Be Mine

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The four chiseled visages. L to R—Washington (the father), Jefferson (the expansionist), Roosevelt #1 (the ham, snugged in like an imposter) and stone-face Lincoln, the emancipator (though there are fresh questions surrounding that). None of these candidates could get a vote today—slavers, misogynists, homophobes, warmongers, historical slyboots, all playing with house money. What does he crave in the aftermath of his road trip with Paul? “I desire to feel free for a moment of airy, well-earned ease and clear-sightedness. Which is to say, not walled off.” Uncompassed is Frank’s default mode; un-encompassed suits him too. He’ll stand his ground, keep his distance, look around—and withhold judgment if possible. If not, he may offer his favorite equivocation: “Yeah-no. The entire human condition in two words.” Ford is among the elite American writers of the past half-century.”— Dwight Garner , New York Times Well, John was a great writer and I adored him, and I would never be in the same sentence as him, but maybe that’s averring that size matters.” He laughs. “But he knew that I was writing a series of books that were connected. And he talked to me as a colleague. He never said ‘These are great books’. Or ‘I know you wouldn’t have written these books if I hadn’t written the Rabbit books’. We just talked. But I’m happy to say that if it hadn’t been for Updike, I probably would never have had the temerity to think that I could write connected books.” I haven’t read the first four in the series, so I was at a disadvantage to understand Frank’s previous world. Especially, learning that the author's book in the series: Independence Day won The Pulitzer.

Be Mine (Frank Bascombe, book 5) by Richard Ford Be Mine (Frank Bascombe, book 5) by Richard Ford

At the end of the book Frank is outside, contemplating his life, and a voice calls him. Maybe it's his hostess, maybe it's death.Over the course of four celebrated works of fiction and almost forty years, Richard Ford has crafted an ambitious, incisive and singular view of American life as lived. Unconstrained, astute, provocative, often laugh-out-loud funny, Frank Bascombe is once more our guide to the great American midway. It’s nearly 40 years since Richard Ford published The Sportswriter and showed in one swoop that America had produced another major writer and that he was not much like anyone in sight, despite his shorter fiction’s affinity with that of his friend Raymond Carver. The two of them decide to take an R.V. trip from an experimental protocol at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn. where Paul is, to Mount Rushmore. I’m happy to say that if it hadn’t been for Updike, I probably would never have had the temerity to think that I could write connected books

Richard Ford: ‘I just make up shit to worry about at 3am’

And then he is almost in. I give another grunting upwards lift, ignoring everything but what I’m doing and doing my best to do. And in he sags. At which point nothing else matters. Ford's writing is as lyrical as ever but Frank Bascombe takes on a new tint in Be Mine: less ironic, more understanding, more tender. Richard Ford is the author of many books, including Canada and the Pulitzer Prize-winning Independence Day. His new short-story collection, Sorry for Your Trouble, was published May 12. Frank is different from Harry physically (in high school, Frank was hopeless at basketball), morally (you won’t catch Frank in flagrante with his daughter-in-law), and socially. Until he got rich as a middle-aged Toyota dealer, Harry was unequivocally blue collar. College-educated Frank is white collar all the way: a short-story writer, a sportswriter, a college professor (very briefly), then a real-estate agent. Frank has always had an expansive range of highbrow references. In Be Mine, “the old Nazi Heidegger,” “that scrofulous old faker Faulkner,” and the novels of J. M. Coetzee all pop up—not names Harry would ever drop. As well as Frank and his son, Be Mine also features the return of minor characters beloved of Ford’s readers, such as Mike Mahoney, a Tibetan-American who changed his name to “something more Irish”.One of the hallmarks of the stories, and of your work in general, is the way you depict what I’ll call the changing emotional “weather” between your characters, especially in dialogue. There is still something to be said about the author’s snarky humor and wit. His view of the world. I don't think this is the best book to start reading Richard Ford's novels but this was my first one and was a sort of novice. What about happiness? The book opens and closes with Frank’s reflections on happiness. Does Ford agree with the research that says that, after a dip in midlife, happiness rises again as we enter old age?

Book Review: ‘Be Mine,’ by Richard Ford - The New York Times

From Pulitzer Prize winner Richard Ford: the final novel in the world of Frank Bascombe, one of the most indelible characters in American literature Recently an advance copy of Mr. Ford’s new book, “Be Mine,” was available and I thought I would give it a shot. I felt I must have missed something, had the wrong attitude. At the same time, I had an extra Audible credit available, and I thought maybe a different format might be the thing to align me with his pacing.Well, because I’m so stupid, it took a long time to get the thing to where it would work. It was cumbersome at first, and then it worked its way to awkward, and then it worked its way to tolerable. As he did so often in the earlier novels—especially The Sportswriter, when his sexual magnetism (age 38) was irresistible and his conquests legion—Frank seeks the comfort of a woman’s love. He visits a massage parlor called Vietnam-Minnesota Hospitality, improbably located in an isolated farmhouse 18 miles north of Rochester. His “massage attendant,” Betty Duong Tran, is a diminutive 34-year-old “with bobbed hair … darkly alert eyes … pert, friendly gestures.” Frank takes Betty on dinner dates; afterward, “inside my still-frozen car … we’ve kissed and embraced sweetly a time or two.” The smarmy soft focus is unusual for Ford, but less disappointing than the safe, generic description that accompanies those occasions when Betty—“for reasons I never anticipate”—decides to strip naked for the massage session: “Undressed, she is as tiny as she seems clothed, but unexpectedly curvy and fleshy where you wouldn’t expect.” I wrote this book through the worst of the pandemic, and it was a big tincture of melancholy of not using my life fully enough