Let Me Be Frank with You

Frank Bascombe #4

by Richard Ford

A brilliant new work that returns Richard Ford to the hallowed territory that sealed his reputation as an American master: the world of Frank Bascombe, and the landscape of his celebrated novels The Sportswriter, the Pulitzer Prize and PEN/Faulkner winning Independence Day, and The Lay of the Land

In his trio of world-acclaimed novels portraying the life of an entire American generation, Richard Ford has imagined one of the most indelible and widely-discussed characters in modern literature, Frank Bascombe. Through Bascombe—protean, funny, profane, wise, often inappropriate—we’ve witnessed the aspirations, sorrows, longings, achievements and failings of an American life in the twilight of the twentieth century.

Now, in Let Me Be Frank with You, Ford reinvents Bascombe in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy. In four richly luminous narratives, Bascombe (and Ford) attempts to reconcile, interpret and console a world undone by calamity. It is a moving and wondrous and extremely funny odyssey through the America we live in at this moment. Ford is here again working with the maturity and brilliance of a writer at the absolute height of his powers.

Genres: Fiction, Short Stories, Literary Fiction, Contemporary, Novels, Audiobook, Literature

255 pages, Kindle Edition

First published November 4, 2014

About the author

Richard Ford, born February 16, 1944 in Jackson, Mississippi, is an American novelist and short story writer. His best-known works are the novel The Sportswriter and its sequels, Independence Day, The Lay of the Land and Let Me Be Frank With You, and the short story collection Rock Springs, which contains several widely anthologized stories. Comparisons have been drawn between Ford's work and the writings of John Updike, William Faulkner, Ernest Hemingway and Walker Percy.

His novel Independence Day won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1996, also winning the PEN/Faulkner Award in the same year.

Reviews

[Jeffrey Keeten · Rating 4 out of 5]

”At some point you just need to leave the theater so the next crowd can see the movie.”

Frank Bascombe can no longer fool himself that he is even a mature middle age. He is, frankly, fully qualified now to claim his twilight years. There is a consistent pain emanating from his prostate, a reminder of a recent bout of cancer. His footing on a sandy beach or on an icy sidewalk is now something potentially treacherous. He is decommissioning words that he finds to be unnecessary or imprecise in expressing himself. He has decided that five friends is plenty and one of those five is himself.

He is trying to keep his life simple.

His ex-wife Ann has moved back to Haddam. All the gin joints in all the world and she decided to walk back into Frank’s. She is living in a high end assisted living facility. It seems one of her ex-husbands provided her with a substantial portfolio. Frank, out of some form of obligation that makes no sense even to himself, goes to see her once a month, muses about her fruit pictures that make him uncomfortable with visions of vaginas, and waits to see how many expertly thrust daggers she manages to squeeze between his ribs. She never goes for the kill, but like a cat wounds him enough that it is impossible for him to escape.

”What I’ve attempted in my visits, and will try once again tonight, is to offer Ann what I consider my ‘Default Self’; this, in the effort to give her what I believe she most wants from me---bedrock truth. I do this by portraying for her the self I’d like others to understand me to be, and at heart believe I am: a man who doesn’t lie (or rarely), who presumes nothing from the past, who takes the high, optimistic road (when available), who doesn’t envision the future, who streamlines his utterances (no embellishments), and in all instances acts nice. In my view, this self plausibly represents one-half of the charmed-union-of-good-souls every marriage promises to convene but mostly fails to---as was true of ours long ago.”

Frank is still counselling his old client base about the devastating effects of Hurricane Sandy. He used to sell real estate and now most of those high dollar beach homes that gave him a comfortable retirement, including one he owned, are now piles of expensive kindling. Real estate agents are being shot, as if they could anticipate a hurricane of the magnitude of Sandy devastating the coast, so a vengeful ex-client is one more thing for Frank to be worried about.

His wife Sally is counselling victims of the hurricane and finds her own state of mind is spiralling downward with the daily barrage of stories of loss. She isn’t sure that Frank is dealing with the devastation properly. It is always hard to know now, with TV dictating the proper responses to any social situation, whether one is being stoic enough or too stoic or too emotional or too cold to any given circumstance. Like everything else even our responses to tragedy have become homogenized. Frank has tried several different levels of response, but hasn’t been a good enough actor to convince Sally of any of them. It isn’t that he doesn’t care. It has more to do with living long enough to understand that unfortunate things...well...happen.

”History’s just somebody else’s War and Peace".

Sally thinks he needs to write a book, but he has been down that road before. Novelists are ”(the last outpost of a certain species of doomed optimist.) Frank doesn’t really want to do anything with his last remaining days on this planet, but he does want to enjoy them as best he can. He weighs the results of even spending time with his grown children. Can he afford the time? They are relatively self-sufficient after all. He wants to elude pain and suffering as best he can. He wants to avoid further time killing entanglements with the past or the future. He is firmly trying to stay planted in the present, but is beset on all sides with the pull of responsibility.

There are four Frank Bascombe books. The first is The Sportswriter, the second is Independence Day, the third is The Lay of the Land, and of course this book makes up the fourth. I hope this is not the last time I spend with Frank Bascombe. I would not suggest parachuting in and reading this one without reading the other books first. The books are the progression of a life. I don’t think a reader can fully appreciate the twilight years of Frank Bascombe without seeing the younger Frank who is still battling, losing, winning, and dreaming. We all wear different skins for different parts of our lives and to know Frank in one stage without knowing him for the others is like eating the core of an apple without the juicy benefits of tasting the fruit.

I must go back and read them all again because I read each of them while still decades younger than Frank. I enjoyed them none the less, but I have a feeling I will achieve a higher affinity with them by rereading them again. This series has been compared favorably to the John Updike Rabbit books, but the Rabbit books are my least favorite Updike books while the Frank Bascombe books routinely end up on my favorite books list. If you haven’t read Richard Ford give The Sportswriter a try. Please give Frank my regards and tell him I’ll stop by and visit with him again real soon.

If you wish to see more of my most recent book and movie reviews, visit http://www.jeffreykeeten.com
I also have a Facebook blogger page at:https://www.facebook.com/JeffreyKeeten

[Steve · Rating 4 out of 5]

Frank contemplates his karmic footprint. And I wonder, by way of a schematic, how to lead readers to this book (and the three in the series preceding it).

[Michael Finocchiaro · Rating 5 out of 5]

Let Me Be Frank With You is the 4th and last volume of the stories of Frank Boscombe by Richard Ford, (The Sportswriter, Independence Day and The Lay of the Land being the previous installments. I reviewed the first two and am waiting for the 3rd one to arrive at my library. Let Me Be Frank With You is different from the previous volume is that it is a collection of four stories about an elderly Frank (whereas the other books had a narrative frame) musing about getting old and about rebuilding after Hurricane Sandy has devastated the New Jersey coastline. One really nice feature that did tie these four stories together was the use of a phrase from a chapter as the title to the next chapter. It was a clever device for connecting these otherwise unrelated narratives.

