras: "bork, bork, bork!", "Klingon" e "Frisian"]


Other reading journals: an index

"The Lay of the Land" by Richard Ford, a reading journal (9)

"(Why do so many things happen in cars? Are they the only interior life left?)" (p. 297)

"We're nearing the 195 junction with the Garden State, where millions (or at least hundreds of thousands) are now streaming south toward Atlantic City - not a bad choice for Turkey Day. It's the stretch of highway we detoured around this morning due to police activity. I shoot through the interchange as new lighted town signage slips past: Belmar, South Belmar, pie-in-the-sky Spring Lake, all sprawling inland from the ocean into the pine scrub and lowlands west of the Parkway. HUNGRY FOR CAPITAL. REGULAR BAPTIST CHURCH - MEET TRIUMPH AND DISASTER HEAD-ON. HOCKEY ALL NIGHT LONG. NJ IS HOSPITAL COUNTRY. Any right-thinking suburbanite would like to feel confident about these things." (p. 279)

America has always been roadmovie land, road-literature, road-lives. Ford shortens the distance. His hero-main character Frank Bascombe drives around his Suburban, not the big distances of the open spaces, but the shorter ones of suburbia. The network of familiar roads, life takes place in a much smaller place than we would like to think, our biggest dramas all enclosed in few kilometers.

Driving around with Frank, we are made to feel the distance between the hypothetical "us" and others, what brings us close as humans and what divides us so much that communication is virtually impossible. That distance causes the rawl in the bar, and it makes for Frank's incompatibility with the "right-thinking" ones. America slit open in two.

I have been enjoying Frank's view "from the car", his look on his own world, one can see the car speeding through the American suburban landscape. And all from a car window, driving to be with yourself, the voyeur, seeing without being seen, observing life without living it, inside one's car, inside one's mind.

"Northbound Ocean Avenue is a wide, empty one-way separated from southbound Ocean Avenue by two city blocks of motels, surfer shops, bait shops, sea-glass jewelers, tatoo parlors, taffy stores (all closed for the season), plus a few genuine lighted-and-lived-in-houses. In summer, our beach towns up 35 swell to twenty times their winter habitation. But at nine at night on November 21st, the mostly empty strip makes for an eerie, foggy fifties-noir incognito I like. No holiday decorations are up. Few cars sit at curbs. The ocean, in frothy winter tumult, is glimpsable down the side streets and the air smells briny. Parking meters have been removed for the convenience of year-rounders. Two traditional tomato-pie stands are open but doing little biz. The Mexicatessen is going and has customers. Farther on, the yellow LIQUOR sign and the ruby glow of the Wiggle Room (a summer titty bar that becomes just a bar in the winter) are signaling they're open for customers. A lone Sea-Clift town cop in his black-and-white Plymouth waits in the shadows beside the fire department in case some wild-ass boogies from the East Orange show up to give us timid white people something to think about. A yellow. Town River Region school bus moves slowly ahead of us. We have now traveled as far east as the continent lasts. There's much to be said for reaching a genuine end mark in a world of indeterminacy and doubt. The feeling of arrival is hopeful, and I feel it even on a night when nothing much is going good."

So many American landscapes, literary and movie scenes in this Ocean Avenue. Hopper, Ellroy, Jack Lemmon, "I walk alone", crime and gansters, the NJ picture cards. All withered down, not losing any of its bitter taste, to the realtor non-hero, one of us.


Other reading journals: an index

"The Lay of the Land" by Richard Ford: a reader's journal (8)

(in Princeton, NJ, at the heart of fictional Haddam)

Wondering, inner ramblings

"I wonder, driving again along untrafficked Pleasant Valley Road past the cemetery fence, if I mentioned to Ann about the bomb, or if I told Marguerite during my Sponsor visit, or did she mention it to me, and did I go past Haddam Doctors before or after my funeral home stop? I can spend hours of a perfectly sleepable night wondering if I've kept such things straight, getting it all settled, then starting the process over, then wondering if I've contracted chemically induced Alzheimer's and pretty soon won't know much of anything." (p.240)

This was one of the sentences I've enjoyed reading the most, it seems typical: physical action, mind wondering, dramatic conclusion, ironic outcome. It also conveys the insignificance of human ramblings, what we are about, what we do and how, our small worries, the mental distraction of an aging man. In Haddam, Ford's land, or anywhere in the world. And it also plays the trick of waking the reader up to a fact of writing: everything, from the beginning, has taken place in a single day that is still not over. We, as Frank, are compelled to sum it up and put it in order, what happened when.

