Novelist Richard Ford Discusses Latest Work, ‘The Lay of the Land’

JEFFREY BROWN:

In the 1986 novel, "The Sportswriter," the world of literature was introduced to a fictional character named Frank Bascombe, a 38-year-old writer living in a New Jersey suburb facing the loss of a son, a marriage, and a career.

In 1995, Frank Bascombe returned, in "Independence Day." He was older, no wiser, now selling real estate, still trying to connect with his children and the rest of the world. That book won both the Pulitzer Prize and the Pen/Faulkner Award.

Now, Frank is back again in the new novel, "The Lay of the Land," about to face an unsettling family Thanksgiving gathering and, at 55, in what he calls "the permanent period."

The man behind Frank Bascombe is writer Richard Ford, a Mississippi native who's lived in — among other places — Montana, Maine, New Orleans and, yes, New Jersey, author of three other novels and three short story collections in addition to the Bascombe books. We talked recently in Washington.

Richard Ford, welcome.

RICHARD FORD, Novelist:

Glad to be here, Jeff. Thanks.

JEFFREY BROWN:

So how does this work for you? Does this character, Frank Bascombe, about every 10 years or so call out to you and say, "Hey, look at me now"?

RICHARD FORD:

Well, it's more like Edgar Bergen and Charlie McCarthy, I think. I kind of go to his box and haul him out more than that. I'm not one of those people who as a writer lets my characters tell me what they want to do or call to me or seek me. I go seeking for things, using them as an agent, really.

JEFFREY BROWN:

So you decided to go call Frank back and use him?

RICHARD FORD:

I did. I did, because I had a bunch of things that I wanted to put in play in a book. Because the book is narrated by the same character and could be said to be in sequence doesn't relieve me — probably doesn't relieve anybody who writes books like that — of the responsibility of writing a new book all the time.

I wanted to write about Frank, too, because I thought the period which is the period that his book takes place in his life — he's 55, which he calls the "permanent period of life" — was a period of time which you can live through and never notice.

And it's that period in your life when you've sort of broken with the past and there's not enough of the future left to screw it up, and maybe it's a time when you should pay attention to your everyday existence, because it's likely to be the time when, once you are gone, you'll be remembered for.