Rating: 
Summary: Engaging and Beautifully Written
Review: THE SPORTSWRITER is a literary, philosophical examination of four days in the life of Frank Bascombe, a nice, ordinary guy who lives in the fictional town of Haddam, New Jersey, about halfway between New York and Philadelphia. In about two weeks, on May 4, 1984, Frank will be 39 years old. Frank has been divorced for about two years, his X has custody of their two surviving children; the third died four years earlier from Reye's syndrome. Frank enjoys being a sportswriter, and he is happy with his new girlfriend, Vicki, who he has known for two months.
Enough happens to Frank to engage the reader in his story, things that might happen to any ordinary guy. This book is not about plot, though. It's about Frank's philosophy, which puzzled me for a while, it seemed murky, a little fuzzy perhaps, until I realized my own approach to life has been pretty much like Frank's, although I'm too old now to remember thinking about it if I ever did. Then, in the end, Frank has a brief conversation with Catherine Flaherty that makes everything crystal clear, sharp as a tack.
Ford investigates the nature of mystery, anticipation, literalism and factualism. For example, Frank thinks "...mystery, first winded, then ruined by fact. I would rather stay on the side of good omens, be part of the inexplicable, an unexpected bellwether for whatever is ahead. Discretion, oddly enough, is the best response for a man of stalled responses."
As in many literary works, there is a bit too much sensory detail at times for my taste, and sometimes the long stretches of interior monologue within dialogue lost me; I had to go back and find out what the conversation was about. But with Ford's superb writing, I didn't mind.
Throughout dialogue however, nearly all the characters consistently inject the name of the person spoken to. For example:
"I came down through Pemberton and Rambler, Wade."
"Isn't it something, Frank?"
This seems stilted, quirky and eventually as irritating as someone who must clear their throat every ten words or so. If that's how they talk in Jersey, I'll stay afar, thank you, Richard."
Also in dialogue, there are frequent clever rejoinders, lovely literary twists; "jokey-quippy-irony" stuff (Ford p283). Unfortunately, several characters are so accomplished, and therefore the voice that grabs is not theirs, but the author's.
Overall, THE SPORTSWRITER is engaging and beautifully written. I'm looking forward to reading the sequel, INDEPENDENCE DAY.
Rating:
Summary: A moving diary of an ordinary man
Review: The Sportswriter reads like the diary of a reflective, thoughtful man as he charts his emotions and insights that arise from his dealings with his ex-wife, his children (including his dead son), his girlfriend Vicki, his friend Walter from the Divorced Men's Club and various other characters who touch his life in some way. The diary, if that's the right word, is pockmarked with flashbacks to his marriage and his affairs which set the context for his reflections on the events of the three days of Easter in which the novel is set. The narrator, Frank Bascombe, describes himself as a dreamy character, and this dreaminess is in many ways the stuff of the book. There are times when he invests the tiniest nuances with powerful emotional impact, such as his feelings when he returns to his Detroit hotel room where Vicki is waiting for him, or when he talks to his son Paul outside the home of his ex-wife. It is not a page-turner, it is rather a thoughtful, darkly humorous book that, with careful reading, reveals some glorious insights into the ordinary, everyday life of an ordinary, everyday man.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent, curious book. Superb Craftsmanship
Review: This is the original book about Frank Bascombe, a sportswriter who is not very into sports. I read the sequel, Independence Day, and liked it, with liking the central character - a major achievement. In this book Frank has the excuse - for me - of being numb following the loss, some years before, of his son. The entire book is written in the first person, and, like the sequel, describes a short period of time - the Easter weekend. The level of detail, the apparent banality of the events and the amount of introspection could make for heavy going, so it is a tribute to Ford's craft that he can make this story quite readable, indeed intriguing.
As in Independence Day, Bascombe's world view could be described as `Comfortably Numb', he is content, if not happy, with his broken marriage, being close (physically and emotionally) to his remaining children, and with his current (failing) relationship. He describes his work - sportswriter - as one in which he can indulge without commitment, major expertise or intense effort, which is not what one would associate with the USA. I have more sympathy for Bascombe in this novel due to his bereavement, but Ford seems to imply that this listless, aimlessness could be a permanent condition, in which case it would seem to me to be a bleak message. But perhaps the point Ford is trying to make is that there is no message, that he is describing a character adrift, without the energy to make definite choices.
A very rewarding read.
