American author
Richard Ford
(born February 16, 1944) is an American
novelist
and
short story
author, and writer of a series of novels featuring the character Frank Bascombe.
[1]
Ford's first collection of short stories,
Rock Springs
, was published in 1987.
[2]
[3]
In the United States, Ford received the 1996
Pulitzer Prize
for his novel
Independence Day
. In Spain, he won the
Princess of Asturias Award
for 2016. In 2018, Ford received the
Park Kyong-ni Prize
, an international literary award from South Korea.
His novel
Wildlife
was adapted into a
2018 film of the same name
, and in 2023 Ford published
Be Mine
, his fifth work of fiction chronicling the life of Frank Bascombe.
Early life
[
edit
]
Ford was born in
Jackson, Mississippi
, the only son of Parker Carrol and Edna Ford. Parker was a traveling salesman for
Faultless Starch
, a
Kansas City
company. Of his mother, Ford said, "Her ambition was to be, first, in love with my father and, second, to be a full-time mother." When Ford was eight years old, his father had a severe
heart failure
, and thereafter Ford spent as much time with his grandfather, a former
prizefighter
and hotel owner in
Little Rock, Arkansas
, as he did with his parents in Mississippi.
[4]
Ford's father died of a second heart attack in 1960. In Jackson, Ford lived across the street from the home of author
Eudora Welty
.
[5]
Ford's grandfather had worked for a railroad. At the age of 19, before deciding to attend college, Ford began work on the
Missouri Pacific
train line as a locomotive engineer's assistant, learning the work while doing the job.
[6]
Ford received a
B.A.
degree from
Michigan State University
. Having enrolled to study hotel management, he switched to English. After graduating, he taught junior high school in
Flint, Michigan
, and enlisted in the
United States Marine Corps
but was discharged after contracting
hepatitis
. At university he met Kristina Hensley, his future wife; they married in 1968.
[4]
Despite mild
dyslexia
, Ford developed a serious interest in
literature
. He has stated in interviews that his dyslexia may have helped him as a reader, as it forced him to read books slowly and thoughtfully.
[7]
Ford briefly attended law school but quit and participated with the creative writing program at the
University of California, Irvine
, to pursue a
Master of Fine Arts
degree, which he received in 1970. Ford chose this course simply because "they admitted me. I remember getting the application for
Iowa
, and thinking they'd never have let me in. I'm sure I was right about that, too. But, typical of me, I didn't know who was teaching at Irvine. I didn't know it was important to know such things. I wasn't the most curious of young men, even though I give myself credit for not letting that deter me." Actually,
Oakley Hall
and
E. L. Doctorow
were teaching there, and Ford has acknowledged that they influenced him.
[8]
In 1971, he was selected for a three-year appointment in the
University of Michigan
Society of Fellows.
[9]
Early career
[
edit
]
Ford published his first novel,
A Piece of My Heart
,
[10]
the story of two unlikely drifters whose paths cross on an island in the
Mississippi River
, during 1976, and followed it with
The Ultimate Good Luck
during 1981. During the interim he briefly taught at
Williams College
and
Princeton University
.
[4]
Despite good notices, the books sold little, and Ford retired from fiction writing to become a writer for the
New York
magazine
Inside Sports
. "I realized," Ford said, "there was probably a wide gulf between what I could do and what would succeed with readers. I felt that I'd had a chance to write two novels, and neither of them had really created much stir, so maybe I should find real employment, and earn my keep."
[8]
During 1982, the magazine was terminated, and when
Sports Illustrated
did not hire Ford, he resumed writing fiction, composing
The Sportswriter
,
[11]
about a failed novelist turned sportswriter who undergoes an emotional crisis after the death of his son. It was named one of
Time
magazine's five best books of 1986 and was a finalist for the
PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction
.
[8]
Ford followed up that success with
Rock Springs
(1987),
[12]
a story collection ?set mostly in
Montana
?that includes what remain some of his most anthologized short stories.
[13]
Mid-career and acclaim
[
edit
]
Ford's 1990 novel
Wildlife
, a story of a
Montana
golf professional turned firefighter, met with mixed reviews and middling sales, but by the end of the 1990s Ford was increasingly sought after as an editor and contributor to various projects. Ford edited the 1990
Best American Short Stories
, the 1992
Granta
Book of the American Short Story
, the Fall 1996 "fiction issue" of
Ploughshares
,
[14]
and the 1998
Granta Book of the American Long Story
. In the latter volume's "Introduction," Ford stipulated that he preferred the designation "long story" instead of the term "novella." For the publishing project
Library of America
, Ford edited a two-volume edition of the selected works of the Mississippi writer
Eudora Welty
, which was published during 1998.