Morning: leave Sea-Clift in the Suburban, Mike driving...


Other reading journals: an index

"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

"The Lay of the Land" by Richard Ford, a reading journal (6)

Happiness

What are books made of? There is the obvious plot, usually summarizable in a short paragraph. But the bulk of pages is filled with a stream of speech, many times simple glances into things, observations, impressions pinned down on a writer's notebook to be used who knows when, sometimes years in the future. And sometimes a moment is frozen in time for ever, as if it were a photograph of words. My own words are meaningless, a small moment of my time alone with the many pages of a book. The image-words are powerful reminders of what someone once saw or, even more relevant, is making us see.

I very much enjoyed the small episode of the Filipino family having a picnic at the beach where Frank and Clarissa go for their daily walk. (p. 182)

"These beach lovers had established an illegal compfire and were laughing and toasting weenies, sitting around on the cold sand, enjoying life. The men were small and compact and wore what looked like old golfer's shirts and new jeans and sported wavy, lacquered coifs. The women were small and substancial and peered across the sands at Clarissa and me with lowered, guilty eyes. We're entitled, their dark looks said, we live here: One man cheerfully waved his long fork at us, a blackned furter hanging from its prongs. A boom box played, though not loud, whatever Filipino music sounds like. We both gave them a wave back and plodded toward home."

It reminded me of another immigrant family having a picnic in Carl Sandburg's "Happiness".

Happiness

I ASKED the professors who teach the meaning of life to tell
me what is happiness.
And I went to famous executives who boss the work of
thousands of men.
They all shook their heads and gave me a smile as though
I was trying to fool with them
And then one Sunday afternoon I wandered out along
the Desplaines river
And I saw a crowd of Hungarians under the trees with
their women and children and a keg of beer and an
accordion.

Happiness better seen through the eyes of those who have faced adversity and, at the same time, immigrants seen as a different breed of still innocent people that - avoiding the cynical sophistication of the educated life - can still feel the most basic and simple pleasures.


Other reading journals: an index

"The Lay of the Land" by Richard Ford: a few links

TLS Times Literary Supplement , a good review
The Esquire review, a spiteful one with nothing but envy or it so seems
The Atlantic Monthly review (who is Carver anyway?)
The Guardian review
The NY Times review
The California Literary Review
Entrevista

An my personal math: it took Ford 4 years to write this book, that makes about 125 pages a year. And that makes almost 3 days per page. Somehow, I admire that.

---
To read on, "Dirty Realism". Rock Sprins online and all the others in Granta. Just possibilities.
Granta 8: Dirty Realism
(The issue of Granta that defined a new school of American writers. Richard Ford, Jayne Anne Phillips, Raymond Carver, Elizabeth Tallent, Tobias Wolff, Bobbie Ann Mason, and others. 'For the first time in two decades, something interesting is once again happening in American literature.' (Gordon Burn, The Face))
Granta 19: More Dirt
(The companion volume to 'Dirty Realism' (Granta 8): unillusioned, spare fiction of the belly-side of American life: with Richard Ford, Ellen Gilchrist, Louise Erdrich, Jayne Anne Phillips, and others. Plus: John Updike, Adam Mars-Jones, and Primo Levi.")

"The Lay of the Land" by Richard Ford: a reader's journal (5)

Character building: Clarissa

I've skipped a handful of quotations I had wanted to leave here. Reading has become more intense as the plot unfolds. I had wanted, for instance, to leave the portrait of Marguerite, the most unusual "sponsoring" episode. I found it unsettling, the hairdo totally knocked me out of balance, I still can't get it out of my head. And there were several other things. But coming on to the beach walks with Clarissa, Ford's thoughts became more profound and closer to a naked, crisp awareness that is really striking. I would like to quote the whole unveiling of Clarissa, his daughter, that runs through pages 176 - 180. To me, it demonstrates (a stupid expression, there is no need to demonstrate anything at all) that a few sentences can convey a whole life and the invisible bond between two people, in this case father and daughter. Capturing the essence, maybe. In today's quest for anchors, Frank and Clarissa's relationship might well be what is still possible, much beyond ideas of "traditional" familes.

I often tell my daughter that her generation is a boring one, those were the days. She answers me from the confidence of her "sixteenhood": "Yeah, we have to look after you guys", we the undefined eighties generation. Frank and Clarissa are older; in ten years time I will know how this all "looking after" turned out.