'I'm Here' deals with Frank and Sally's house on the Shore which had been sold a decade before to Arnie Urquhart, but now lies uprooted following Sandy. As each book has a gap of approximately 5-10 years between it and the next, we spend a little time learning of Frank's life with Sally, his retirement from real estate, his activities (reading Naipaul over the radio to the blind, handing out tracts to returning veterans, enjoying Obama's presidency while rebuffing seemingly daily racist comments about Obama from his neighbors - this was very, very prescient when you think about it). The action centers around Frank driving out to where the house was and meeting Arnie who is seeking advice on whether to rebuild or sell the wreckage. When crossing the police line after speaking with a former client who is armed to the teeth against looters, as Corporal Alyss has said, it's easy to see how a person could drive down on a reconnoitering mission and simply never show up again; as if calamity had left a hole in the world on the rim of which everything civilized and postive-tending teeters - spirits, efforts, dreams, memories...buildings, for sure - all in jeopardy of spiraling down and down. I do, in fact, feel smart for having gotten out when the getting was good. Though when you sell a house where you've been happy, it's never that smart. In all such moves, one feels the bruise of defeat. (p. 31)
Frank meets a transformed Arnie, the latter having had multiple bizarre and seemingly unsuccessful interventions of plastic surgery, a smile opening on his strange, half-woman face - as if he knows he's wasted my time but means to make it right before all is lost, the beach returned to the dominion of the gulls, all trace of us gone...Remoteness joins us as much as it separates us, but in a way that's truly mysterious, yet completely adequate for the life ongoing (p. 58). There is a particularly hilarious digression about one of his more hardcore right-wing neighbors (certainly a Trump voter two years later) who is always asking free advice which Frank always tried to sabotage: I do my utmost to pass along the worst possible realty advice: never evernegotiate, demand your price or fuck it; don't waste a nickel on superficial niceties...don't act friendly to potential buyers...leave your Tea Party reading material and gun paraphernalia out on the coffee table." (p. 68)
As one point, Sally, his wife, tells him a tragic story about the American massacre of the Sioux in which the Indians being hung en masse all say "I'm here" in Sioux before dying and this stands as a motif for this story about the ephemeral permanence of our houses.

'Everything Could Be Worse' is about a tragedy that unfolded in Frank and Sally's house inland from the Shore in Haddam, NJ. It is told by the daughter, Ms. Pine, that was orphaned by the tragedy who happens to be African-American. There is a delicate balance of Frank attempting to be understanding of her grief without being condescending or saying something that could be misconstrued as racist (and failing most but not all of the time): But was it actual grief? The spectacle-grim-oddness of the whole bewilderment might require an entirely new emotion - a fresh phylum of feeling, matched by a new species of lingo. (p. 107).

'The New Normal' is about Frank visiting his ex-wife Alice, who is living in a chic retirement community slowing dying of Parkinson's. Their relationship has been one of the undercurrents of the whole series and it is quite succinctly described here, stripped of Frank's sexual longing (but not entirely as the erotic photography he sees in her living room reveals.) He learns that from the beginning, she has lied about her age and is not quite sure how to deal with this minor, but significant, change in his perception of her: Something's different. Possibly only a poet would know what it is and be able to set it prettily out. But I would say that when the grand inquisitor frowns at me over the top of his ledger and growls, "Bascombe, before I send you where you know you're going, tell me what it feels like to be divorced. Boil it all down to one emotion, a final assay, something that says it all. And be quick about it because there's a line of lost souls behind you and it's cruel to make them wait..." What I'd say to him (or her) is, "Let me put it this way: I loved my wife, we got divorced, then thirty years later she told me she'd always lied about her age. It's vital information, Your Honor. Though there's nothing at all I can do with it." I can hear the oven doors clanking, feel on my cheek the lick of flame. "Next!" (p. 132-133) I loved the mixed allusions here to Dante and Dostoyevski and myself included a similar fantasy in my novel, Sophie's Playlist, albeit far less fluidly and less meaningfully than Ford.
Frank has always been big on defining the periods of his life, the Permanence period for example in Independence Day. Here, he instead defines his Default Self which he uses to abstract his feelings and deal with his dying wife (and his own mortality).
The Default Self is one we've all wrestled with even when we've failed to find it and gone away frustrated. We've eyed it hungrily, wishing we could figure it out and install it in our lives, like a hair shirt we could get cozy in. Tough bottom line, it's not that different from a bedrock self, except it's our creation, rather than us being its. (p. 145-146).
The story ends on Ann abruptly sending Frank away: There is no urge to touch, to kiss, to embrace. But I do it just the same. It is our last charm. Love isn't a thing, after all, but an endless series of single acts." (p. 174).

'Deaths of Others' is the last story of this collection where Frank will visit an old member of his defunct Divorced Men's Club, who is also dying like Ann in the previous chapter. He receives a phone call of old Eddie asking him to come pay his final respects, but he doesn't want to go. However, being Frank, of course he does but full of regret: "Why are we such fuck-ups? Why couldn't the wrong thing just declare itself without my having to dip a fucking toe in? Errors are errors long before we commit them. (p. 198). I really love that last phrase. A friend of his who suffered from Alzheimer's and has since disappeared kayaking at night told him: "The geniuses are the people who spot the trends, Frank, the ones who see Orion where the rest of us assholes just see a bunch of pretty stars." (p. 206). Before the final scene, he meets Eddie's nurse, another African-American woman with infinite expressivity like Ms. Pine: She elevates her chin, her plush mouth in a tight, pious line to represent 1. Gravity; 2. Respect; 3. Solemnity; 4. Sorrow; 5. Consideration; 6. Submission; 7. Candor; 8. Lament. Plus a hundred inexpressibles that come into play (or might) when we elect to face the final hours of another. (p. 218). Frank is in for another unpleasant revelation and then makes his exit from this book and from the American literary canon.

This is a beautiful book and a fitting coda to Frank's story. I think it deserves its place next to similar multi-book chronicles of late 20th/early 21st century men's lives along with Rabbit Angstrom in John Updike's books or Nathan Zuckerman in Philip Roth's masterpieces. I nearly forgot also that the Donald “Sully” Sullivan novels by Richard Russo (also garnered with a Pulitzer) were also similar in scope, but I think Sully is less self-aware than Nathan or Frank, probably more similar to Rabbit.

As a parting note, this book, albeit far shorter, was merely a runner-up for the 2015 Pulitzer Prize for fiction. I think it is a pity that the Hollywood-esque mess that was All the Light We Cannot See won in its place.

[Melanie · Rating 4 out of 5]

“What draws me to writing Frank Bascombe is what’s always drawn me: he’s funny (and it’s thrilling to write things that are funny), but also he offers me the chance to write into the breach between what Henry James calls ‘bliss and bale’; in my own way, to connect ‘the things that help and the things that hurt’ and to find some kind of reconciling vocabulary for both,” Mr. Ford said. “I always think that, when I’m writing Frank Bascombe, I have the chance to write about the most important things I know, and that’s always been irresistible — as it probably is for most writers.”
Richard Ford - New York Times

And so it is. Reading the last installment of the Frank Bascombe novels was a bittersweet and eerily quiet experience. A part of me wasn't quite sure that this would be the last time I would live inside one of my favorite characters' head, so page after page, I felt myself resisting, paddling wildly against the current.

I don't know if there could have been a satisfying ending to one of the most celebrated Everyman's journey in American literature. The sense of finality that we expect in an "ending" or "conclusion" could not be a part of this character's life. The life of Frank Bascombe is a study in impermanence, transience, fugitive forces, bouts of bad luck and the music of chance, as Paul Auster would call it.

This particular novel feels even more evanescent than the previous three, less grounded in "plot". It doesn't seem to be circling around a central emotional vortex pulling everything together, like a magnetic force running below the surface. Frank Bascombe is a lot more ruminative and pensive here, and less part of a bigger story.

But in spite of the fact that this novel felt a lot more scattered than the other three, I read the last page with a surge of emotion and gratitude for having known a character whose radical intelligence and razor-sharp sense of humor illuminated the things that help and the things that hurt.

