Richard Ford's 'Independence Day' captures essence of American condition

By Dean Bakopoulos
Daily Arts Writer

If the folks who give out the Pulitzer Prize for fiction use closing paragraphs as one of their deciding factors, it's no wonder that Richard Ford was this year's choice. Ford's "Independence Day" pulled in this year's Pulitzer (during the same two-week stretch in which he lassoed the PEN/Faulkner award for fiction), and the closing paragraph of the winning novel is a testament to Ford's rank as one of America's most adept prose practicioners. Emotional, yet restrained, full of meaning, yet subtle - this is how Ford ends "Independence Day." As a matter of fact, it's how he writes the whole damn thing.

"Independence Day" catches up with Frank Bascombe, hero of Ford's acclaimed 1986 novel, "The Sportswriter." Frank happens to be a graduate of the University of Michigan, and often recalls his "Ann Arbor days."

Frank has since given up his career as a sportswriter, as well as turned his back on writing short stories. Now, he simply sells real estate in Haddam, NJ, although the career move has taken only some of the complexity out of his life.

His ex-wife has since remarried a Yale man, and his son Paul, now 15, has been charged with shoplifting Magnum condoms. Among Paul's quirks are his inexplicable dog barking, a violent temper and other psychological problems. So, Frank plans to take his son on a Fourth of July weekend trip. Armed with a copy of Emerson's "Self-Reliance," he hopes to get to the bottom of his son's problems, all the while establishing a father-son relationship that would fill a void in both father and son's lives. He's through the crisis of epic porportions he suffered in "The Sportswriter," and now remains in what he calls the "Existence Period": "The part that comes after the big struggle that led to the big blowup."

On this "Independence Day" weekend, a time Frank calls an "observance of human possibility," Frank must deal not only with his problematic son, but also with a semi-relationship going semi-awry, stubborn and despairing realty clients, and a broad cast of characters whose existence somehow affects Frank. Sometimes the minor characters who sneak their way into Frank's holiday seem superfluous additions by Ford, but as a whole they make up a cast of characters who represent a very real and very touching portrait of the average American's condition. Some have hope, but most have lost it; and many of them directly or indirectly rely on Frank to return the hope and possibility to their lives.

In his vast and far-reaching novel, Ford relies not only on plot, but rather on a series of observations and ponderings though the eyes of Frank Bascombe, a distinctly American voice who, with "Independence Day," joins the ranks of some of the great American literary characters. Names like Nick Carraway, Harry Angstrom and Augie March come to mind as similar literary characters who have similarily captured the American condition. With the distinctly American "Independence Day," Ford has vaulted himself into the forefont of contemporary American novelists.