Re: Richard Ford
William Hochman (wh14@is9.nyu.edu)
Wed, 25 Aug 1999 11:20:30 -0400 (EDT)
C, Ford's most successful prose to date probably revolves around his
narrator and the main character in _The Sportswriter_ and _Independence
Day_. I didn't think I'd be interested in the character based on the
content but found his philosophical underpinnings to resonate with my own
so much so that I really enjoyed being in his head throughout the two
books. Of course Richard Ford has a large head and high forehead in
reality and yet I felt that sense of being at home in the man's mind
before I ever met him.
If you want to try a short story route, I prefer the longer ones in his
most recent, _Women with Men_ (a back issue of the New Yorker contain
"Jealous" and back a back issue of Granta has "The Womanizer." _Rock
Springs_ is an earlier collection of shorter fiction that was uneven and
now that I think of it, not memorable...
BTW, one of the things that irks me about his Chekhov book is that he
titles it "The Essential Tales of Chekhov." I'm no Chekhov scholar, but I
missed some of my personal favorites. Nonetheless, the introduction is
honest and reveals Ford as a reader who gets to the heart of things
without the usual literary and scholarly trappings.
will
On Wed, 25 Aug 1999, Camille Scaysbrook wrote:
> I've never even heard of Richard Ford. Would any of you be so kind as to
> recommend where I should start with him ??? Anyone who's edited Chekov is
> worth a look!
>
> Camille
> verona_beach@geocities.com
>
>
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