we come to the third and seemingly final installment of Richard Ford's brilliant portrait of contemporary American adult life, as seen through the eyes of Ford's meditative everyman, Frank Bascombe.
I have spent a great deal of time now with Mr, Bascombe over the past few years, and in book time, we've passed nearlyyears together, Here, I slipped so easily back into reading Frank's voice, it was like I was passing time with an old college buddy someone I know, but only see every few years now.
As in all three of the Bascombe novels, Frank's voice is just so damn absorbing, it's hard to imagine seeing the everexpanding New Jersey suburban landscape through another set of eyes.
Frank knows this place, and you never for a moment question his authority, Sometimes, he knows his surroundings so well, you find yourself saying, "ok, Frank, get on with it, We know that cafeteria serves some good meatloaf, but there's more story to tell, . . " He's also a great observer of character Frank has the ability to pinpoint what makes someone unique in a recognizable, Americansounding way 'he looked like an old Division III linebacker' e.
g. . If Frank Bascombe were a character in every single book I read, I would be happy, He's someone who, despite his propensity for pervasive selfanalysis, is comforting, He's sure of himself and aware of the influence he has on the people around him,
Now, my criticisms have a lot to do with putting "The Lay of the Land" in the context of the other novels in this trilogy, The story here is the least engaging of the three, in my mind, Frank has entered what he dubs the "Permanent Period" of his life which is a little restrictive, since we've already spentpages with him undergoing his "Existence Period" in Independence Day.
He defines the Permanent Period rather broadly as life running a steady course until death intervenes, But Frank undergoes such enormous upheaval in these pages, it was hard for me to reconcile him having a "permanent" view of himself his second wife leaves him, he develops cancer, his first wife expresses a desire to rekindle their decades old marriage and all the while he is trying to understand the strange adults that his two children are turning into.
At points, Frank recognizes the tenuousness of the Permanent Period, but he never renounces it, In the end, I didn't buy into it the way I did the Existence Period,
My other big issue is that Frank is still plying his trade as a New Jersey real estate jockey, Sure, he's moved out to the Shore, away from the staid suburban life of Haddam, so the climate's a little different, but the volume of observations on real estate, housing, finance etc.
etc. , didn't stray far enough from the realm of the previous book to keep my interest from flagging at times, The book is structured around Frank driving all over the state, so there are times when he just doesn't get places fast enough, This was especially true at the beginning of the novel, which I thought was a real snoozer, The story gains a lot of speed when he hits on his family esp, when wifereappears, and we enter the backstory of wife's disappearance, and for the most part carries through to the end, The pacing, in places, felt off, The Bascombe novels have successively gained weight, which may reflect real life complexities, but does not serve the fictional purpose ideally, in my mind,
All in all, though, I love spending time with this character, hearing his commentary on contemporary American family life, He is wise without being overbearing, he is emotional without being false, and he is aware of his place in history, in league with so many of his fellow Americans, trying to hold it together in the face of life's continual adversity, waiting for those bursts of happiness along the way that make it worthwhile.
"Dennett had three things to say about how we should live, The secret to spirituality had nothing to do with the soul, or anything supernatural it was this: let your self go, "If you can approach the world's complexities, both its glories and its horrors, with an attitude of humble curiosity, acknowledging that however deeply you have seen, you have only just scratched the surface, you will find worlds within worlds, beauties you could not heretofore imagine, and your own mundane preoccupations will shrink to proper size, not all that important in the great scheme of things.
Keeping that awestruck vision of the world ready to hand while dealing with the demands of daily living is no easy exercise, but it is definitely worth the effort, for if you can stay centered, and engaged, you will find the hard choices easier, the right words will come to you when you need them, and you will indeed be a better person.
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From "The Age of Atheists" by Peter Watson
Could Frank Bascombe be The Great American Existentialist character
Never before have I felt such powerful and intrinsic descriptions of how I personally feel when I happen to wander through Middle America's landscape of suburbia, the alignment of stores along the highway oh the poetry of Home Depot and Target and Kohl's and Walmart, the clusters of houses constituting a "town", the widening of empty spaces between centers of activity, the deafening silence in midafternoon, the evisceration of community, the quiet existential despair you can almost hear in poorer neighborhoods and vacant parking lots drenched in sunlight.
