This is book two of the Frank Bascombe series by Richard Ford. I think it would more or less make sense to read these out of order, as I was actually thinking of doing, but regardless, they are more or less in order. This series reminds me of the projects of several other writers, especially male American writers where an everyman type American guy stands in for the author’s desire to cast a light on late 20th century American white maleness. This isn’t inherently a […]
Small Nonfiction/Small Fiction
84 Charing Cross Road- Helene Hanff 5/5 This is an incredibly charming book and was even a literary sensation that I didn’t really ever know about. More about that in the follow up. The set up is that Helene Hanff, a television screenwriter with a love of nonfiction, especially British diaries, writes letters to a British book shop asking for various books. As she gets her books, as she writes her thanks, and as the book shop returns her correspondence, a relationship develops especially […]
Divorced Dad Proto Character
I THINK this is a very 1980s novel. It’s a very male novel too, but it’s not really very chauvinistic or sexist. I was talking about it with my girlfriend and she suggested it might just be a very northeastern novel. I am not sure which, but what I mean by this is that the main character focuses a lot of energy thinking about people’s ethnic background (so lots of “Pollacks,””Jews,” and “Negroes”) and how it tracks with or doesn’t track with their behavior. One […]