“In America no one will stay home”

IRISHNESS RUNS THROUGH RICHARD FORD’S NEW COLLECTION OF STORIES AS VEINS IN MARBLE

Richard Ford, make no mistake, love Ireland. “I would love to live there,” he says from his home in the United States. “I was teaching in Trinidad for a few years, very happily. And I have family in Cavan. Her paternal grandmother came from the county.

His first trip to Ireland was in the company of his British publisher in 1985, when he had “a wonderful lunch with all the literary staff at The Irish Times”, and never looked back. More recently, he has regularly rented a house in Connemara, near Clifden, and would have been here right now without the small problem of a global pandemic. “I planned to be in Ireland all May and half June. And I said to my wife, I think I’m just going. Then I realized, of course, that there is a travel ban. “

In Ford’s home state of Maine, as in Ireland and in many other countries, there is a blockade or “place lock”, as it is called there, to combat the coronavirus. Although as he says, “in the United States, no one will stay home.” But isn’t that what writers do most of the time anyway: stay home? Martin Amis said that writers are more alive when they are alone. “I am not!” Ford quickly objects, laughing. “I’m more alive when I’m around my wife!”

The book is not an attempt in any way to define anything Irish, or to discover anything Irish. It was just to equip the stories in a way that was recognizable and plausible

His wife, 52, Kristina Hensley, is dedicated to all Ford books (dedications read simply: Kristina). They live “by the sea in a kind of big place, so being at home is no problem and we prefer to be at home than anywhere else.”

It’s particularly frustrating for Ford, now 76, not to be in Ireland for the publication of his new book, a collection of stories titled Sorry for Your Trouble. As the title suggests, it has an Irish flavor and explores the fortunes and difficulties of Irish Americans both at home and in the old country.

“Originally, I wanted to call it The Irish in America,” says Ford. “But there are probably 47 books with that title. And I thought to myself, well, instead of leading with that, I’m going to let the fact of the book fade away. “

And corner it yes. The Irishman runs through the stories like veins in marble, although “the book is not an attempt in any way to define anything Irish, nor to discover anything Irish. It was just to equip the stories in a way that was recognizable and plausible. “

Ford, who has a “good ear,” uses phrases he learned in Ireland over the years, such as the title of the longest story, The Run of Yourself. For the Irish reader, from a purely chauvinistic point of view, it’s exciting to see mentions of Ranelagh or Ballymena or Buswells Hotel in a Richard Ford book, a bit like seeing a photo of your neighborhood in a Hollywood movie. But, he adds, “You hope the stories, if they’re good, can be set anywhere.”

The stories in Sorry for Your Trouble are more than “a good thing”. They have the usual grace and subtlety that we expect from Ford, the usual graceful prayers, and the way their characters slowly move toward responses to the crises they face: grief, sexual confusion, ungrateful children, feel plausibly uncertain and it makes the reader identify with them more fully.

This is not a surprise to a writer who may have as great a claim as anyone who now lives to be called the Great American Novelist, who last year received the Library of Congress Award for the Lifetime Achievement Award for American Fiction. , and was the first writer to win both the Pulitzer Prize and the Pen / Faulkner Prize in the same year, for his 1995 novel Independence Day.

That book was the second in his chronicles of the life of real estate agent Frank Bascombe, whose story began in Ford’s revolutionary novel, The Sportswriter (1986), and continued with The Lay of the Land (2006) and Let Me Be Frank with You (2014). The last of these is a collection of novels, and Ford has always sought short fiction with as much enthusiasm and skill as the novel. Their collections of stories always have themes, for example, about adultery (the brilliant A Multitude of Sins, 2002) or relationships (the Women with Men trio, 1997).

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Is it important to him that a book of his stories is a coherent whole? “It is completely important. If I can imagine a circulating set of concerns throughout the stories, then I think the book works better, and the stories are intertwined in some way.”

The concept for Sorry for Your Trouble came about when Ford realized that “there are so many Irish in America that they are a kind of Americanized Irish.” They are there and they are part of the fabric of American life, and that was something interesting for me, because they identify only as Americans, even though they are Irish or have Irish lineage like me. It just seemed like an interesting little bias to the set of stories. “

It’s always encouraging that someone I didn’t know liked something I did. It means that I haven’t been wasting my time in 50 years.

