The Sportswriter by Richard Ford

Richard Ford has written three books that tell the tale of Frank Bascombe. The first of these books is The Sportswriter. Written in 1986 the book was hailed as one of the best books of the year and still often appears in many top lists. Later books in the series, including the nineties entry Independence Day were also very well reviewed. In fact Independence Day won both the Penn-Faulkner award and The Pulitzer.

Therefore going in one has to know they are getting into some books that are certainly supposed to be strong. With the first in the series The Sportswriter the case is well proven.


Easy comparisons to Updike's once a decade look at Rabbit Angstrom soon fall flat however. Having not yet read the second and third books in the Bascombe trilogy it might well be true that the action picks up a bit. However in The Sportswriter we meet a man who is surely suffering with a crisis of life, a crisis of faith, or at least a turning point in his life. Unlike Rabbit Angstrom for whom introspection is a word not understood the character of Frank Bascombe knows full well what is going on in his internal person.

At 39, recently divorced with two young children and a son who died a couple of years earlier, of Reye Syndrome no less, Frank is a man who could easily be at war with the world. The fact is, introspection or not, he is not. He likes his life, he does not like to think too deeply. He has discovered some things along the way. He wishes people did not share so much, he feels quite comfortable with that manly quality of swallowing your disapointments in life and painting on contentment.

Frank would like it if people did not need to have a pained explanation for each mistake. In short if you love someone give them some room, forgive mistakes without a hearing and move on. His infidelity period after the death of his son is something he feels bad about, but only in that it hurts his wife. When called for an explanation he has none, cannot bring himself to offer one, and accepts the divorce that follows with equal amounts of calm and wishing for an explanation that could reverse it.

This book takes place over three days, Easter weekend. Frank takes his new girlfriend on a work trip to Detroit, meets her family on Easter and tries in his own, don't show me too much of your inner self way, to help an acquaintance in his Divorced Men's Club through his weekend. All through the weekend we see what Frank sees and see him retreating from feeling too much. It is as if he has been given the gift of seperation from his own experiences and can see them all with a wryness from the outside.

It is not really a gift to do so, we all think about being a fly on the wall at our own funeral but no one should really live their life as an observer of his own experiences. Frank seems to do this and to be watching a split screen at these times.

In the end the book serves as a good vehicle for examination of your own life, failures and misgivings included, unless of course you are like Frank and prefer to not read the chapters but just look at the titles and make assumptions.

Frank observes in the end that life is like a film that sticks to you. Your experiences good and bad over the course of time stick to you. This is like a protective coating, it also however means that nothing is new and shiny. Nothing can through to give great joy or great sadness. It is as sadness accumulates over life, with failed relationships, career trouble, health issues, that we have this protective coating. The coating also however stops the joy and sensation of wonder from slipping into your life as well. He tells that occasionally the sheen slips off and you find yourself filled with wonder.

I am familiar with the feeling. For me, sad as it is to say, it often seems to come from being outdoors and seeing and feeling the sun or the wind on my face. Feeling what I must have felt forty years ago in my childhood before my film had been applied. Frank Bascombe tells us each time we have that feeling of not having been here before, of something new, to embrace it because soon we will be protected again from the new and dangerous expression of feelings and we might never be this alive again.

It is a feeling one can relate too. As your children go older, mine now being teenagers and certainly in that stage of life where sincere, heartfelt emotion seems to be something that is to be avoided it is easy to see that the film of life is already building on them.

It is sad, Ford's Bascombe however, knows he does not allow those feelings in, does not want to let them in. Unlike for mamy of us though he knows it is a choice that he is making. He is a very self aware fellow.

The book is well worth your time. Be prepared to have to think over your own middle aged life.

An interesting side note. Ford, writing in 1986, has his sportswriter say that at times you have to the ability in sports to go with your guts. That it cannot all be numbers. When that happens says Bascombe Sports will become just another place where the numbers geeks rule. Little does he know that now, here, twenty five years later we are well in that time. I look forward to seeing what other changes in life after this book was written Frank Bascombe and Richard Ford address in the next two books.