"... Clarissa has told me, her life seemed to grow more and more undifferentiated, "both vertically and horizontally". Everything, she noticed, began to seem a part of everything else, the world becme very fluid and seamless and not too fast-paced though all "really good". Except, she wasn't, she felt, "exactly facing all of life all the time," but was instead living "in linked worlds inside a big world". (People talk this way now). There was school. There was a group of female friends. There was the shelter. There were the favorite little Provençal restaurants nobody else knew about. There was Cookie's many-porched Craftsman-style house on Pretty Marsh in Maine (Cookie, whose actual name is Cooper, comes from the deepest of unhappy New England pockets). There was Cookie, whom she adored (I could see why). There was Wilbur, Cookie's Weimaraner. There were the Manx cats. Plus some inevitable unattached men nobody took seriously. There were other "things", lots of them - all fine as long as you stayed in the little "boxed, linked" world you found yourself in on any given day. Not fine, if you felt you needed to live more "out in the all-of-it, in the big swim." Getting outside, moving around the boxes, or over them, or some goddam thing like that, was, I guess, hard. Except being outside the boxes had begun to seem the only way it made sense to live, the only "life strategy" by which the results would ever be clear and mean anything. She had already begun thinking of all this before I got sick."

And another very significant quote on pain (life angst?) or how different people deal with it:

"And of course I know what Clarissa does not permit herlself to be fearful of, and is by training hard-wired to confront: making the big mistake. Harvard teaches resilience and self-forgiveness and to regret as little as possible. Yet what she does fear and can't say, and why she's here with me and sometimes stares at me as if I were a rare, endangered and suffering creature, is unbearable pain. Something in Clarissa's life has softened her to great pain, made her diffident and dodgy about it. She knows such fear's a weakness, that pain's unavoidable, wants to get beyond fearing it and out of those smooth boxes. But in some corner of her heart she's still scared silly that pain will bring her down and leave nothing behind. Who would blame her?"

"The Lay of the Land" by Richard Ford, a reader's journal (4)

Descriptive greens: the pastel stains of Autumn

(...) as I stood out on Cleveland Street watching green-suited Bekins men tote my blanketed belongings up the ramp under matching green-leaf, sun-shot oaks and chestnuts just showing the pastel stains of autumn 1992(...) (p. 130)

Fiquei-me nesta frase, a imaginar como traduziria "green-suited Bekins men". Sem saber. Depois olhei para os verdes de uma rua de subúrbio, os verdes ainda de carvalhos e castanheiros, os pastéis do Outono.

A minha filha queixa-se muito das frases e dos parágrafos descritivos, nos livros. Que a aborrecem. Por mim, deixei-me cativar por linhas que fotografam alguma coisa para que eu, aqui sentada a ler, a possa ver. Desde o Primo Basílio. Hoje, não me lembro quem, dizia na rádio que o Cirque do Soleil deve ser visto com cuidado, na medida certa, porque as sensações que produzem são excessivas, e como uma droga adormecem os sentidos pelo lado do excesso. Não é nunca o caso de R. Ford, que subtilmente e em poucas palavras conta uma imagem e uma história.


Other reading journals: an index

"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

"The Lay of the Land" by Richard Ford: a reading journal (2)

"The Lay of the Land", a title exposed

Mesmo antes do final do primeiro capítulo, o título explicado: "the lay of the land", a terra original, os campos agrícolas antes de invadidos pelas máquinas da construção. A terra por onde Frank passeou com o seu filho, morto agora há muitos anos; o seu próprio passado dourado. Irónico que um vendedor de imóveis tenha por seu "eldorado" a terra antes de terraplanada e vendida em lotes.

"As I pull away, I take a departing look at the cornfield stretching down to Mullica Creek, its gentle fall and charming hardwood copse, soon to be overwhelmed by grumbling, chuffing, knife-bladed Komatsus and Kubotas, cluttered with corrugated culverts, rebar and pre-cut king posts, ready-mixers lined up to 206, every inch flattened and staked with little red flags prophesying megahouses waiting on the drawing boards. The neighbor across the road, watching his dreams go up in smoke, has his point: Someone should draw the line somewhere.
I say silent adieu to the ground my son trod and will no more. The old lay of the land. E-eye, E-eye, OOOOOOO."

Gostei deste final da canção do "Old MacDonald had a farm", óbvia associação ao facto de o velho proprietário do terreno que nos é descrito, e cuja venda se congemina, se chamar MacDonald. Morto o velho MacDonald, os herdeiros podem alienar a terra, memória de Frank.


Other reading journals: an index

"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.

---
"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