Be Mine

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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. At the end of the book Frank is outside, contemplating his life, and a voice calls him. Maybe it's his hostess, maybe it's death. One of the hallmarks of the stories, and of your work in general, is the way you depict what I’ll call the changing emotional “weather” between your characters, especially in dialogue. Once again, Richard Ford has taken a slice of life that we all have or will have served to us at one time or another and finds the authentic pathos. The main story, set in the present day, concerns a teacher from Illinois named Finn who's come to New York to sit at the bedside of his dying brother. While at the hospice, Finn learns that Lily — his depressed former girlfriend with whom he's still hopelessly in love — has died by suicide. Distraught, he travels to her grave, only to be greeted by Lily herself, in the flesh — albeit, rapidly decaying flesh that causes her to smell "like warm food cooling." Because Lily says she wants her body to be moved to the forensic body farm in Knoxville, Tenn., Finn helps her into his car and off they go.

Be Mine by Richard Ford | Waterstones

Ford has a loud and faithful following among writers on both sides of the Atlantic....Every sentence is considered, yet many look like they’re about to fall apart in their devious careening. Something similar can be said of the meandering Bascombe books, too: Their course, like Frank’s, is uncompassed by design. Every detour offers an opportunity to ponder….The astonishing core of Be Mineis the barbed, tender, despairing bond between father and son.”— Adam Begley, The Atlantic And, as the fighting in Sudan continues, writer Fatin Abbas tells us about three novels which help to shed light on the country's complex history. A line in the novella The Run of Yourself reads: “Things happen that seem life-altering, then everything grinds down to being bearable – sometimes slightly better,” which felt resonant in this pandemic moment. Do you think it applies?

Looking away from Paul’s death, Frank looks instead at America – Ford’s other great subject in the Bascombe books, which now essentially constitute a social history of Ford’s own boomer generation from midlife to end times. If you do nothing, you will be auto-enrolled in our premium digital monthly subscription plan and retain complete access for 65 € per month.

Be Mine by Richard Ford | Book review | The TLS

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. Ford's writing is as lyrical as ever but Frank Bascombe takes on a new tint in Be Mine: less ironic, more understanding, more tender. I find it hard to subordinate what’s happening now to anything I would have written about it. Because what’s happening now will eventually have to become subordinate to people’s imaginations, but I don’t feel I have the language for what’s happening now. I wish, in a way, I did. This pandemic is going to produce some wonderful literature. That’s not much of a solace to us, but I wouldn’t even try to apply my thinking about these stories to the situation that’s before us now, because all those stories were framed around a world that’s in jeopardy of never existing again. The stories feel almost quaint. For cost savings, you can change your plan at any time online in the “Settings & Account” section. If you’d like to retain your premium access and save 20%, you can opt to pay annually at the end of the trial. Frank is different from Harry physically (in high school, Frank was hopeless at basketball), morally (you won’t catch Frank in flagrante with his daughter-in-law), and socially. Until he got rich as a middle-aged Toyota dealer, Harry was unequivocally blue collar. College-educated Frank is white collar all the way: a short-story writer, a sportswriter, a college professor (very briefly), then a real-estate agent. Frank has always had an expansive range of highbrow references. In Be Mine, “the old Nazi Heidegger,” “that scrofulous old faker Faulkner,” and the novels of J. M. Coetzee all pop up—not names Harry would ever drop.Age, forgetting, fathers, children, happiness: the scene is set. We switch to Rochester, Minnesota, where Frank’s unpleasant 47-year-old son Paul is taking part in a clinical trial at the Mayo Clinic. Paul has a form of motor neurone disease; his prognosis is terminal. Frank cares for him; Paul resents his care. They are “joined unwillingly at the heart”. The action of the novel shows Frank taking Paul in a rented RV to see America’s stone presidents at Mount Rushmore – one last performance in “the theatre of lasts”. A trip is planned– rent a dilapidated RV and make the trek up to the glorious Mount Rushmore with the goal of helping the guys bond while shaking off a painfully claustrophobic walk of death. Father and son look to break down some of the walls neglect has fostered over the years. The question looms…why this destination? What huge significance can a commercial tourist trap like Mount Rushmore be in the comprehension of a life? A literary project matched in ambition only by John Updike's Rabbit series … The greatest ambition of all is that Ford has decided to make this grim material into a bright comedy, and has succeeded' 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: A Frank Bascombe Novel by Richard Ford | Goodreads Be Mine: A Frank Bascombe Novel by Richard Ford | Goodreads

Richard Ford talks to Alex Clark about his latest novel Be Mine. Ford has written about American life through his character Frank Bascombe for nearly forty years though The Sportswriter to Independence Day and Lay of the Land. This time Frank undertakes a road trip across the country with his son who is dying of ALS - a form of motor neurone disease – and their journey is both tender and tough, filled with wit. Ford discusses his writing, passion for observation and unerring faith in the US political institutions.

There were some gems in this book - the thoughts on what is happiness, their analysis of their relationship, and their views on death, is it an abrupt light switch or a slower dimmer switch.? In fact, says Ford, the pleasure for him is all in the writing of the book, rather than the responses from readers. “It’s all in the doing for me. I’m constantly thinking to myself, is this working the way I need it to work? Or is my delight something the reader will never share?