During 1995, Ford published the novel
Independence Day
, a sequel to
The Sportswriter
, featuring the continued story of its protagonist, Frank Bascombe. Reviews were positive, and the novel became the first to win both the PEN/Faulkner Award
[15]
and the
Pulitzer Prize for Fiction
.
[16]
During the same year, Ford was chosen as winner of the
Rea Award for the Short Story
, for outstanding achievement for that genre.
[17]
He ended the 1990s with a well-received collection of short stories,
Women With Men
, published during 1997. The
Paris Review
termed him a "master" of the short story genre.
[2]
Later life and writings
[
edit
]
Ford lived for many years in
New Orleans
in the
French Quarter
, on lower
Bourbon Street
, and then in the
Garden District
of the same city, where his wife, Kristina, was the executive director of the city planning commission. For a while Ford and his wife resided in
East Boothbay, Maine
.
[18]
As of 2023, Ford lives in
Billings, Montana
where he bought a house.
[19]
During the intervening years, Ford lived in other locations, usually in the United States, as he pursued a
peripatetic
teaching career.
He obtained a teaching appointment at
Bowdoin College
during 2005 but kept the job for only one semester.
[20]
During 2008 Ford was an adjunct professor of the
Oscar Wilde Centre
with the School of English at
Trinity College, Dublin
, Ireland, teaching in the Masters programme in creative writing.
[21]
Starting December 29, 2010, Ford assumed the job of senior fiction professor at the
University of Mississippi
during the autumn of 2011, replacing
Barry Hannah
, who died during March 2010. During the autumn of 2012, he became the Emmanuel Roman and Barrie Sardoff Roman Professor of the Humanities and Professor of Writing at the
Columbia University School of the Arts
.
[22]
As the new century commenced, he published another story collection,
A Multitude of Sins
(2002), followed by the novels
The Lay Of The Land,
?the third in his Bascombe series? in 2006, and
Canada
, published during May 2012.
[23]
According to Ford,
The Lay Of The Land
completed his series of Bascombe novels, but
Canada
was a stand-alone novel.
In April 2013, Ford read from a new Frank Bascombe story without revealing to the audience whether it was part of a longer work.
[24]
By 2014, it was confirmed that the story was to appear in the book
Let Me Be Frank With You
, published during November of that year.
[25]
The latter work consists of four interconnected novellas (or "long stories"), all narrated by Frank Bascombe.
[26]
[27]
Let Me Be Frank With You
was a finalist for the 2015 Pulitzer Prize in Fiction. It did not win the prize, but the selection committee praised the book for its "unflinching series of narratives, set in the aftermath of
Hurricane Sandy
, insightfully portraying a society in decline."
[28]
As in the preceding decade, Ford continued to assist with various editing projects. During 2007, he edited the
New
Granta
Book of the American Short Story
, and in 2011 he edited
Blue Collar, White Collar, No Collar: Stories of Work
. During May 2017, Ford published a memoir,
Between Them: Remembering My Parents
.
[29]
In 2018,
Wildlife
was adapted into a
film of the same name
by director
Paul Dano
and screenwriter
Zoe Kazan
. It was released to widespread critical acclaim.
[
citation needed
]
In 2020, Ford's short story collection,
Sorry For Your Trouble
, was published. His novel,
Be Mine
, was published in June 2023 and is the fifth
?and presumably final? book in Ford's so-called "Bascombe series."
[30]
Reception
[
edit
]
Ford began publishing his short stories in the 1980s, which corresponded with an American renaissance in the short story that centered around
Raymond Carver
(1938?1988).
[31]
So there was a tendency early on to associate Ford's stories in
Rock Springs
with
minimalism
and its offshoot, an aesthetic style known as
Dirty realism
that referred to Carver's lower-middle-class subjects or the protagonists Ford portrays in
Rock Springs
. "Dirty realism" and "minimalism" came to be associated with a long list of writers during the 1970s and 1980s, including
Tobias Wolff
,
Ann Beattie
,
Frederick Barthelme
,
Larry Brown
,
Jayne Anne Phillips
, and
Gordon Lish
.
