Be Mine

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They are an odd couple. Paul is 47, often in his wheelchair. They display their love through puns and insults. Earlier in the novel, Frank details a relationship he has with Betty, a Vietnamese American massage therapist who he considers marrying and who may or may not seriously consider him as anything more than a reliable client. This may have some point in a five-novel portrait of Frank Bascombe, but in a stand-alone story it really serves little purpose. 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. The relationship between father and son is both touching and a little rowdy, but as with all Bascombe books, the relationship of Frank to the universe is what it's all about. More than a passive observer, an optimist in spite of his skepticism, Frank, like all of us, is doing the best that he can.

Richard Ford: ‘Work. That’s what I do’ - Financial Times Richard Ford: ‘Work. That’s what I do’ - Financial Times

I am roughly the same age as Frank Bascombe so my adulthood has paralleled his. The subject of this chapter, his son’s ALS, as well as his own mortality made this a rather sobering read. However, the dark humor and Ford’s brilliant writing alleviate the pain.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. There is still something to be said about the author’s snarky humor and wit. His view of the world. From Pulitzer Prize winner Richard Ford: the final novel in the world of Frank Bascombe, one of the most indelible characters in American literature

Be Mine: : Richard Ford: Bloomsbury Publishing Be Mine: : Richard Ford: Bloomsbury Publishing

The thing about living this way is that you think nothing of driving 2,000 miles to reclaim something you’ve left behind.” Richard Ford is talking, via Zoom, about his recent move from Maine, in the northeastern corner of the USA, where he lived when I last spoke to him in 2020, to the southern city of New Orleans.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.” Other than my genius?” he laughs. “I think it’s probably because of something I admire myself in books that comes from a line of Henry James. ‘No themes are so human as those that reflect out of the confusion of life, the relationship between bliss and bile.’ I think the people who do like the books like them because they’re funny, and they’re funny about really grave things. There’s the old Borscht Belt comedian line: if nothing’s funny, nothing’s serious.” The two faces of tragedy and comedy are always joined, for me,” says Ford. “It wasn’t always important to me. But as I got on with life, and realised I was trying to write great books, in those [other] great books I cared about was tragedy and comedy joined.”

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

Over the course of four celebrated works of fiction and almost forty years, Richard Ford has crafted an ambitious, incisive and singular view of American life as lived. Unconstrained, astute, provocative, often laugh-out-loud funny, Frank Bascombe is once more our guide to the great American midway. I’m happy to say that if it hadn’t been for Updike, I probably would never have had the temerity to think that I could write connected books 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. In case we, like Hoffman, miss the point, Be Mine, the fifth and (I don’t think it really spoils anything to say) final Bascombe book, begins with a prologue entitled Happiness. Frank, “b 1945”, is “approaching my stipulated biblical allotment”. In this overture, he attends his high-school reunion, where he meets Pug Minokur, once the class basketball champ. Pug now has dementia and remembers nothing. “I’m really happy,” Pug says, before being led away by his grandson.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 typicalBascombe 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. Over the course of four celebrated works of fiction and almost fortyyears, Richard Ford has crafted an ambitious, incisive, and singular view of American life as lived.Unconstrained, astute, provocative, often laugh-out-loud funny, Frank Bascombe is once more our guide to thegreat American midway. In brief, the novel tells two stories: The slighter, opening one is set during the Civil War. Through letters and a journal we meet a woman named Elizabeth who keeps a boarding house where she fends off a sly "gentleman lodger" — an itinerant actor — who, she says, "is keen to relieve me of my spinsterhood ..."