has anyone read the new Richard Ford?

Read Independence Day a while back and was unimpressed. Then picked up a used Sportswriter just recently, and it was pretty awesome. Read it slowly, and just finished it. So I went back and tried Independence Day again, and still found it dull.

Not sure why. They seem like two entirely different types of books, even though there's obviously the same writer, same style, and even same structure to both. I don't really see the Frank of one becoming the Frank of the other. Don't see the themes of one translating even to the themes of the other.

Sportswriter felt very tight and focused on a particular sort of experience and meaning. The brief detour into academia was one of a few very neatly executed set pieces, and there seemed to be a great deal going on with the language, toward a purpose and effect. Independence Day, by comparison, feels very flat and conventional. The language is more crafted, but feels like there's little payoff.

Anyway, any pointers to good articles on the dude? Also, will LoL be closer to Sportswriter or ID territory (I fear the latter)?

Holy crap is Canada slow

Madison should have conquered it in 1812 :(

i can't read this guy at all. zzzzzzzz......

but i can't really read updike either, so, you know, whatever. ford kinda that dying breed of tough guys. sons of hemingway. which is fine by me. that they are a dying breed. i liked thom jones though. and i do like the southern tough guys. but they are dying too.

i read 'wildlife' a few weeks ago -- it surprised me @ how good it was

previously had read 'the sportswriter' & didnt think it was anything special

it could just be me though. other people like him. other writers like him. lorrie moore likes him.

i've tried in the past. just seemed tedious.

otm. There's a greyness to him -- maybe he's our Arnold Bennett or something

just feel like the southern white man blues at least has humor going for it. and more flights of fancy. and dementia. greyness is right. flatness. like he should be writing about prairies all day long. feel like cormac mccarthy isn't the right guy for me either. though i do still want to read the end of the world one. because i do love the end of the world. feel like there are some writers who were profoundly moved when they read updike and styron when they were younger and i am not this kind of person. and hemingway. i liked what hemingway i read when i was younger...but i never feel the need to revisit him. i liked older funnier delillo anyway. i liked a robert stone book once. nobody even really reads frank conroy or walker percy anymore do they? they still shoot horses, don't they?

Lorrie Moore's New Yorker description of the new Ford seemed appealing, maybe I'll check it out. Books I've read and liked, feeling no need for more by their authors (might well be my loss, though:
Geronimo Rex and Airships, Barry Hannah; Hall of Mirrors and Dog Soldiers, Robert Stone (actually I did read and was frustrated by Flag For Sunrise); The Moviegoer, Walker Percy. Would like to re-read Hemingway's early short stories, from the earliest.

Speaking of Hem, what Gellhorn should I read? Thinking of that new cable movie about 'em both.

Halfway through Canada at the moment...WOAHHH!!!! What a novel!

"It hurts to be criticized, and there is exhilaration in firing back, sometimes literally. The novelist Richard Ford, after a dismissive review from Alice Hoffman in The New York Times Book Review in 1986, shot bullets through one of her novels and mailed the mutilated thing to her. “My wife shot it first,” he reportedly said. Years later he spat in public upon the novelist Colson Whitehead, who had harshly reviewed another of his books. Afterward Whitehead commented, “This wasn’t the first time some old coot had drooled on me, and it probably won’t be the last.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/19/magazine/a-critic-makes-the-case-for-critics.html

I'm almost more a fan of hearing Ford read than reading him. I've had very mixed feelings about him for 20-some-odd-years now. There's a podcast of him reading and talking with Michael Silverblatt at the L.A. Public Library that is extraordinary, especially late in the Q and A:

http://www.lfla.org/event-detail/716/An-Evening-with-Novelist-Richard-Ford

Hearing him read, his accent and somewhat his demeanor remind me of George W. Bush.

he seems like a real turd

I've liked a few of his dessicated stories (the ones in Rock Springs) but man this guy plods.

I loved Rock Springs back in the day, liked Wildlife, and think the Bascombe triolgy is overrated. But, again, I've really enjoyed seeing him read and hearing him read.

Realized that part of the Bush connection is not just the region but the self-satisfied smugness that they share when coming up with a turn of phrase they particularly feel proud of.

I still remember reading smething Ford said in a book of recollections about Raymond Carver. He said: "Style is bullshit's sneaky cousin." Which, of course, is a sentence beaming with style.