Wednesday, January 14, 2015

The Sportswriter by Richard Ford



The first three weeks of the New Year are heaven for the football lovers in my family as the college football season presents its champions. This year the football bug has hit my six-year-old for the first time. He matter-of-factly spouts off facts such as, “A safety is when you get tackled in the end zone” and “mostly you don’t go for the fourth down even when it’s four and one.”

Unlike my son and husband, the closest I get to listening to sports is if this guy happens to be on the radio. And actually it’s been his voice I hear in my head as I read The Sportswriter by Richard Ford.

“If sportswriting teaches you anything, and there is much truth to it as well as plenty of lies, it is that for your life to be worth anything you must sooner or later face the possibility of terrible, searing regret.” 

Frank Bascombe is the sportswriter of the title. As he takes us through a play-by-play of his week, his ruminations touch on his marriage, divorce, the mourning of his son, his town, travels, and of course, his career as a writer. 

Patience with his musings is rewarded: “It was her voice I loved first, the sharpened Midwestern vowels, the succinct glaciated syntax: Binton Herbor, himburg, Gren Repids. It is a voice that knows the minimum of what will suffice, and banks on it.”

Although reading about a sportswriter isn’t as thrilling as, say, [insert sports metaphor here], it may end up being just as heartbreaking.

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