Richard Ford and Me

The Reading

I had the wonderful opportunity to hear Richard Ford speak on Friday night (1/19/07, New York State Writers Institute, SUNY Albany), and was able to chat briefly with him and get a copy of The Lay of the Land, his latest novel, signed. Quite an experience.

I ventured out alone (my wife is not as interested in listening to middle aged male writers as I am, and we had a houseful of ten year olds participating in a sleep over) to SUNY Albany, a monstrous campus nearly empty with the cold and biting wind. As I made my way into the room, Ford was there talking to the five or six other early birds, and he was congenial and affable as the group plied him with questions they had just been dying to ask. I chose to forgo joining the group (he didn't need another groupie), instead opting to purchase a hard cover of The Lay of the Land, which he would later sign. Once William Kennedy (of Ironweed fame and executive director of the Writers Institute) settled in, Don Faulkner introduced Ford and away we went. Forty five minutes later, Ford had finished and the crowd of fifty plus listeners dug into their questions.

The Writer

Ford is a funny, engaging, intelligent writer, and Frank Bacombe, the protagonist of three linked novels- The Sportswriter (1986), Independence Day (1996), and The Lay of the Land (2006)- provides him with an eloquent, introspective voice in which to reflect on what it is to be a man, a husband, and a father. Bascombe navigates the treacherous shoals of grief, love, divorce, and, yes, writing, as he moves through the many periods of a modern man's life, ending, with the latest book, in the permanent period, a kind of extended and suspended time in which legacies are made or sustained, and things sometimes fall apart.

I found Ford to be such a personable guy to listen to, erudite and funny. His text- he read an excerpt from the novel that I originally read in The New Yorker- was engaging, thought provoking, and, at times, laugh out loud funny. After, he answered questions (how do writers keep it fresh, hearing the same questions over and over again?) and signed a bunch of books, mine included.

In the end, the evening was such a positive one that I wondered, as I drove home in the chilly Albany night, if being a book geek wasn't so bad, after all. I mean, the high from hearing a flesh and blood writer surpasses most manufactured highs, hands down. And I was inspired to write when I left, which I hope I can actually transfer into something substantial. Added bonus. So, in the future, I won't be hesitant to feed my soul, as one friend puts it. The benefits outweigh the potential social problems that could arise.