And here comes Frank Bascombe, realtor extraordinaire, dealing with the customary prostate cancer scare and the upcoming upheavals of Thanksgiving celebrations, Three days in and around the beach town of Sea Clift feel like a Joycean and Camusian promenade along the New Jersey shore, with a touch of Bruce Springsteen angst and "About Schmidt" quiet desperation.
Frank Bascombe is just a regular guy trying to deal with the demands of daily living and trying to stay centered and engaged in the process,
Except Frank Bascombe is anything but a regular guy, He is an astoundingly perceptive, impossibly funny, stubbornly eager and repeatedly awestruck American man, father, twice husband, once divorced, once abandoned, whose musings about women and men, politics, Democrats and Republicans, fathers and sons, fathers and daughters, work, real estate, the philosophical stages of life, the inescapability of death, immigration, selfactualization and the various "delights" of aging will make you weak at the knees at every single turn.
If you haven't met Frank yet, I urge you to start at the beginning with "The Sportswriter" and "Independence Day", These melancholy and angerfueled works of art will introduce you to a character who will stake a permanent place in your heart and your pantheon of unforgettable characters, One of my dearest friends fell sick about a year ago just before we were scheduled to go up for our yearly Memorial Day visit, Since he wasn't feeling well, we decided to hold off for a bit and maybe come up later in the summer, but by later in the summer, he had discovered that he had cancer and decided it would be best to wait until he had gone through chemo.
He got through chemo and after a bit got the prognosis, which was that he had mabye two years left if he went throught another round of chemoabout a year if not.
This was around late March or early April and we were still discussing us maybe coming up Memorial Day this year, Michael said that he sas tired, but woulld probably be up to a visit, but "lets wait a few weeks and see how I'm doing",
During MarchApril, I was reading this book, in which the main character has just disovered he has prostate cancer, has had the little radioactive pellets inserted, but doesnt know yet if they "took".
Much of the book deals with his observations about his feelings of his current situation, including many of the expected comments on our mortality etc, I kept wanting to ask Michael if he had read the book, but wasnt sure if I wanted to spend too mcuh time on that
subject as our conversations were pretty infrequent and he seemed to want to focus on lighter issues so I let hime take the lead most of the time and reveal to me as much or as little as he wanted about his cancer.
Two or three weeks went by after that conversation about maybe coming up, when I got a call from Diana, his ex, She was calling from Michael's phone, so I naturally thought it was him, but instead it was news that Michael had died about a week beforeapparently just after we talked, he plummeted and was gone in a couple of weeks.
We went to his place for a memorial obvservation this last weekend it's on Vancouver Island, so it was a very rushed and tiring trip which we made up and back in jsut overhoursa trip I''ll always be grateful we made.
While in his living room I perused his bookshelvees as I always have done, and, sure enough, there was this book, His name and the date Janabout the time he first started feeling ill, I don't know if he ever readd it, but I suspect he did and wish I had brought up the subject so we could have had one last bit of booktalk.
So, on top of being a really good book, I have this other attachment to it, . . I love Richard Ford, and the Frank Bascombe trilogy should be required reading for anyone, particularly any man, born from, It hits home in a most recognizable way, It hits and pulls a punch in the exact same way our fathers and brothers, uncles and friends of the severalgenerationsolderthanGenerationY probably do: emotionally, professionally, romantically, and parentally,
And Ford's writing is as fluid as a poet's, as ever,
Some people compare him to Raymond Carver, or John Updike, whom I love, . . and it feels similar at times, . . but isn't quite the same,
I love Carver but rarely recognize myself in his stories, and hope my life doesn't go that far off track, as his characters always seem to, Updike is wonderful, and the Bascombe series is Rabbitlike, though I find the Rabbit novels more dated, and pigeonholy, and slightly less recognizable, while great. Bascombe is your dad, your parents' best friend, your high school baseball coach, or the neighbor whose window you've broken with a baseball, You know him well.
If you haven't read these novels, don't start with this one, Read the PEN/Faulkner finalist "The Sportswriter" first, then the PEN/Faulkner and Pulitzer Prize winning "Independence Day" and only then read the National Book Critics Circle Award winning "The Lay of the Land.
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