Ford also enjoys varying the shape and length of the stories; two of the pieces in Sorry for Your Trouble are novel. “You know, a novel is basically unpublished, apart from the books. But that’s okay. They provide some of the novel longueurs without the project lasting forever. One of the freedoms of being a writer is that you don’t have to have a template for what you do. “

And what do you expect the reader to get out of your new book? “I would like the reader to think that the language is suitable. And I would like the reader to think that the stories have expanded what is possible to think about. But the most true of all is that I want a reader who reads all the words in order, and then think about what he or she could do. “

Ford has said before that he doesn’t care what the posterity of his work thinks, although like any writer, he is interested in what today’s readers think: “It is always encouraging that someone you didn’t know liked something I did.” It means I haven’t wasted my time in 50 years. “

He is said to have responded harshly to critics who criticized his books, reportedly spitting on Colson Whitehead and sending Alice Hoffman one of his books with a bullet hole through it. Of these, he only says: “The Alice Hoffman thing has always been misinformed: it was my wife who did that! It was not meant to threaten. Kristina did it, just thought it was fun. I have nothing against it at all. It was also 35 years ago. “

This idea of ​​Ford as short-tempered is difficult to fit in with his current demeanor, who is warm and committed, and just as interested in other people as one would expect from a great novelist. The stories in Sorry for Your Trouble have protagonists ranging from adolescence to old age, but that doesn’t stop people from assuming that their stories are autobiographical.

For Ford, however, a story does not represent something; It is the thing itself. “And a story is only the sum of its constituent parts, it is not the surface of something that is hidden. And all you have to do to understand any of my stories is read it. “

Ford himself is a reader, of course, a great enthusiast and promoter of other writers, who has edited collections of American short and long stories, an anthology of Chekhov, and more. And, with his interest in Ireland in general, there are plenty of Irish writers whose work he loves. “My first big influence was Frank O’Connor.”

We talked about O’Connor’s story, widely discussed and beloved, Guests of the Nation: “I remember exactly where it was when I first read it. It was 1968, it was in Irvine, California. And I thought, when I got to the end of that story: “And whatever happened to me afterwards, I never felt the same again,” I thought: I would like to write that at the end of each story!

He also admires contemporary Irish writers: John Banville is “a teacher, if not the teacher”. And Edna O’Brien: “I know her very well, I have known her for a long time. That book of yours, girl, my God, what a remarkable book that is. Wonderful.”

Shares the discontent that has been widely expressed here in the past year New York Profile O’Brien.

“Well, it sucked. It was shit, it was what it was. I think the poor writer was on the defensive, he was prepared to find someone who was formidable and out of reach, and he did find someone who was formidable and out of reach. And I think he was not ready for the task. I mean, holding against her the things he had against her, some irritating little indiscretions that he erased from her story. She has already written about all those things. Who cares?”

Ford has always been openly political and wrote about his feelings after the 2016 US election and the 2018 midterm elections. One of the Sorry for Your Trouble stories, Jimmy Green – 1992, reminds us of how much things have changed in recent years. 30 years. “It was a happier time,” he says now, “when the people we didn’t like were not monsters.” They were not disrespected for not agreeing with them. “

What do you think will happen in the November elections? “Well, I tell you, we are all terrified that the elections will be postponed or suspended. I think that is exactly what Trump is looking for … he is trying to find a way to say that, due to the virus, particularly if he comes back to bloom in the fall, it is too dangerous to have the choice.

“I am terrified not only because I would be president longer, but because that very basic institution of representative democracy would have been flawed in that way. And this would be the lowest of the lowest and the worst of the worst. “

No matter what happens in November, Richard Ford fans will have not only these new stories to read, but also the pleasure of a new Frank Bascombe book in the not-too-distant future. “I’m writing it now. It’s a comic book. I have about 120 pages.”

He doesn’t say more about it, but it’s a relief that Ford is taking the approach of John Updike, who continued to write about his own American common man, Harry “Rabbit” Angstrom, throughout his career, rather than that of Philip Roth. , who publicly withdrawn from the deed.

“I tried [to retire]”Says Ford.” I’ve really tried. I have proclaimed out loud and bored that I am not going to do this anymore. “He pauses.” But I couldn’t find anything I liked doing better. “