[Jim Marshall · Rating 5 out of 5]

The title of this book is annoyingly cute, but I could not not read it. It is probably the last (the author is 70) of Richard Ford’s richly textured, deeply observant Frank Bascomb books. Beginning with The Sportswriter in 1986 (when I was a newly minted professor and a father-in-training) through Independence Day (1995), The Lay of the Land (2006), and this year’s Let Me Be Frank with You, Ford has given us a decade by decade accounting of the life of Frank Bascomb—a sportswriter turned real estate agent who lives most of his life in Haddonfield, New Jersey. If that sounds fairly pedestrian, it is meant to be because Ford’s project is less about world-shattering events that it is about Frank’s honest if often mistaken impressions of those events. He is cynical, flawed, lustful, kind, hurt, eager, and disarmingly candid. All the books are narrated by Frank, and all are marked by Ford’s magnificent command of the cadences of the human voice in highly specific contexts at very specific times. Each of the four books, published near the middle of a particular decade, takes on the colors of that decade and centers on a Frank who has aged 10 years since the last book. We grow older with him over four decades in real time. He loses a son to illness and a first wife to grief. He fails as a sportswriter and finds, to his surprise, that he is good at selling houses. He is careful with friendship, with clients, with family, but quietly honest with himself about how distant he feels when intimacy in possible. Over time, I found myself thinking of him as a slightly cantankerous but beloved uncle who cracks wise at family gatherings, takes nephews like me to baseball games, asks us about our sex lives, gives unwanted advice about money, and knows when to keep his mouth shut. I grew into and through middle age with him—he is three years older than me and beginning to fail a bit—and I am tempted to start the quartet again to see how each of us have changed since the first one.

The only other character that I consider a life-long companion is Updike’s Rabbit Angstrom. Like Ford, Updike took Rabbit through four books and four decades, beginning in 1960 with Rabbit Run, then Rabbit Redux, in the early 70’s, Rabbit is Rich in the early 80’s, and Rabbit at Rest in the early 90’s. Rabbit was less an uncle to me than an older brother who was always getting into trouble. One of his problems was that he was unable to articulate most of what he felt so he would probably have been a bad narrator. Thus Updike wisely told the story in the 3rd person and was able to render the hapless but somehow likeable Rabbit in his exquisitely graceful prose that never fails to dazzle.

We often speak of growing up with a series of books—Little House on the Prairie, Harry Potter—but I think that I have grown older with these two guys, Rabbit and Frank. I never failed to learn from them, even when, especially when, I saw them making serious mistakes. I was always sorry for their pain and glad for their joy. They have helped teach me why we should always read fiction.

[Diane S ☔ · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 Frank now retired and no longer living on the coast, is quite happy not having anything to do, and looks forward to his own quiet, introspective life. As we know though, life very seldom let's us alone and so in these five vignettes Frank is approached by five people from his past, people he finds himself unable to say no to, one being his ex-wife.

As minds tend to do, his mind constantly wanders and so, even if involved in one thing, off we go with his wandering mind to another. He has so shortage of opinions, memories and pontifications. Though since these were after hurricane Sandy, it was heartbreaking reading about all the destruction to property and coast.

So many of these lines were humorous, this man is funny and so are his thoughts. But, at times it got tiresome, seriously I don't even find my mind wanderings all that interesting. Well interesting to me maybe, but not to others who have not been there or done or saw that. So that became my problem, loving many of his comments, as I posted them, but getting overloaded with anothers thoughts. Still well worth the read for all the amusing bits, just don't expect a straightforward or on task story.

ARC from publisher.

[Michael · Rating 3 out of 5]

It was good to be back with Frank Bascombe, our intrepid survivor of all the curves and accidents in the journey of modern life as portrayed in The Sportswriter and sequels (I have the third still to go). Because he has a likely terminal condition, it gives him a special strength and perspective that makes him able to deal with and render aid for the problems that fellow riders on this planet experience.
The love of Ford for Frank and the set of odd characters in this short book comes through. I appreciated the voice of Frank and the sense of earning his sardonic wisdom, as evident in these samples:

You survived. Whatever doesn’t kill us makes us stronger, right?” I don’t, of course, believe this. Most things that don’t kill us right off, kill us later.

I don’t look in mirrors anymore. It’s cheaper than surgery.

There is no urge to touch, to kiss, to embrace. But I do it just the same. It is our last charm. Love isn’t a thing, after all, but an endless series of single acts.

Patience is a prelapsarian concept in a post-lapsarian world.

But there is a bit too much reflection and not enough of the struggle of living in this book to reach higher star levels. A worthy supplement for readers of The Sportswriter series but likely not that rewarding as a stand alone read.

[Nood-Lesse · Rating 3 out of 5]

Siamo sempre circondati solo da noi stessi

Ho pensato a quelle rare volte in cui non avrei voluto abbandonare un personaggio, e mi sono venuti in mente i nomi di Jean, Edmond, Morris, Harry… c’ho pensato perché con Frank non mi è successo. Il quarto libro della Bascombe saga (*1) ha un inizio tutt’altro che accattivante, sembrano pagine di diario scritte a proprio uso e consumo dal personaggio americano di uno scrittore americano con a tema l’America nota solo agli americani. Bisogna arrivare a “Ieri, appena passate le otto, una telefonata inattesa mi ha rovinato la mattina..” perché il romanzo decolli e regali le sue pagine migliori.
Frank, agente immobiliare in pensione, viene contattato da un cliente in cerca di solidarietà per il modo in cui l’uragano Sandy ha ridotto casa sua. Non si tratta di una casa qualunque, è quella dove Frank ha vissuto per diversi anni con la sua seconda moglie. Lo conoscemmo trentottenne giornalista sportivo che tentava di sopravvivere alla morte del suo primogenito, adesso è un sessantottenne, pensionato e caduco, sopravvissuto alla morte del figlio ma impossibilitato a non pensare a quanti anni avrebbe, che lavoro svolgerebbe se fosse ancora vivo. Nei quattro libri della saga il dolore insanabile per la perdita è la cosa resa nel modo migliore, nonostante Richard Ford (l’ho scoperto leggendo “Tra Loro”) non sia mai diventato padre. Tutto ciò che Frank Bascombe ci racconterà dalla morte di Ralph in poi, si legherà prima o poi con essa e lo farà in modo naturale ed inesorabile. Perfino le parole finali che Ford fa pronunciare a Bascombe in questo libro chiamano in causa quel figlio che è morto, o forse non è mai nato.

Leggere Richard Ford non è quasi mai appagante sul momento; si fa fatica, abbondano i riferimenti alla tv, al costume, alla storia, ai gusti prettamente americani. Capita di sentirsi estranei, avulsi ma ciò spesso precede una folgorazione. Il sonnacchioso Ford ti stupisce quando meno te lo aspetteresti compilando una considerazione sulla (tua) vita che (tu) congetturavi da anni.
“Tutto potrebbe andare molto peggio” è un romanzo triste, a tratti rassegnato, scommetto però che fra vent’anni, se lo rileggessi, vi troverei la speranza che non vi ho riconosciuto.

Colonna sonora:
Sullo sfondo, chissà dove, c’era della musica: Peter, Paul & Mary che cantavano Lemon Tree, dal remoto ’65. “Le-mun tree, ve-ry pritty / and the lemun flower is sweet...”.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MLhYg...

e se la svecchiassimo?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bCDIt...

