The Sportswriter
by Richard Ford
read: 2021
Time 100 Novels, Guardian 1000 Novels
Ford sets The Sportswriter after a lot of the most critical events in the life of titular protagonist / narrator Frank Bascombe. Frank has gone from promising young writer to abandoning his fiction, from family man, to grieving father of a son struck down by untimely illness, to divorcée. The novel begins after all those events, with a protagonist who largely has come to terms with his tragedies and failures, and settled in comfortably to a life as a sportswriter in a New Jersey suburb.
Frank's maturity from life experience brings perspective as he navigates the events of the novel, as does the grounded reality of being a sportswriter. Late in the book, he sums things up with the observation "The only truth that can never be a lie, let me tell you, is life itself—the thing that happens."
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