Early Influential Book

When I was in college, way back in the late '80s (ancient times), Random House had just launched a papberback imprint called Vintage Contemporaries. Joy Williams was on it, Thomas McGuane, Jay McInerney and a bunch of other literary authors who were finding readership through the line's more mass produced runs and cartoonish book cover art. I'd been assigned The Sportswriter for a post-modern lit class, among other books I wasn't very enthusiastic to read.

Thirty pages into The Sportswriter, I was stunned at how calculated and perfect the language was, how logical the flow of the story was. I hated it. It began at the beginning and told a simple story. Some sixty pages in, I was appalled at how shut off the protagonist Frank Bascombe was. I was frustrated by his lack of action, his sunny, suppressed attitude. I wanted to toss the book away, I was so irritated by the lack of movement. But the characterization ... it was insanely good. Detailed. Vivid. Poetic. Profound. Frank constantly said things full of clarity and insight.

Later about two-thirds through the book, it hit me, "Oh, he's supposed to be this way." This is the tone of the book, this is the voice. It's meant to be like that. He's supposed to give a little try, a little nudge to his life, and then drop back into what he has, what he's already doing, what's comfortable. He's supposed to be a removed observer. The impatience I had with the narrator was the same impatience his ex-wife had, his state of dreaminess irritated others as well.

The fact that the line between the voice and its effect was so paperthin and unnoticeable introduced me to the power of first-person narration. It was the first time I realized, I mean truly understood from an artistic standpoint, how one could manipulate and influence the reader. (Please keep in mind I was only eighteen and I'm sure whip-smart eighteen-year-olds today would catch that right away.) But while other novels I'd read had strong voices, they were somehow dysfunctional in their musings and therefore obvious, but Frank seemingly didn't have any pointed problems. Or did he? The beauty of Ford's writing was its ambivalence, that thin line between a guy chatting you up and the larger story of his pain and history beneath the surface.

Needless to say it's influenced me greatly.