(*1)
Sportswriter (The Sportswriter, 1986)
Il giorno dell'Indipendenza (Independence Day, 1995)
Lo stato delle cose (The Lay of the Land, 2006)
Tutto potrebbe andare molto peggio (Let Me Be Frank With You, 2014)

[thewanderingjew · Rating 1 out of 5]

I found the book depressing and deceptive. I felt physically accosted by the author’s political views and personally insulted by them. If he wants to impugn the reputation of a former President or former presidential candidates, let him do it in a forum other than a novel meant to entertain. I found the book insulting to my intelligence and the intelligence of his readers. An author may write a novel about anything, but to insult the reader for having different views using verbal abuse and vile language is not worthy of any reader’s time or energy.
I finished the book simply to give the author more respect than he gave to me in the hope that at some point the story would legitimately prove me wrong and illustrate a good reason for the invective, illustrate the point that he was trying to prove, but instead it turned into a gratuitous political attack in the guise of a story about an angry, unpleasant, unfulfilled, 68 year old retired realtor. If he is an example of a liberal Democrat, it is not an attractive picture. He is selfish and self-centered. Under the guise of a book that seeks to address the unfairness of life and death, the tragedy of Hurricane Sandy, failed marriages, the loss of a child, illness at the end of life, among other things, we have a diatribe condemning the Republican with such blatant insults and filthy language, that the book is definitely not worth reading, unless of course, you are a bleeding heart Liberal! Then by all means, read it and enjoy the trashing of those who don’t agree with you. While it is an immature way to deal with disagreements, it seems to be the common approach of many liberal authors. I didn’t ever think I would have to give a litmus test to the authors of prospective books, but now I may have to research their politics before I choose to read their books. Perhaps he is a liberal who falls at the feet of Obama, but not all his readers are of that ilk, and whether or not they are, it is improper for him to imply that those who disagree with his views are “asinine” or brown shirts or racists.
This is the third in a series and I have no desire to refresh my memory about the other two. I am truly sorry, I read this one. If the author wants to voice his political opinion he should run for office or write a non-fiction piece informing the reader of his intent.
If I wanted a book about political partisanship, I would have searched for one. He intentionally disparages the Tea Party, Mitt Romney, former President Bush, among others, while he lays wreaths at the feet of Obama. If it weren’t for the abject pandering to liberals and their views, there might have been some saving grace in the novel, but as it stands now, there was not. The book was dry with inappropriate comparisons of events and inappropriate moral equivalents. I failed to find the humor in it satisfactory or appealing, rather it was bleak.
The author used his pen to voice his political beliefs calling Governor Christie the candied yam and comparing members of the Tea Party to Brown Shirts, describing them as Jew hating, white lovers. If name-calling is the calling card of the Democrat, don’t count me among them and definitely save me from anymore of these disguised political treatises. This author owes many of his readers an apology.

[Melissa · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is my favorite Frank yet. Gentler, less caustic, but still wry, grumpy, my favorite reformed bad boy Frank. I tore through the first two stories then forced myself to slow down with the last two. Richard Ford is a master. Looking forward to rereading earlier Franks in the new year.

[Rafa · Rating 5 out of 5]

Con ningún personaje me he sentido más identificado que con Frank Bascombe. Mi libro del año.

[Mona · Rating 4 out of 5]

Poignant--and Darkly Comical--Meditations on Aging, Death, Nature's Destructiveness, and Life

I liked this much, much more than I liked "Canada".

We're back with our old friend Frank Bascombe.

And he's as cynical, observant, self-deprecating and mordantly funny as ever.

He is also sorrowful in a muted way, mourning the ending of his life and of life as he once knew it.

Frank's observations of New Jersey life are spot on.

He is a kind of upper middle class philosopher.

In this book, though, he is often at war with his impulses as he tries to do the right thing in spite of himself.

This isn't so much a novel as a loosely connected group of short stories. It doesn't have the traditional story arc of a novel. It's more a like a series of meditations on aging, death, disease, friendship, the destructiveness of nature, and change.

As with previous novels in this series, Frank is the central character and narrator.

In this book, Frank is retired. He is no longer a real estate agent.

He often sees himself as irrelevant or useless. He is lonely.

He and his wife Sally Caldwell have moved back to Haddom, New Jersey.

He's the regular guy who you see in the hardware store. Except that he's smarter, more observant, more articulate, and more affluent than most.

This book takes place after Hurricane Sandy has plowed through the Northeast, leaving destruction in her wake.

Frank and Sally are lucky. Their Haddom home was sufficiently inland that Sandy spared it. They had once lived on the shore, but had sold their shore house and moved inland several years ago.

Sally is working as a grief counselor for people who've lost homes or loved ones to the storm.

Frank is knocking around, doing a little of this and a little of that.

He's a survivor of prostate cancer.

In one chapter, he reluctantly agrees to meet Arnie Urquhart at the Jersey Shore.

Frank sold Arnie his upscale house on the shore in the town of Seacliff.

Sandy destroyed the house, and Arnie needs someone to witness the destruction for him.

In another chapter, an African American history teacher--a stranger--who used to live in Frank's house in Haddom shows up to reveal a startling bit of history about the house.

In still another chapter, Frank visits his ex-wife Ann (who has Parkinson's) in an assisted living facility called Carnage Heights or something like that.

This piece is a savage and very funny send up of Feng Shui, New Agers, upscale senior residences, etc.

It's also an observation of Ann skewering Frank for "not loving her enough". Frank doesn't agree, but he keeps it to himself.

He's brought a therapeutic pillow (selected by Sally) as a gift for Ann.

In a very funny (and sad) passage he ruminates, "What do I have to offer her? A pillow?"

In another chapter, Frank rues the changes in his neighborhood. There are now massage parlors and congenial neighbors are a thing of the past.

In the final chapter, Frank (again reluctantly) visits an old buddy, Eddie, who's on his death bed. Eddie lives in a McMansion and twists Frank's arm until he visits.

Frank does a savage send up (in his mind) of the pettiness and foolishness of old white people.

Ford ends the chapter (and the book) on an upbeat note though.

Frank runs into Elijah, an African American guy who delivers heating oil.

Elijah, thinks Frank, is "the best of us". He and his wife are going out and helping hurricane victims (through their church) with food and other assistance. They are even studying Spanish for this purpose.

Richard Poe is pitch perfect delivering the audiobook.

[Paula Hagar · Rating 5 out of 5]

Oh how I have missed Frank Bascombe. And how do love Richard Ford? Let me count the ways with some of my favorite quotes from this laugh-out-loud little novella about, among other things, aging.

"I now feel the need to more consciously pick my feet up when I walk. The gramps shuffle being the unmaskable final journey approach signal. It’ll also keep me from falling down and busting my ass.
What is it about falling? 'He died of a fall.' 'The poor thing never recovered after his fall.' 'Death came relatively quickly after a fall in the backyard.' How fucking far do these people fall? Off of buildings? Over spuming cataracts? Down manholes? Is it farther to the ground than it used to be? In years gone by I’d fall on the ice; hop back up, and never think a thought. Now it’s a death sentence."

"Why am I now a walking accident waiting to happen? Why am I more worried about that than whether there is an afterlife?"

"Like most conversations between consenting adults, nothing crucial’s been exchanged."

‘Everyone is seeing the new Arnie, the way he does in the mirror each morning, and it’s weird as hell. His big face, once scuffed and diveted by a boyhood on the briny, now looks lacquered. As though he’d gone to the islands and picked up some new facial features. Strange resurfacings and repointings. A follicle forest that’s now grown in but will never look natural. The smoothed out previously gumpled forehead; the stupid tree-lined hair implantation; the repaved cheeks and unruckled neck. I don’t look in mirrors anymore – it’s cheaper than surgery."

"What are we supposed to do with all the information we’ve been collecting and storing up in our brains to use someday? I could put it on Facebook, but as Eddie Medley says, Everybody knows everything and already doesn’t know what to do with it."

There are so many wonderful passages in this book that had me laughing loudly. If you are able to find an audio version of this, I highly recommend it. It truly brings Frank Bascombe to life in a way that is missed from simply reading the book. I loved this beyond all reason.

[Oscar · Rating 4 out of 5]

De nuevo Richard Ford nos devuelve a su personaje por antonomasia, Frank Bascombe. Anteriormente a ‘Francamente, Frank’ (2014), Ford publicó ‘El periodista deportivo‘ (1986), ‘El Día de la Independencia’ (1995) y ‘Acción de Gracias’ (2006), todas protagonizadas por el cínico y reflexivo Frank.

