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A review by carolynf
The Sportswriter by Richard Ford
2.0
This seems to be one of those books that people either love or hate. It was written in 1986, but feels more like something from the 50s or 60s. The protagonist, Frank, is not having a midlife crisis exactly. It sounds more like he has always lived without any sense of passion or commitment. He prides himself on living just comfortably enough, going with the flow, while forming superficial short term relationships. He avoids any kind of long term planning to preserve a sense of "mystery" in life. He did experience a lot of grief when his eldest son died of a random childhood disease (as we learn in the first chapter), but I don't think that this caused him to unravel his life. By then he already had dropped his novel to switch to magazine writing, which allowed him to continuously be on the road and sleep with scores of random younger women. He lucked into plenty of money at an early age, so he never really has to do anything he doesn't want to do.
The plot of the book takes place over Easter weekend. There is the anniversary of his son's death, a work trip to Detroit (from New Jersey) with his current girlfriend along for the ride, and then Easter dinner with her family. Along the way he reminiscences about his life a lot, and gets interrupted repeatedly by a friend who is struggling with his recent hook-up with a man. In all of his interactions, Frank is most comfortable when everything is going according to script. There are lots of references to Frank saying what he feels the conversation calls for even though he really believes the opposite, and using smiles or other body language to nonverbally mislead the other person about his feelings. He has absolutely no desire for intimacy with either male friends or female love interests. This doesn't really change throughout the story.
Frank is very WASPy, and continuously labels people by their ethnicity - mentally though while pretending to be nonjudgmental about them. He talks about "Negros" and "Coloreds" a lot, and how they are the servant class in town and happy and content. He talks about Jews, Pollacks, Irish, Italians (spaghetti-benders), and Arabs. He is super skeeved out by his friend's homosexual encounter and makes a mental note that he should be committed and given drugs to cure him, while telling the friend that of course it doesn't bother him at all. He wants to have sex with pretty much every woman he meets and does a lot of propositioning at very inappropriate times. He says random stupid things a lot in a very knowing tone, and other characters (particularly women) occasionally call him on it. Which made me wonder throughout the book whether the reader is expected to connect with Frank or laugh at him.
Anyway, the book is not long but it took forever to get through because it is exceptionally boring. I can't believe it is the first in a series of four novels.
The plot of the book takes place over Easter weekend. There is the anniversary of his son's death, a work trip to Detroit (from New Jersey) with his current girlfriend along for the ride, and then Easter dinner with her family. Along the way he reminiscences about his life a lot, and gets interrupted repeatedly by a friend who is struggling with his recent hook-up with a man. In all of his interactions, Frank is most comfortable when everything is going according to script. There are lots of references to Frank saying what he feels the conversation calls for even though he really believes the opposite, and using smiles or other body language to nonverbally mislead the other person about his feelings. He has absolutely no desire for intimacy with either male friends or female love interests. This doesn't really change throughout the story.
Frank is very WASPy, and continuously labels people by their ethnicity - mentally though while pretending to be nonjudgmental about them. He talks about "Negros" and "Coloreds" a lot, and how they are the servant class in town and happy and content. He talks about Jews, Pollacks, Irish, Italians (spaghetti-benders), and Arabs. He is super skeeved out by his friend's homosexual encounter and makes a mental note that he should be committed and given drugs to cure him, while telling the friend that of course it doesn't bother him at all. He wants to have sex with pretty much every woman he meets and does a lot of propositioning at very inappropriate times. He says random stupid things a lot in a very knowing tone, and other characters (particularly women) occasionally call him on it. Which made me wonder throughout the book whether the reader is expected to connect with Frank or laugh at him.
Anyway, the book is not long but it took forever to get through because it is exceptionally boring. I can't believe it is the first in a series of four novels.