Bridgman reviewed The sportswriter by Richard Ford (Vintage contemporaries)
Review of 'The sportswriter' on 'Goodreads'
3 stars
Of the ten or so reviews by fellow Goodreads members I read, I didn’t see any asking about some of the character’s choice of language. Why does the narrator, Frank Bascombe, often refer to blacks as “Negroes” and “coloreds” as well as blacks? Granted, he is, like the author, originally from the South, but he’s spent much of his life in the Northeast. Besides, no one, even southerners in their late 30s, were using such descriptions by the early 1980s. If it’s in an attempt at irony, it was lost on me.
A couple of other language issues:
- Side characters have goofy names like “Walter.” That’s always to signal the reader that the character is not to be taken as seriously as the author. Not always fair.
- In dialogue, said to be one of Ford’s strengths, characters use the name of the person they’re talking with in nearly every sentence …
Of the ten or so reviews by fellow Goodreads members I read, I didn’t see any asking about some of the character’s choice of language. Why does the narrator, Frank Bascombe, often refer to blacks as “Negroes” and “coloreds” as well as blacks? Granted, he is, like the author, originally from the South, but he’s spent much of his life in the Northeast. Besides, no one, even southerners in their late 30s, were using such descriptions by the early 1980s. If it’s in an attempt at irony, it was lost on me.
A couple of other language issues:
- Side characters have goofy names like “Walter.” That’s always to signal the reader that the character is not to be taken as seriously as the author. Not always fair.
- In dialogue, said to be one of Ford’s strengths, characters use the name of the person they’re talking with in nearly every sentence even though it’s not needed to keep the reader on track. It comes across as unnatural.
- Throughout, he refers to his ex-wife as “X.” Granted, that’s the right letter to choose, but the narrator doesn’t seem so obsessed with her or traumatized by losing her that he can’t bear to utter her name.
- In my copy, the 1995 edition pictured here, the copyediting and proofreading should’ve been perfect but it’s not, so you have phrases like “... making the possibility of going as remote at Neptune,” (page 197) and, about being ready to depart, “... ready to do.”
- Naming your dog “Elvis Presley” and referring to him by the full name every time is cartoonish and shows contempt for the character doing it.
Minor stuff, I know, and this book has some rich writing in it, though not enough action to connect the character to the people around him. A better read is Anne Tyler’s “The Accidental Tourist,” which has many similarities to “The Sportswriter” (East Coast divorced writer-father with dead son coupling with a woman more working-class than his ex-wife) but more warmth and humor.
