HBO planning miniseries on Richard Ford's The Sportswriter

ditto

 

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9A0DEFDE1030F930A15750C0A960948260&n=Top%2fFeatures%2fBooks%2fBook%20Reviews

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9B0DEEDF1030F933A1575AC0A961948260&n=Top%2fFeatures%2fBooks%2fBook%20Reviews

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=990CEED7143BF930A25755C0A963958260&n=Top%2fFeatures%2fBooks%2fBook%20Reviews

 

Extremely well played.

 

As the New York Times review states:

Though ''The Sportswriter'' aims for a tougher, more realistic stance than ''The Accidental Tourist,'' it suffers from a lack of compelling action and an emphasis on Bascombe's dry meditations that obscures and minimizes the complex domestic structure the author initially presents. MR. FORD is a daring and intelligent novelist, but in choosing Bascombe as his narrator he has taken a risk that ultimately does not pay off.

 

I wasn't challenging you to a counterargument, Billy, or questioning your taste, merely fulfilling your request that someone be produced who thought these novels great. That Mr. Ford won the Pulitzer a few years later for 'Independence Day,' a novel using the same dry, ruminative narrator, may say more about the awarding of prizes than the quality of Ford's prose. Or perhaps it's a better book. I thought so.

But then, I like Ford a lot. I think he's a great chronicler of a certain kind of late-modern American male alienation. I think his understanding of the desolation of life in these times rivals Updike's, and that Frank Bascombe is the linear descendant of Rabbit Angstrom. Updike's the better writer, I think; and Angstrom more a creature of action than Bascombe, who is a character trapped, like many of us these days, in his own head. And while Angstrom inhabited an America still bounded by notions - however absurd - of right and wrong (a setting that drives much of the drama in those books), Bascombe seems adrift in an utterly amoral place and time. Which is an America I find very familiar.

Just my two cents.

 

Yeah, no, I appreciate the posting of the reviews. That particular part of the review just really summed it up for me.
Your assessment is insightful. While reading those books, I did feel that this book was speaking to me on a deeper level about a guy trapped inside his own head on a search for some meaning.
I just kept wishing that what was going on in his head was more interesting.
I hate to sound like one of those attention-deficit people can't appreciate a book without lots of drama and action, but doesn't any good book need at least some of that?

 

http://news.google.com/news?hl=en&ned=us&ie=UTF-8&q=%22The%20Sportswriter%22%20HBO&oe=UTF-8&um=1&sa=N&tab=wn
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&ned=us&ie=UTF-8&q=%22The+Sportswriter%22+HBO&sa=N&tab=nw