Rating: 
Summary: No Big Loss
Review: Whenever I finish a book, I always like to take stock of how the book affected me. What did it make me feel? Did it have any lessons to teach me? The best novels are those that make me feel something--sadness, joy, or whatever else depending on the situation presented in the book--and have some sort of message to leave with me. The book I read recently that best demonstrates this is "Atonement" by Ian MacEwan, which like "The Sportswriter" started slow, but it ended strong, whereas this novel continued to trudge along until it ran out of steam. When I came to the end of "The Sportswriter", I felt nothing. I learned nothing. After 384 pages, this book meant exactly NOTHING to me.The problem is not with the writing; Ford's prose and descriptions are tremendous (although his dialogue often sounds too stuffy to be real), which is why I give the book 3 stars as opposed to the 1 or 2 stars that the "plot" merits. The problem with "The Sportswriter" is the sportswriter, Frank Bascombe. Frank is a guy who never really had a relationship with his parents (his father died when he was young and his mother was out-of-touch and sent him to military school), had a briefly successful career as a writer before succumbing to writer's block, turned to sportswriting when the opportunity arose, lost his son to Reye's Syndrome, and then had his marriage fall apart. You'd think this guy would be a mess after all that, but he isn't. Frank is just floating along like a leaf in the breeze, never allowing himself to feel much, and since he's the narrator of the story, that in turn means I don't feel much either. The best term for him might be "detached" or to use his favorite word, "ironic". The story follows Frank through Easter as very little happens and for inexplicable reasons, the wind carries Frank off in a different direction. The events of the Easter weekend are largely dictated by chance and random impulses. During a brief trip to Detroit, Frank rummages through his girlfriend's purse after a sharp, fleeting pang of jealousy that helps put the last nails in the coffin of that relationship. He goes out to Walled Lake to interview a crippled offensive lineman for the Lions, but the athlete is on medication and suffering substantial mood swings, so the trip turns out to be all for naught. When he gets back to New Jersey, he meets his girlfriend's family, but is called away when a "friend" (Frank is the type who has no real, close friends) commits suicide, which is fine at that point because his girlfriend breaks up with him because she doesn't really love him and apparently has chosen that precise moment to not tolerate it anymore. Frank goes back home, visits his dead friend's apartment, and goes to the train station to clear his head, where he proceeds to get on a train for New York with nothing other than the clothes on his back for no real reason. There, an intern appears out of nowhere (it's always good to introduce characters in the last chapter) and they spend a couple days together before he runs off to Florida to find his dead friend's illegitimate daughter, who does not exist. Instead of going home, Frank decides to just stay in Florida, who even knows why. And that's it until the equally plodding Pulitzer-winning sequel... Having read that sequel, I can tell you that Frank still just coasts along, an anonymous, shallow suburbanite who no one (let alone the reading public) need take notice of. I have to admire the author, though, for getting a good 900 total pages out of such a bland character. I don't want to sound all doom and gloom here, because I enjoyed most of this book. Frank, as maddeningly detached as he is, is a complex character. None of the other major characters (the X, the girlfriend, the friend who dies, etc.) come off as stereotypes. And as dull as Frank's life is, Ford's writing is good enough that the book is not tedious. There are a lot of descriptions and anecdotes that give depth to Frank, even if there is little to see. One bone I have to pick with Ford in this book are some of the generalizations Frank makes about Michigan, my home, and its people. He's always talking about Michigan "literalness" and the dull, severity of the midwest, which coming from someone as boring as Frank is a real insult. At one point he compares the sad landscapes of Michigan with New Jersey, something I took great offense with because I have seen most of the state in my life and I think there are many beautiful places. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, I suppose, but he shouldn't state how sad the state is as though it is a fact. At another point he talks about midwestern accents and how his X says "Gren Repids" instead of "Grand Rapids" and how his son says "watching news" instead of "watching the news". As someone who's lived here for a while, I can say I haven't heard anyone say "Gren Repids" or that they're "watching news". To me, that's the problem with making such broad generalizations about places and people and stating opinion as fact--you wind up making a lot untrue observations. I'm sure many other authors have done this, I just don't have the experience to disprove them when they do, but in this case I found it irritating, especially since Frank only lived in Michigan for four years while going to college; how much can you KNOW about a place in four years? Anyway, I'm rambling on when all you want to know is if you should buy this book. I would say no, not as long as there's something else on your reading list. As enjoyable as parts of "The Sportswriter" are (and by the way there is very little about sports or sportswriting in this novel), the book just doesn't go anywhere. After reading this and the sequel, "Independence Day", all I can do is shrug my shoulders and ask, "So what?"
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