Be Mine

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I don't think this is the best book to start reading Richard Ford's novels but this was my first one and was a sort of novice. Relations, the great master says, never really end. But it is the task of the teller to draw - by a geometry of his own - the circle within which they will, happily or otherwise, appear to do so.” (Richard Ford) I haven’t read the first four in the series, so I was at a disadvantage to understand Frank’s previous world. Especially, learning that the author's book in the series: Independence Day won The Pulitzer.

Be Mine: : Richard Ford: Bloomsbury Publishing Be Mine: : Richard Ford: Bloomsbury Publishing

I had assumed that this one would end with Frank’s funeral, or at any rate, its planning (the novels are written in the first person). But it turns out that it isn’t Frank, by now in his 70s, who lies dying in Be Mine, but another of his sons, Paul, a troubled middle-aged man who, when the book begins, has been diagnosed with ALS, a form of motor neurone disease that is also known in the US as Lou Gehrig’s disease, after the baseball player who was diagnosed with it. Looking away from Paul’s death, Frank looks instead at America – Ford’s other great subject in the Bascombe books, which now essentially constitute a social history of Ford’s own boomer generation from midlife to end times.

Reviews

Advancing age brings with it the examination of what life is all about. Frank had his own concerns, but they are framed much differently when it is his son’s story he is defining. Death has become the undeniable reality and its progress is being measured by Paul’s decline, something Frank cannot ignore.

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The story, which moved at a leisurely pace until now, hurries up. They go to Arizona where the daughter lives, Paul contracts another disease, apparently something contagious because Frank and his daughter can't visit, Frank sends a philosophical note about life which, he is told, Paul answered with a thumbs up, and Paul dies. I got more than i bargained as I discovered a talented storyteller and read a novel that moved me to tears and made me laugh. By the time they embark on their road trip—knowing, as they’ve always known, that no miracle cure will present itself—every step Paul takes, every gesture, is a struggle. Even when he sits, his right hand trembles, “clenching and curling”; knees shudder; feet fidget. His life “pares down to arch necessities—ambulation, swallowing, talking, breathing.” Devastating as this is for Paul, it also takes a heavy toll on an already death-haunted Frank, who early in the novel scattered the ashes of his first wife. “If three house moves are the psychic equivalent of a death, a son’s diagnosis of ALS is equal to crashing your car into a wall day after day, with the outcome always the same.” I teach literature at [New York-based] Columbia University and I’ve been doing that by “distance learning.” The central character running throughout this series is Frank Bascombe, now 74 and focused on mortality and the puzzle of life. His son, Paul, is 47 and has been diagnosed with ALS, the “Lou Gehrig” disease for which there is still no cure. It is one thing to be playing out your days trying to come to grips with life’s eventual fade, it is quite a bit more challenging to be the one guiding your son to his finale.At the end Frank has been living in the basement of his doctor friend. She has rebuffed any suggestion of a romantic relationship, let alone marriage which Frank sort of proposes, but he can stay and they have drinks together, often along with her current boyfriend. The two of them decide to take an R.V. trip from an experimental protocol at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn. where Paul is, to Mount Rushmore. Frank, our protagonist is now 74, mostly retired. He was a sportswriter before doing real estate. He now is into observing the human condition. Frank’s grown son, Paul has A.L.S., (Lou Gehrig’s disease), and time is short. I find it hard to subordinate what’s happening now to anything I would have written about it. Because what’s happening now will eventually have to become subordinate to people’s imaginations, but I don’t feel I have the language for what’s happening now. I wish, in a way, I did. This pandemic is going to produce some wonderful literature. That’s not much of a solace to us, but I wouldn’t even try to apply my thinking about these stories to the situation that’s before us now, because all those stories were framed around a world that’s in jeopardy of never existing again. The stories feel almost quaint.

Be Mine by Richard Ford review – America, the fool’s paradise

Richard Ford remains my favourite author. He captures the mundane inner life of an ordinary Joe, and in the process the reader gains significant insights into America - the country, people, politics, landscape, society, and memorable incidental characters. As readers we can feel the fear of that, and understanding of growing older, weaker, and more uncomfortable with a body that doesn’t work as well for us. What about happiness? The book opens and closes with Frank’s reflections on happiness. Does Ford agree with the research that says that, after a dip in midlife, happiness rises again as we enter old age?At the end of the book Frank is outside, contemplating his life, and a voice calls him. Maybe it's his hostess, maybe it's death. And then he is almost in. I give another grunting upwards lift, ignoring everything but what I’m doing and doing my best to do. And in he sags. At which point nothing else matters.