[31]
However, many of the characters in the novels about Frank Bascombe (
The Sportswriter
,
Independence Day
,
The Lay of the Land
,
Let Me Be Frank With You
,
Be Mine
), including the protagonist, enjoy degrees of material affluence and
cultural capital
not normally associated with dirty realism.
Ford's writing demonstrates "a meticulous concern for the nuances of language ... [and] the rhythms of phrases and sentences". He has described his sense of language as "a source of pleasure in itself?- all of its corporeal qualities, its syncopations, moods, sounds, the way things look on the page". Besides this "devotion to language" is what he terms "the fabric of affection that holds people close enough together to survive".
[32]
Comparisons have been drawn between Ford's work and the writings of
John Updike
,
William Faulkner
,
Ernest Hemingway
and
Walker Percy
. Ford resists such comparisons, commenting, "You can't write ... on the strength of influence. You can only write a good story or a good novel by yourself."
[33]
Ford's works of fiction "dramatize the breakdown of such cultural institutions as marriage, family, and community," and his "marginalized protagonists often typify the rootlessness and nameless longing ... pervasive in a highly mobile, present-oriented society in which individuals, having lost a sense of the past, relentlessly pursue their own elusive identities in the here and now."
[34]
Ford "looks to art, rather than religion, to provide consolation and redemption in a chaotic time."
[35]
Controversies
[
edit
]
Ford once sent
Alice Hoffman
a copy of one of her books with bullet holes in it after she angered him by unfavorably reviewing
The Sportswriter
.
[36]
In 2004, Ford spat on
Colson Whitehead
when encountering him at a party two years after Whitehead published a negative review of
A Multitude of Sins
in
The New York Times
.
[37]
Thirteen years later, Ford remained unrepentant. Writing in
Esquire
in 2017, Ford declared that "as of today, I don't feel any different about Mr. Whitehead, or his review, or my response."
[38]
Awards and honors
[
edit
]
Selected works
[
edit
]
Novels
[
edit
]
Story collections
[
edit
]
Memoir
[
edit
]
- Between Them: Remembering My Parents
(2017)
Screenplays
[
edit
]
As contributor or editor
[
edit
]
- The
Granta
Book of the American Short Story
(1992)
- The Granta Book of the American Long Story
(1999)
- The Essential Tales of
Chekhov
(1999)
- Foreword to
Alec Soth
,
NIAGARA
(Gottingen, Germany: Steidl, 2006)
- The New Granta Book of the American Short Story
(2007)
- Blue Collar, White Collar, No Collar: Stories of Work
(2012)
- Foreword to Maude Schuyler Clay,
Mississippi History
(Gottingen, Germany: Steidl, 2015)
References
[
edit
]
- ^
Sansom, Ian (June 15, 2023).
"The heroic last stand of an all-American everyman"
.
The Telegraph
– via www.telegraph.co.uk.
- ^
a
b
Lyons, Bonnie (1996-01-01).
"Richard Ford, The Art of Fiction No. 147"
.
Paris Review
. No. 140.
ISSN
0031-2037
. Retrieved
2016-01-10
.
- ^
"Love and Truth: Use With Caution"
.
archive.nytimes.com
.
New York Times
(September 20, 1987), Sunday, Late City Final Edition; Section 7; Page 1, Column 3; Book Review Desk
- ^
a
b
c
Guagliardo 2001, p.xiii.
- ^
Barton, Laura (2003-02-08).
"
Guardian
profile"
.
Guardian
. London
. Retrieved
2011-08-18
.
- ^
Ford, Richard (2013-10-19).
"A Boy Who Played with Trains"
.
New York Times
. New York
. Retrieved
2013-10-20
.
- ^
"Ford on His Dyslexia, in Conversation with the
Washington Post
;"
.
Washingtonpost.com
. 2006-12-14
. Retrieved
2011-08-18
.
- ^
a
b
c
This citation is now only available in its
"Profile in the journal
Ploughshares
"
. Pshares.org. 2010-07-08. Archived from the original on 2009-10-22
. Retrieved
2011-08-18
.
