The Sportswriter

I normally don't read fiction, because what's the point of reading stuff that's made up? When there's stranger things in this ol' planet, Horatio? Anyway. I thought I'd give The Sportswriter a try since there were murmurs on the zeitgeist (Richard Ford has just published a couple sequels in the last few years) and because the sample I read of it was so meditatively dharmic, written with such clarity and vision. Couple something written in clarity, with great dharma spirit, and taking place in the nostalgia-inducing mundanity of 1980s America? You have the Great American Novel, my friends.

Alas, then. Alas that this was so quickly waterlogged that I eventually had to say, goodbye, Richard Ford, I'll just have to trust The New Yorker on this one and go back on my non-fiction way.

Specific incidences of waterlogging:
1. After a while, the great dharma spirit of the book - about a middle-aged American Man named Frank Banscombe, titular sportswriter, who still grieves for his dead son and lost marriage, and meditates extensively (EXTENSIVELY) on the virtues of living “within” ourselves, rather than subjecting ourselves to “dreaminess” - gaaaaasp anyway, the great dharma spirit of the book unfortunately starts to sour and mutate from Nice Meditative Book about Plain New Jersey Life (in Vein of Bruce Springsteen Classic) into the unwanted and unintended sequel to Catcher in the Rye.

Now, I ain't dissin' Catcher in the Rye, taught in high schools everywhere. I do, perhaps, note that one's feelings towards Catcher in the Rye mutate as one matures, until perhaps one settles on a feeling of, “Gosh, isn't Holden an entitled jerk sometimes?” (Just me?) It was starting to feel the same way with Mr. Frank Banscombe. His long soliloquizing about what's what and the nature of life was starting to feel less spot-on spiritual (which he was that, even, sometimes), and more entitled and tedious.

2. As many have noted, the unfortunate treatment of non-white people; specifically, Frank Banscombe's repeated use of racist slurs to describe folks. And, boy, do I mean repeated, casual, constant, repeated, did I mention repeated? I was doing all sorts of mental gymnastics to continuously forgive Frank Banscombe/Richard Ford for their anachronistic, offensive use of these words - constantly trying to rationalize and justify why it might make sense that a Southern white man of a certain age, writing about a transplanted Southern white man of a certain age, would constantly use these words. But then I was like: you know, I have better things to do with my time! And when Frank Banscombe/Richard Ford describes someone as having “N—roid” features, I was like, “You know, I could be doing something nice right now?” It wasn't a social justice judo chop, so much as a social justice withering-of-interest.

3. Similarly, the treatment of women, and Richard Ford's laundry list assurances of Frank Banscombe's lady conquests PLUS Vicki the airhead nurse from Texas PLUS the ex-wife being called only “X”... well, all of this just reminded me of an excellent Tiger Beatdown post about these types of books (i.e. anything written by these John Updike/Martin Amis/Salman Rushdie types about older men looking back on their lives, meditatively, while mentioning all the action they're getting from ladies OTHER than their shrewish, awful wives).

So yeah, the book sank for me. It sank down into a miasma of disappointment. But also spirit and hope! Because: despite the above, I bet Richard Ford has written some killer New Yorker short stories, and I'd be happy to read one or two (not 300+ pages).

And now: more New Jersey meditation. And more. And OK, one more.

Almost put this down after 50 pages but there was something hypnotic about living so completely in this delusional man's head. The main adjective Bascombe uses to describe himself is “dreamy” and the whole novel - almost 400 pages to describe a weekend - is very fantastical, if not nightmarish. Frank is so self-assured it takes a while to realise how weak and pathetic he actually is. Everything he says out loud he assures us isn't how he really feels, or what he really thinks. I was surprised when Vicki punched him in the mouth but by the end the surprise is why more people in his life haven't done the same thing.

The most dismal and dull book that I could not put down. Ford has created a nice set of characters about whom I care nothing, whose lives are pointless, and whose spirits are empty. But boy oh boy, when those dull, empty people have conversations, Ford puts the reader right there and sometimes makes your skin crawl. After one such conversation, the one with Herb, dismal and dull though it was, I uttered a “Wow!” loud enough to draw attention to myself in the diner. It alone was worth the price of admission. Ford is magnificent at what he does, and though what he does is drag you along to watch a perfectly uninteresting person live out his perfectly uninteresting life, he made me want to keep reading and left me amazed at what a well-crafted paragraph can do.

This is a great experience as it shows how a writer is able to successfully achieve a first-person narrative, deep point-of-view, character. For that reason alone, this book is worthy of exploration.

DNF.

The more I read, the more I truly disliked the central character, and reading a book which is entirely the thoughts/actions of a character I had no interest in proved too hard.