La prosa de Richard Ford es fluida y clara, parece que esté escrita con facilidad, sin esfuerzo, algo que resulta engañoso. Ford trata temas profundos, como la muerte, la vejez y la condición humana, con el trasfondo de los estragos del huracán Sandy. Ford nos presenta a un Frank Bascombe de sesenta y ocho años, divertido, irónico y mordaz, cuando ya hace un tiempo que ha dejado de ejercer como agente inmobiliario. Me gusta cómo ha hecho envejecer Richard Ford a su personaje. Existe cierto parecido entre este personaje y Harry “Conejo” Angstrom, el personaje de John Updike, que personalmente opino que no envejeció tan bien a lo largo de sus novelas.

'Francamente, Frank' (Let Me Be Frank With You), se compone de cuatro relatos entrelazados que tienen lugar en vísperas de la Navidad de 2012, cuando hacía tan solo unos meses del huracán Sandy.

En ‘Aquí estoy’, Frank, que ahora reside junto a su esposa Sally en Haddam, Nueva Jersey, acude a visitar su antigua casa junto al mar. En ‘Todo podría ser peor’, Frank recibe la visita de una mujer que vivió anteriormente en su casa y desea volver a verla por dentro. En ‘La nueva normalidad’ Frank se dispone a visitar a su ex mujer Ann, que sufre de Parkinson y vive en un centro de atención prolongada de primera clase. Y en ‘Muertes de otros’, Frank decide visitar a un viejo amigo moribundo. Relatos tristes, trágicos y esperanzadores a un tiempo.

Ha sido un placer reencontrarse con el bueno de Frank.

[Tina · Rating 1 out of 5]

Richard Ford's Frank Bascombe books, of which "Let Me Be Frank With You" is the fourth, are essentially a study of one character: Frank. So, whether or not you like these books has a lot to do with whether or not you like Frank or are interested in what he's thinking. I'm not. I really, really am not. I haven't read the previous books, but in "Let Me Be Frank With You", Bascombe is a 68-year-old slightly horny, slightly racist, and very grumpy old white man. Through the four novellas of this book, all which take place in the months after Hurricane Sandy, Frank just floats through as an emotionally detached observer. As a relatively healthy, mobile senior he's already gone into "Default Self", seemingly counting down the days until he kicks the can. Blah. Nothing about this book was compelling to me. To read more and some very illuminating quotes, go to www.iwantmichikosjob.com.

[Chris Dietzel · Rating 5 out of 5]

It says a lot about Richard Ford's ability to write meaningful dialogue based around genuine characters that this is the weakest of his four Bascombe novels and yet it's still a 5-star rating. The story has the same subtle awareness of the world that all of Ford's books have, but in this one you feel like the author is not only saying goodbye to a character that has existed over 30 years (The Sportswriter was published in 1986), you also get the sense that Ford is coming to terms with the twilight of his own life. For anyone who hasn't read Ford, I recommend you start with The Sportswriter and progress through the Bascombe novels in order.

[Shane · Rating 3 out of 5]

You can’t help but like Frank Bascombe, Ford’s answer to Updike’s Rabbit Angstrom and Roth’s Nathan Zuckerman. It seems to be a convenient device for a career author to roll out his alter-ego every decade or so for a visit to our screwed up world, so that he can cast his cynical and judgemental view upon it from behind the safety of his fictional self.

And yet, Frank is likeable in his wordy, prejudiced and flawed way. In this book of four linked stories, he is 68 years old, retired from his career in real-estate, and creaking at the seams. He suffers from vertigo and is “fartational” (prone to unexpected and embarrassing bursts of farting). He is also suffering from immense guilt for surviving Hurricane Sandy without property damage, for seeing his ex-wife slowly succumb to Parkinson’s, and for meeting an old colleague who is ending his days in a hospice. In fact, Hurricane Sandy is the central theme of this book, acting as a metaphor for God’s wrath brought down upon an upwardly mobile and materialistic Middle America obsessed with beach-front properties and cosmetic surgery. Everyone is affected, so much that Franks present wife, Sally, is providing grief-counselling to hurricane victims.

In the first story, Frank visits a former client, Arnie, to whom he sold his former beach-front house, now wrecked in Sandy’s wake. Arnie calls Frank to pay him a visit, not to get his advice on what to do with the wreck but to have Frank share in his pain and ego battering. In guilt, Frank submits and takes all of Arnie’s snide edging without retaliation. The same guilt accompanies him when visits his ailing ex-wife, Ann, in the third story at her state-of-the-art retirement home where the motto is “Old Is Where You Want To Be”; Ann believes the hurricane exacerbated her onset of Parkinson’s while Frank is trying to deconstruct his first marriage that produced children but ended in failure. Despite all the trappings of retired wealth, Ann is unable to escape the spectre of her advancing disease. Unlike Arnie wanting Frank to visit his former wrecked home, Ms. Pines in the second story, wants to visit Frank’s present home that has been saved from the storm, to remind herself of growing up as a black woman (the term Negro is used by the first-person narrator, Frank, and I wondered whether this is to reveal his innate racism) in a white neighbourhood in the ‘60’s. In the final story, Frank visits the dying Eddie, a former friend and a brilliant inventor who is preaching the message that “you can’t take it with you when you go,” and who in his dying breath gives Frank clues to the failure of his marriage to Ann.

As a narrator, Frank has to dissect and philosophize every observation and incident, which creates an unnecessary drag to the book, even though his observations are wise, insightful and cutting. Some quotes stick with me: “Love is a series of small acts,” “ Writing a novel - the last outpost for the doomed optimist” and “Most memoirists don’t have much to say, although they work hard at turning that fact into a vocation.” And yet there is too much of this book going on in Frank’s (or Ford’s) head and chronological details are repeated in each story that are unnecessary unless one is reading each story with long breaks in-between.

This was my first Frank Bascombe book, and I liked him. I think I will read more, even though I may be going backwards in time.

[Richard Block · Rating 5 out of 5]

Franky Terrific

Frank Bascombe is to Richard Ford what Rabbit Angstrom was to John Updike. However good or bad their other writing, both men could turn to their 'go to' characters and end up with a terrific novel. After the letdown of the ambitious 'Canada', Ford snaps back into form with this new work. His core character is raging and facing the end with a snide smile. In 'Let Me Be Frank With You' , Bascombe is all about comforting others with his bland encouragements and subtle, unfelt support. Frank knows what it is to be getting old and gaining a new perspective on life, and he is not to happy with the whole deal.

It might be stretching the term novel. This is more like 4 short continuous stories featuring the voice of Frank. The first takes him to his now destroyed, former house of the coast, devastated by Hurricane Sandy, comforting his cash buyer Arne. He doesn't know what Arne wants of him. Does he want his money back? Does he want to blame Frank? Kill him?

The second story is based in Frank's new home in Haddam, near Trenton. A middle aged, well dressed black woman waits outside, wanting to go inside for a look, because it was once her home. As it turns out, terrible things happened in that home, and she seeks comfort from Frank in her revelations of the tragedy she recalls. Frank becomes, once again, a human comfort blanket, but a conflicted one. He is more honestly perplexed by her memoir, but manages to keep it together and offer his bland wisdom and support.

The escalation mounts as Frank visits his ex-wife Ann, now divorced 30 years, who resides in a nearby nursing home that pretends it is a wellness resort. This is a very funny, bitter story, full of Ford's best wit and observations. Ann is not a nice character, and i can't blame Frank for running away from her. With her creeping Parkinson's Disease, she manages to cut a not very sympathetic figure. Frank can't and won't offer her much comfort other than a new orthopaedic pillow.