{{
cite web
}}
: CS1 maint: bot: original URL status unknown (
link
)
via the
Web Archive
. It was originally cited here:
"Profile in the journal
Ploughshares
"
. Pshares.org. 2010-07-08
. Retrieved
2011-08-18
.
- ^
"Alumni Fellows | Society of Fellows"
. Societyoffellows.umich.edu
. Retrieved
2011-08-18
.
- ^
Ford, Richard (1985-01-01).
A Piece of My Heart
. Vintage.
ISBN
9780394729145
.
OCLC
924573478
.
- ^
Ford, Richard (1996-01-01).
The Sportswriter
. Alfred A. Knopf.
ISBN
9780679454519
.
OCLC
35049877
.
- ^
Ford, Richard (1987).
Rock Springs : Stories
. Atlantic Monthly Press.
ISBN
9780871131591
.
OCLC
829387991
.
- ^
Moore, Lorrie (October 16, 2014).
"Canada Dry ? The New Yorker"
.
The New Yorker
. Archived from
the original
on 2014-10-16.
- ^
"Fall 1996 ? Ploughshares"
.
www.pshares.org
.
- ^
a
b
"PEN/Faulkner Foundation list of winners"
. Penfaulkner.org. Archived from
the original
on 2008-04-21
. Retrieved
2011-08-18
.
- ^
a
b
"Pulitzer Prize citation"
. Pulitzer.org
. Retrieved
2011-08-18
.
- ^
a
b
"Rea Award citation"
. Reaaward.org. Archived from
the original
on 2011-07-27
. Retrieved
2011-08-18
.
- ^
Mehegan, David (2006-12-04).
"
Boston Globe
profile"
. Boston.com
. Retrieved
2011-08-18
.
- ^
"Richard Ford on 'The natural attrition of getting old'
"
. December 2022.
- ^
"News of Bowdoin College appointment"
. Bowdoin.edu. 2004-10-13
. Retrieved
2011-08-18
.
- ^
"Oscar Wilde Centre: Trinity College Dublin, The University of Dublin, Ireland"
. Tcd.ie. 2010-12-22. Archived from
the original
on 2011-06-07
. Retrieved
2011-08-18
.
- ^
"Richard Ford, Pulitzer Prize Winner, Joins Columbia Faculty | Columbia University School of the Arts"
. Arts.columbia.edu. Archived from
the original
on 2013-12-12
. Retrieved
2014-01-10
.
- ^
"Canada (novel)"
. www.harpercollins.com.
- ^
Liu, Lowen (2013-04-30).
"Richard Ford's New Frank Bascombe Story Shows the Damage Done by Hurricane Sandy"
.
Slate.com
. Retrieved
2014-01-10
.
- ^
"Frank and me: Richard Ford on his Bascombe novels"
.
Financial Times
. 24 October 2014.
Archived
from the original on 2022-12-10
. Retrieved
2 August
2015
.
- ^
Richard Ford
Archived
2015-12-20 at the
Wayback Machine
, Lyceum Agency, 2014
- ^
Treisman, Deborah (November 5, 2014).
"Living with Frank Bascombe: An Interview with Richard Ford"
.
The New Yorker
– via www.newyorker.com.
- ^
a
b
"The 2015 Pulitzer Prize Finalist in Fiction"
, The Pulitzer Prizes.
- ^
"For Richard Ford, Memoir Is A Chance To 'Tell The Unthinkable'
"
.
NPR.org
.
- ^
a
b
c
"Richard Ford Returns With a New Collection of Stories"
.
Columbia News
. 26 July 2023.
- ^
a
b
"Granta interview with Tim Adams"
. Granta.com. 25 October 2007.
- ^
Guagliardo 2001, p.vii.
- ^
Guagliardo 2001, p. xi.
- ^
Guagliardo 2000, p. xiv.
- ^
Guagliardo 2000, p. xvi.
- ^
"Richard Ford and Alice Hoffman 30 years later"
.
Entertainment Weekly
. March 23, 2016
. Retrieved
September 5,
2017
.
- ^
Whitehead, Colson (March 3, 2002).
"The End of the Affair (Published 2002)"
.
The New York Times
.
- ^
Ford, Richard (1 June 2017).
"Perilous Business: A novelist takes on his critics"
.
Esquire
. Retrieved
2 September
2020
.
- ^
"MIAL Winners"
. Archived from
the original
on 3 March 2016
. Retrieved
24 April
2011
.
