Be Mine

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Resolutely uncynical, blessed with the perceptual gifts of his creator, Frank Bascombe incarnates an old idea of America, now waning; and he knows it. The Mount Rushmore presidents, finally reached, have something “decidedly measly about them […] the great men themselves seem unapologetically apart, as if they’ve seen me, and I’m too small.” If that seems a bit on the nose, well, neither Frank Bascombe nor Richard Ford have ever shied away from the obvious – the obvious being, like everything else, part of the job. For cost savings, you can change your plan at any time online in the “Settings & Account” section. If you’d like to retain your premium access and save 20%, you can opt to pay annually at the end of the trial. What about happiness? The book opens and closes with Frank’s reflections on happiness. Does Ford agree with the research that says that, after a dip in midlife, happiness rises again as we enter old age? President Trump’s swollen, eyes-bulging face filled the TV screen behind the honor bar, doing his pooch-lipped, arms-folded Mussolini. I couldn’t take my eyes off him – tuberous limbs, prognathous jaw, looking in all directions at once, seeking approval but not finding enough.” They are an odd couple. Paul is 47, often in his wheelchair. They display their love through puns and insults.

Richard Ford BBC Radio 4 - Open Book, Richard Ford

The book charts Frank and Paul’s time together in February 2020, just as a new virus is beginning to threaten the world. But it is a funny book, with Frank and Paul’s dialogue – decades of love contained within – reading at times like a comedy double-act. Now in the twilight of life, a man who has occupied many colourful lives - sportswriter, father, husband, ex-husband, friend, real estate agent - Bascombe finds himself in the most sorrowing role of all; caregiver to his son, Paul, diagnosed with ALS. On a shared winter's odyssey to Mount Rushmore, Frank in typical Bascombe fashion faces down the mortality that is assured each of us, and in doing so confronts what happiness might signify at the end of days. There can be no happy ending here, and Frank knows it. But “I happen to believe there’s plenty to be said for a robust state of denial about many things – death being high on the list”.Richard Ford talks to Alex Clark about his latest novel Be Mine. Ford has written about American life through his character Frank Bascombe for nearly forty years though The Sportswriter to Independence Day and Lay of the Land. This time Frank undertakes a road trip across the country with his son who is dying of ALS - a form of motor neurone disease – and their journey is both tender and tough, filled with wit. Ford discusses his writing, passion for observation and unerring faith in the US political institutions.

Be Mine by Richard Ford | Book review | The TLS

Now in the twilight of life, a man who has occupied many colorful lives—sportswriter, father, husband, ex-husband, friend, real estate agent—Bascombe finds himself in the most sorrowing role of all: caregiver to his son, Paul, diagnosed with ALS. On a shared winter odyssey to Mount Rushmore, Frank, in typical Bascombe fashion, faces down the mortality that is assured each of us, and in doing so confronts what happiness might signify at the end of days.

If someone comes up to me and says, ‘I read your book, it wasn’t worth a s**t’ – that would make me unhappy. But then that doesn’t usually happen in America, where people don’t read much Now that Frank’s story has fattened into a sequence spanning four decades and five books, it is easier to perceive that Hoffman’s review may have missed The Sportswriter’s point (though shooting her book in retaliation still seems excessive). As you progress through The Sportswriter and its sequels – Independence Day (1995), The Lay of the Land (2006) and the title novella in the collection Let Me Be Frank With You (2014) – it becomes clearer and clearer that these are, indeed, books about happiness as a project of conscious denial. Frank, in his own way, does what the alien Tralfamadorians tell Billy Pilgrim to do in Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five: he lives only in the happy moments. Blessed with the perceptual gifts of his creator, Frank incarnates an old idea of America, now waning; and he knows it

Be Mine’ Shows the Trump Era Through Frank Bascombe’s Eyes ‘Be Mine’ Shows the Trump Era Through Frank Bascombe’s Eyes

One of the hallmarks of the stories, and of your work in general, is the way you depict what I’ll call the changing emotional “weather” between your characters, especially in dialogue. There is still something to be said about the author’s snarky humor and wit. His view of the world. Denis Donoghue says language is where we find values in action. In a way it substitutes for other types of possible actions within stories, physical actions: the cavalry coming over the hill, a man walking through the door holding a gun, all of those things. Sometimes language is just the action of the story.It's been a while since I read the four previous works by Ford featuring and following Frank Bascombe through family and marriages and divorces and emotions, holidays, yearnings, America and more. I can't say I remember them particularly well, but I recall falling into each happily, reading them with great focus, and have each on my bookshelves. Having read this one, which may or may not be the final installment in Bascombe's world, I might very well make it a project to read them all again from the beginning. In Be Mine, Frank is now 74, working in real estate part-time, mostly a desk job, living alone, when he learns from his daughter that his son, Paul, with whom he's had an uneven relationship, has ALS. A road trip, as the other novels include, is featured here, once Paul has gone through an experimental drug program at Mayo. This is not laugh out loud funny, but the views are amusing, droll, the nature of America precise, the relationship between father and son true, and it was a pleasure to take this latest trip with Frank.

Be Mine: A Frank Bascombe Novel by Richard Ford, Hardcover Be Mine: A Frank Bascombe Novel by Richard Ford, Hardcover

But,” he continues, “I’m mostly caught up in the dearth of imagination among the Democrats for not having the gumption to quietly escort President Biden off the stage. It’s just horrible. And he’s got them all convinced that he’s the only Democrat who can beat Trump. Biden and I are the same age and he’s too damn old to be president. He’s not too damn old to be writing a novel ... ” The fifth, last, and saddest of the Frank Bascombe books. As always, there is fine writing, smart observations of American life and culture, and sharp humor. But there's less humor than in the past, and most of it is bitter.Much is made of the clinic, its physical layout and its various attempts at raising people's spirits, separate from whatever it can or can't do for them physically. Frank and Paul are united in their rejection of this atmosphere and Frank rents a vehicle, old, large, not quite a camper, for a road trip to Mt Rushmore, where he went with his parents some 60 years earlier. How cruel to keep killing off poor Frank’s children! (Bascombe also has a daughter, with whom he does not get on.) It’s against nature. Why did he do it? Shouldn’t it really be Frank who’s for the chop? Ford’s eyes are a famous shade of aquamarine and they consider me now, rather coolly. Don’t I know, his expression says, how horribly ruthless novelists can be? “I’m such a conventional writer,” he finally says. “I just couldn’t figure out any way that I could have written that book. I mean, I didn’t want to write as a… ghost.” Readers of The Sportswriter will remember Paul as an appealing little boy who kept pigeons in a coop behind the house in Haddam and sent them off with forlorn messages to his dead older brother—who Paul thought lived on Cape May. In the next novel, Paul was a teenager, troubled, abrasive, yet still intermittently appealing. Then he was briefly married and worked for Hallmark writing “dopey” greeting cards. Familiarity with these previous incarnations is in no way necessary, though it does add to the illusion of depth, an accretion of sedimentary layers. The astonishing core of Be Mine is the barbed, tender, despairing bond between father and son, a bond both battered and strengthened by the cruel “progress” of Paul’s disease. In fact, says Ford, the pleasure for him is all in the writing of the book, rather than the responses from readers. “It’s all in the doing for me. I’m constantly thinking to myself, is this working the way I need it to work? Or is my delight something the reader will never share?