The final story focuses on death itself in the form of an old acquaintance, a man nicknamed Olive, who is dying from cancer. Out of the blue, he calls Frank and asks him to come over. He revels a dark secret to Frank, a deathbed confession that should shake Frank up. Olive needs the comfort of confession. But Frank is unmoved. He has passed the point of caring, and lets the reader know that there is nothing that can shake a man facing his own mortality. Life is what it is, and then as far as he is concerned no more.

I found this book beautifully written, very funny, wise and no nonsense. It lacks any greater purpose than to expose one man's rather shallow life coming to an end. It is Ford's Rabbit At Rest, and if you think that's faint praise, well, think again. One of the best books of 2014. A Ford everyone should drive

[Jeanette]

I'm not giving this one a rating, because I don't think I read it slowly or accurately enough to do so. The writing is excellent, at least a 4.

But it's just not the book for me, so after about a third, I skimmed or speed read for more than 100 pages and then did read the last chapters slowly.

He has wit and can convey thoughts and context associations of senior and ordinary men, quite well. He also defines his protagonist sharply and intensely by his extreme likes and dislikes, reactive almost entirely. He does this amidst modern cultural values or trivia for the exact period to a T.

If John Updike had a writing twin it would be Richard Ford. Their writing and their characters nearly the same men too. A way with words to nuance point- remarkable chic in the same way, as well.

But the central character, the voice here! He was repulsive and so off-putting to me that I couldn't see spending any more time reading his humor of hubris and/or egotistic opinions of superior cruelty. Disguised as it was in such excellent skills of language, that dichotomy earns a zero star. I would put Frank on the "evil" shelf and leave him there.

[Philippe Malzieu · Rating 3 out of 5]

Is there a life after "Canada". Not sure. From my point of view, "Canada" is one of the greatest book of this beginning of the XXIth century. Perhaps it is this fascination for american mythology.
Here, we change the level. It makes me think to last Philippe Roth's books (without prostate's problem).
It is thus the fourth volume on the life of Frank Bascombe versus old age. Our hero lives his retirement by limiting his friendships to 5 people. He carries out a life petit-bourgeois, egoist, not very glamour. Not easy to impassion himself for him. And then the hurricane Sandy appears. Frank is complained to show empathy for the others. It is rather foreseeable. In short a disappointment. But it is well written and is well better than much another successful books.

[Gaylord Dold · Rating 1 out of 5]

Ford, Richard. Let Me Be Frank, Ecco (Harper Collins), New York, 2014
(238pp.$27.99)

The loathsome character Frank Bascombe continues to tunnel away at writer Richard Ford’s time and talent, both of them, writer and main character, now nearly hollow, each nearly filled to ooze-point with snide metaphysical certainty, hateful disdain for common virtue, and a smirking buddy-buddy haughtiness not unfamiliar to male Middle School culture. Ford continues to write beautiful prose—maybe too beautiful by half, a prose haunted by narcissistic prancing. Bascombe, his face always in the mirror, ages, but sheds wisdom, honor, kindness, decency, fellow-feeling and hope, as if all these acknowledged ideals were just body armor and not, as most of us think, warm skin that grows between us and the Monstrous Emptiness.

In his original incarnation (“The Sportswriter”, 1986), Bascombe was a man in a bad marriage wounded by the death of his son. He became withdrawn, guarded, and emotionally detached. In the bloated “Independence Day” (1995) and the hyper-bloated “Lay of the Land” (2006), Ford moved Bascombe to New Jersey, where he became a realtor in the suburbs and exurbs where the hollowing out—environmental, existential, emotional, sexual and personal, commenced in earnest. The endless malls, freeways, bridges, residential tracts, and commercial zones of New Jersey’s shore, melded with Bascombe’s behavior to create an unflattering drama of America entering a truly materialist phase, coupled with civic and physical decline pictured by Ford as a mordant satire, fleece-lined with a brilliant writer’s spiraling syntax, letter-perfect vocabulary, and subtle but empty intelligence.

“Let Me Be Frank With You”—has there ever been a worse (almost self-consciously bad?) title, links four short stories that take place during the Christmas season after Hurricane Sandy has laid waste to large portions of Bascombe’s hunting grounds. Luckily for Frank, he sold his shore house to a guy named Arnie and his new house remains unscathed, his pot of equity still in tact. It goes like this: Story One—Arnie, in despair, calls on Frank for advice about his destroyed property; Story Two—a black woman (a “vestigial Negro, in Frank’s lingo) visits Frank at home with a terrible family story to tell; Story Three—Frank takes an orthopedic pillow to his ex-wife Ann, now suffering from the onset of Alzheimer’s; Story Four—an old “friend” Eddie, now on his deathbed, calls for a visit from Frank, who reluctantly goes, only to be told a confession.

In each case, something is asked of Frank. Arnie wants hope and fellow feeling; Ms. Pines (the vestigial Negro) wants only a little time to contemplate her past; Ann hopes to talk about their shared children, but knows Frank too well to expect much; Eddie wants to get something off his chest before dying. Frank makes not a single concession to any of these people, regarding them as either annoyances or specimens. Contemplating his children and their lives occupies Frank a little, but their status and Being he regards as purely a social function, nothing more. As a “professional liberal”, Frank reads to the blind and welcomes veterans home from the Wars at the airport, but even these acts he looks on with cool dispassion. (“This fall, I’ve been reading Naipaul’s “The Enigma of Arrival”, thirty minutes is all they can stand…From all I know about the blind from the letters they send me, they’re pissed off about the same things he’s pissed off about—the wrong people getting everything, fools too-long suffered, the wrong ship coming into the wrong port.”). Ann’s staged-care facility looks like “the home décor department at Nordstrom”. Frank’s compassion is easily summed up in his reaction to Arnie’s need: “Like most conversations between consenting adults, nothing crucial’s been exchanged. Arnie just needed someone to show his mangled house to. And there’s no reason that someone shouldn’t be me. It’s a not-unheard-of human impulse.”

The writer Ford tells us that the character Bascombe is exhibiting his “Default-Self”, the assemblage or impersonation of a human being, allowing the character not to seem cynical. More likely is that Richard Ford has become the Default-Writer, talking to his readers in the guise of a man who is supposed to be a retired sportswriter, sexless realtor, and faux-friend, but who, nevertheless, makes knowing asides about “go-to-Roethke” modes of conversation, or who spouts references to Auden in a casual and knowing manner, and to Obama “getting his little black booty spanked by Romney about fiscal stewardship”. Here, in the poetry references and clean-lined cleverness, Ford upstages his main character in a way that a writer like Balzac or Bellow never did.

Some of Ford’s opinions are so vile as to be unforgivable. “Where I was standing in my pajamas, staring out the front window as the Elizabethtown Water meter-reader strode up to the front walk to check on our consumption, my mind fled back to the face of the ultra-sensual Mary (of Peter, Paul and Mary…)—cruel-mouthed, earthy, blond hair slashing, her alto-voiced promise of no-nonsense coitus you’d renounce all dignity for, while knowing full well you couldn’t make the grade. A far cry from how she ended life years on—mu-muu’d and unrecognizable. Which one of the other two was the weenie waver?”
Aside from the unforgivable falseness of this picture of a beautiful, talented, giving, loving, full-of-hope and politically committed woman, as well as the pointless sexual innuendo, there is the gaunt and purposeless nature of these dual insults, delivered sotto voce. I guess it doesn’t matter to Ford or Bascombe that Mary Travers was suffering, later in life, from terminal leukemia.