- ^
"Richard Ford | Ploughshares"
.
www.pshares.org
.
- ^
"Saint Louis Literary Award ? Saint Louis University"
.
www.slu.edu
. Archived from
the original
on 2016-08-23
. Retrieved
2016-07-25
.
- ^
Saint Louis University Library Associates.
"Richard Ford to Receive 2005 Saint Louis Literary Award"
. Retrieved
July 25,
2016
.
- ^
"Kenyon Review for Literary Achievement"
.
KenyonReview.org
.
- ^
Italie, Hillel (June 30, 2013).
"Ford, Egan Win Literary Medals"
.
San Jose Mercury News
. Archived from
the original
on March 4, 2016
. Retrieved
May 28,
2019
.
- ^
"Richard Ford wins Princess of Asturias Award for Literature"
.
euronews
. 15 June 2016.
- ^
"Siegfried-Lenz-Preis an US-Schriftsteller Richard Ford"
.
Der Standard
(in German). 12 June 2000
. Retrieved
20 September
2021
.
- ^
Routhier, Ray (May 16, 2019).
"Maine author Richard Ford wins lifetime achievement award from Library of Congress"
.
Portland Press Herald
. Retrieved
May 28,
2019
.
- ^
Michael Schaub. "Frankly, Bascombe's Return Has Some Problems"
, 2014-11-06. Retrieved 2015-01-06.
- ^
Routhier, Ray (May 16, 2019).
"Maine author Richard Ford wins lifetime achievement award from Library of Congress"
. Retrieved
Sep 26,
2019
.
Works cited
[
edit
]
- Guagliardo, Huey (ed.)
Conversations with Richard Ford
Jackson, Mississippi: University Press of Mississippi, 2001.
ISBN
978-1-57806-406-9
- Guagliardo, Huey.
Perspectives on Richard Ford: Redeemed by Affection
. Jackson, Mississippi: University Press of Mississippi, 2000.
ISBN
978-1-57806-234-8
Further reading
[
edit
]
- Armengol, Joseph M.
Richard Ford and the Fiction of Masculinities
. New York: Peter Lang, 2010.
ISBN
978-143311-086-3
- Duffy, Brian.
Morality, Identity and Narrative in the Fiction of Richard Ford
. New York: Rodopi, 2008.
ISBN
978-904202-409-0
- McGuire, Ian.
Richard Ford and the Ends of Realism
. Iowa City, Iowa: University of Iowa Press, 2015.
ISBN
978-1-60938-343-5
- Walker, Elinor.
Richard Ford
. New York: Twayne Publishers, 2000.
ISBN
0805716793
External links
[
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]
Work
[
edit
]
Profiles
[
edit
]
Interviews
[
edit
]
- Interview on the 7th Avenue Project radio show
Richard Ford discusses his Frank Bascombe novels, his approach to fiction and his life.
- Lyons, Bonnie (Fall 1996).
"Richard Ford, The Art of Fiction No. 147"
.
Paris Review
. Fall 1996 (140).
- "Armistead Maupin: Brisbane Writers' Festival ? RN Book Show ? 23 January 2008"
. Abc.net.au. 2008-01-23
. Retrieved
2011-08-19
.
? Transcript of interview with
Ramona Koval
,
The Book Show
,
ABC Radio National
31 December 2007
- Interview for public radio in Maine (2006)
,
Maine Humanities Council
- Interview (1996)
Archived
2000-05-22 at the
Wayback Machine
,
Salon.com
- Interview on
Writer's Voice
(2006)
with radio host, Francesca Rheannon
- Interview (2002)
,
IdentityTheory.com
- Interview (2006)
Archived
2013-01-30 at
archive.today
,
The New Yorker
- Interview (2006)
,
Nerve.com
- Interview, book reading, and discussion video streams and MP3 download (2006)
,
University of Pennsylvania
- Interview February 2007
; Pulitzer Prize-winning author talks with Robert Birnbaum about his latest Frank Bascombe novel,
The Lay of the Land
- Richard Ford: Shooting for the stars.
Video interview by
Louisiana Channel
2012.
- Interview (2016)
,
The Ringer (website)
Archival collections
[
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]
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Previously the Pulitzer Prize for the Novel from 1917?1947
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2001?present
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Prince of Asturias Award for Literature
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Princess of Asturias Award for Literature
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