Sexless, joyless and emotionally cruel, Frank Bascombe deserves place of pride in one of the Circles of Hell. In his own words: “My mass has simply been deemed deficient…Character to me, is one more lie of history and the dramatic arts. In my view we have only what we did yesterday, what we do today, and what we might still do. But northing else—nothing hard and kernel-like. I’ve never seen evidence of anything resembling it. In fact I’ve seen the opposite: life as teeming and befuddling, followed by the end.”

So much for Huck on the Mississippi; so much for Nick Adams on the Big Two-Hearted River; so much for Walt Whitman and Philip Roth and the existential courage of Albert Camus. So much for what we’ve learned from the Greeks and Romans, the Christian martyrs; much less what we learned from the guys on Omaha Beach at D-Day. What Ford serves up is Frank Bascombe, with his spoiled Swiss cheese soul.

[Camie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ford’s latest book about Frank Bascombe finds him ruminating about what his life has become at age 68. I’ve enjoyed this series which follows Frank’s life decade to decade in the style of Sinclair’s Babbitt. Though I’m also in my sixties this was the least interesting of the series for me. The author himself is 70 so perhaps there will be another book offering me the secret insights of wisdom those of us of a certain age are waiting to learn ;-)
3.5 stars

[Ellen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Let Me Be Frank With You (a title much lamented by most reviewers but by me not so much) by Richard Ford is the last in the series of books that began with The Sportswriter, then continued with Independence Day and The Lay of the Land. Although they varied somewhat in quality (with The Sportswriter flawlessly the best), I've loved them all. Let Me Be Frank with You is up there with the best.

Let Me Be Frank With You consists of four loosely connected stories, almost chapters of a larger story. Frank is 68 now, a survivor of prostate cancer but the book seems largely his preparation for death. Although I loved the writing (as always), I was unprepared for how depressing I found it. Maybe because I'm only a few years younger, it was very painful to see Frank largely divesting himself of everything-even words (he calls it "stripping down"). Maybe Frank was always already a little "stripped down," maintaining a low-level response to life no matter how he actually felt; maybe, with the loss of his son, he felt too much, maybe he's just a highly defended (even from himself) person, but he seems to be accommodating death too well. Not that he doesn't like life, just that he doesn't seem to let himself like it too much.

That being said, Frank is the perfect observer-always acknowledging his presence even while stepping away from a scene, seeing himself sometimes all too clearly. I wanted to comfort him but from what I don't know. His house has been spared the ravages of Hurricane Sandy (unlike his old house-something in that destruction of his past life seemed important), his ex-wife's contempt, and the knowledge brought to him in one of the stories that his current house was once the scene of a horrific tragedy. The constant presence of the past, the encroachment of death and loss (his wife Sally is volunteering as a grief counselor to victims of the hurricane), renders Frank even in his speech almost mute, as though what there is to be said is too great to be said.

This left me feeling an ache and a sadness that Frank would deny feeling. He's always fine, no matter what sadness he is dealing with. And his fineness left me gutted.

[Steve Petherbridge · Rating 5 out of 5]

Since John Updike left us, Richard Ford is my favourite living American writer. Updike had Rabbitt Angstrom and Ford has Frank Bascombe. Both authors revisited their respective characters from time to time. There has been a trilogy of Bascombe novels and this is another gem for all Richard Ford fans. This book is comprised of four short stories. Bascombe is now 68 and entering the twilight years of an eventful life. Not a lot happens in these books, yet they are rich in commentary on modern American life, small town American life and chronicle the successes and failures, strengths and weaknesses of a good life led by an ordinary man, a man in many ways like us. Ford is a master of both the short story and the novel genres and he holds the reader in the palm of his hand.
Frank Bascombe, an American everyman, in many ways has made Richard Ford into the Pulitzer prize winning writer that he is. Would we have heard of either without the other? Of course Richard Ford would have risen to the top. My comment is too simplistic. "In this new book of stories set around Christmas 2012, nothing as dramatic happens to the sportswriter turned estate agent, but mortality hangs heavy. Frank, now retired, visits his ex-wife, who has Parkinson’s; in another story, he has cause to reassess their marriage after a friend’s surprising deathbed confession. Elsewhere, an African-American woman who grew up in Frank’s house arrives out of the blue to reveal the horror that once transpired in his basement. At 68, Frank has a year on Ford, and the texture of his narration consists of the details of later life. Yet Frank’s appeal for sympathy also rests on more specific assumptions about his audience. When the visitor who grew up in his house begins her life story, he likens it to fiction from The New Yorker, to her incomprehension, or indifference."
All four stories can stand alone - a testament to the artistry of Richard Ford.
The title of one story - “Everything Could Be Worse” could sum up Frank Bascombe's life. "This is the keynote: Frank’s life has been far from painless, but if you reckon “there’s something to be said for a good no-nonsense hurricane, to bully life back into perspective”, you have to be pretty comfortable to begin with." Welcome back Frank Bascombe. Welcome back Richard Ford. Similar to John Updike's recent biography, which showed a great amount of his writing was based on personal experience, we shall have to wait for a biography of Richard Ford to see how much of Richard Ford is in Frank Bascombe!

[Frabe · Rating 4 out of 5]

Frank Bascombe - quello di “Sportswriter”, “Il giorno dell'Indipendenza”, “Lo stato delle cose” - è tornato! E con lui, personaggio normale protagonista di vicende normali, è tornato Ford, il Ford autentico, godibile - molto diverso da quello che in “Canada” si era cimentato con una storia a tinte forti raccontandola fiaccamente.
Il romanzo si impernia su quattro momenti di Bascombe, ben distinti ma collocati in giorni ravvicinati alla fine del 2012, dopo le distruzioni operate dall'uragano Sandy sulla costa orientale degli Stati Uniti. Frank, al tempo, ha sessantotto anni - come Ford -, un'età di memorie, bilanci, riflessioni esistenziali - che in effetti abbondano, caratterizzate dalla consueta franchezza (il titolo originale del romanzo è “Let Me Be Frank With You”), da una simpatica vena di autoironia e da un fondo di moderato ottimismo - perché quasi sempre, a ben vedere, "tutto potrebbe andare molto peggio"; un'età nella quale si dovrebbero dosare le forze, per una progressiva “aerodinamizzazione della vita in previsione degli ultimi emozionanti tuffi nel vuoto dell'ottovolante”: Frank vorrebbe senz'altro evitare le incombenze evitabili ma in lui, diviso in partenza tra cinismo e umanità, finisce solitamente col prevalere la seconda, in forma di presenza e ascolto, sicché a suo modo, disordinatamente - a differenza della moglie Sally, ordinatamente impegnata nell'aiuto alle vittime dell'uragano -, Frank dà.

[Agnes · Rating 4 out of 5]

Oggi il libraio della Lovat, mi ha detto che sarebbe meglio non leggere di seguito tutti i libri di uno stesso autore . Questa la sua opinione e questo l’errore che ho fatto io con Ford ;
conseguenza : ricordo poco dei libri, con la fretta di passare al prossimo, e alla fine non li apprezzo quanto giustamente meritano.
Memore di ciò ho riguardato la valutazione che avevo dato a questo terzo romanzo di Ford letto ( mi manca il secondo della quadrilogia : Il giorno dell'Indipendenza ) ed ho aggiunto una stellina, perché la merita !

[Kathleen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Frank Bascombe continues to be one of the best fictional characters to spend time with. I hope he outlives me.

[Mientras Leo · Rating 4 out of 5]

Siempre es un placer volver a encontrarme con Bascombe

[David Carrasco · Rating 4 out of 5]

Hay libros que no se escriben para contar algo, sino para confirmar que aún queda alguien ahí. Francamente, Frank es exactamente eso: la constatación de que Frank Bascombe sigue en pie, aunque apenas.

Más que una novela, este último capítulo (*) en la saga de Richard Ford es una serie de cuatro relatos largos que funcionan como una postdata existencial, una última ronda antes de apagar las luces. No hay épica ni revelación ni resolución. Lo que hay es un hombre de sesenta y ocho años, un país roto, y una prosa que se arrastra con la dignidad de quien ya ha perdido casi todo lo que importaba… pero sigue abriendo la puerta al cartero con una media sonrisa.

Y lo hace en 2012, en una América recién sacudida por el huracán Sandy, un país devastado —literalmente— y reconstruido con prisa y parches. Justo como él. Los relatos giran en torno a visitas, reencuentros, situaciones absurdas o incómodas, todo en ese tono de falsa cotidianidad que Ford domina como nadie: nada parece extraordinario, pero cada frase lleva un peso específico. Aquí no hay trama, hay presencia. Frank está. Observa. Comenta. Resiste. Y lo que dice no es precisamente alentador, pero sí certero. Más que nunca, parece hablar para sí mismo, como si llevara años ensayando una última conversación que nunca llegará a tener.

Una conversación que adopta forma de cuatro relatos largos, independientes pero con el mismo tono terminal. Los cuentos —que podrían haberse llamado Cuatro formas de envejecer con sarcasmo— no son uniformes, pero comparten esa sensación de intemperie moral. En el primero, Frank visita la casa que una vez fue suya y que el huracán ha destrozado. Ya no es suya, claro, pero va igual, como uno va al lugar donde fue feliz —ese al que nunca debieras tratar de volver— sin saber muy bien por qué. En el segundo, un antiguo conocido del pasado le pide un gesto de compasión. En el tercero, visita a su exmujer, ahora enferma, que vive en una residencia de lujo, distante como un recuerdo que duele. Y en el último, un extraño le revela una historia oscura sobre su casa actual. Son cuentos que se leen como paseos por un cementerio personal: cada visita es una tumba sin lápida, una oportunidad para no decir lo que se debería.

Esa ausencia, ese silencio que cala en cada relato, se refleja en la prosa de Ford: una sequedad casi nihilista, sin énfasis ni piedad. Frank no se permite el lujo de la tristeza abierta: la entierra bajo capas de ironía, de reflexiones medio cínicas, medio sabias, y de esa lucidez crepuscular que sólo tiene el que ha sobrevivido a su propia importancia. Ya no hay espacio para reformular la vida, solo para mantenerla en marcha. Aunque sea con prótesis emocionales.

Así, en este libro, Frank ya no es un hombre en tránsito: es el que ha llegado al final del camino y se ha sentado en el arcén a mirar cómo pasan los demás. Hay momentos en los que se nota que apenas puede sostener el personaje que fue en las novelas anteriores. Pero ahí sigue. Contestando a todo con frases secas, negándose al sentimentalismo, agarrado a una idea cada vez más frágil de decencia. Y es esa resistencia, esa negativa a dramatizar lo inevitable, la que lo convierte en alguien a quien no puedes evitar reconocer.

Y quizá sea esa misma resistencia la que lleva a Ford a negarse a darle a Frank un cierre redondo Hay algo profundamente triste —y admirable— en ello. No hay despedida. No hay epílogo. Solo más vida, más desgaste, más conciencia de que lo que queda no es para grandes gestos, sino para mantener la compostura mientras se cae todo alrededor. Por eso, Francamente, Frank es el libro más honesto de los cuatro. El más doloroso también, porque ya ni siquiera disimula el vacío: lo muestra como quien enseña una herida vieja, sin ganas de hablar de ella, pero sin esconderla.

Así, en conjunto, la saga Bascombe se revela como una obra monumental sobre la vida cuando ya no hace falta fingir. El periodista deportivo fue la ilusión de la reconstrucción. El Día de la Independencia , la tentativa de entendimiento. Acción de gracias , el triunfo de la resignación lúcida. Y Francamente, Frank, el eco final. No un final brillante, ni trágico, ni esperanzador. Solo un hombre que ya no espera, pero aún respira. Que no quiere ser recordado, pero tampoco olvidado. Que no busca alivio, solo algo de silencio.

Y eso, en estos tiempos de ruido estéril, ya es una forma de dignidad.


[* Postdata:]

Durante casi una década, creímos que Francamente, Frank era el adiós: el último acto de un hombre que sólo quería pasar desapercibido en su propia vida. Pero en 2024, Richard Ford decidió retomar una vez más a Frank Bascombe y publicó Sé mía (Be Mine), la quinta entrega de la saga, que funciona como un epílogo tardío, casi un susurro final.

Frank, ya en los márgenes del todo, acompaña a su hijo Paul, enfermo terminal, en un viaje que no busca redención ni sentimentalismos, sino simplemente humanidad. Es un libro escrito desde la vejez más cruda, con la conciencia de que ya no queda tiempo para simbolismos ni para grandes frases. Sólo queda estar ahí. Respirar un poco más. Y tal vez —solo tal vez— sostenerle la mano a alguien en el tramo final.

Sé mía no desmiente Francamente, Frank; lo completa con un gesto silencioso. Como si Ford nos dijera que la vida no se termina cuando uno cree, sino cuando ya no queda nadie a quien mirar mientras se apaga la luz.

[Harry Jr. · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm a long time reader and fan of Richard Ford. When "Independence Day" came out in 1995, set during the 4th of July timeframe in 1988, I saw an article on it in The Wall Street Journal, and then decided to read its predecessor "The Sportswriter," (set over Easter weekend, 1982) which was released in 1986, first. I then read "Independence Day," and some of his short stories collections, including "Women with Men." I was excited to read the presumably last and final chapter in the life and times of Frank Bascombe in "The Lay of the Land," set over Thanksgiving weekend in 2000. I think of these works as containing deep imagery and human reflection within the realm of historically-applied fiction, a wonderful cocktail to share with oneself, alone, late at night.

Thus, I was extremely excited to see this "bonus" novella-like work with four interconnected longish short stories from the world of Mr. Bascombe, set around Christmas, 2012. If you're a fan of the earlier Bascombe adventures, it's simply criminal not to read it. And you will enjoy catching up with an old friend, or "older" friend as Bascombe is now 68 and feeling perhaps older than his years. Bascombe has gone from "dreaminess" in the first novel to "existence" period of the second, to the "Permanent" period of the 3rd novel...to the Default Period.

But what if you haven't read any of the Frank Bascombe stories, or aren't a fan of Richard Ford? Would you enjoy it?

The short answer is yes, particularly if you are looking for great imagery, deep insight into human relationships, especially when it comes to what is left unsaid and what is thought and felt, either in a conversation or in silence. I won't spoil the stories with what actually happens, but suffice it to say, Frank is reflective as ever as he deals again with "family" relationships, the aging of his peers and himself, and perhaps the indelicate aging of his memories, too. Dealing with the fallout of Hurricane Sandy, and its impact to some of his associates in New Jersey adds wonderful background to the stories. Note I did not use the term friend, as Frank Bascombe shares interesting thoughts on friendship at his age (and mental state).

As first time novelist, I created my protagonist Mark Amici of my recently published novel "The Naive Guys," l as very much a descendent of this type of writing. Of course, it is nowhere near as good. But even with this fourth edition of the life and times of Mr. Bascombe, I was amazed and uplifted how Mr. Ford continues to deliver.

There's tons of compelling, thought-provoking universal truths that emerge from Frank's thoughts in the novel. Two of my favorite are "Love isn't a thing, after all, but an endless series of single acts" and "Since time invested determines the quality of a friendship, having more than five genuine friends is pretty much impossible."

I can only hope Richard Ford will change his mind once again, and give us a truly final Frank Bascombe novella set during a New Year's Eve yet to happen. Enjoy.