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Richard Ford on The Lay of the Land. Part 2

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Uploaded by on Sep 11, 2008

http://www.bloomsbury.com/thelayoftheland
Richard Ford on The Lay of the Land, his third Frank Bascombe novel, after the bestselling The Sportswriter and Independence Day.
In this novel, Richard Ford contemplates the human character with wry precision and luminous prose. Graceful, expansive, filled with pathos but irresistibly funny, The Lay of the Land is a modern American masterpiece.

It is fall, 2000 - and in every household and bar across the USA the likely outcome of the hi-jacked Presidential election is being hotly debated. Frank Bascombe, fifty-five, settled in his realty business in Sea-Clift, New Jersey, has arrived at a state of optimistic pragmatism that he calls the Permanent Period of life. Epic mistakes have already been made; dreams downsized, and Frank reflects that now at least there are fewer opportunities left in life to get things wrong.
But the tranquility he had anticipated is not to be. Who could have guessed that his second wife Sally would walk out on their apparently happy marriage? Or that, after all these years, he would be spending Thanksgiving dinner with first wife Ann and their two children? That Ann might still, after all, feel for him what he has never quite stopped feeling for her? Life in the Permanent Period proves as ambivalent, precarious and full of possibility as life had ever been.
In his third Frank Bascombe novel, after the bestselling The Sportswriter and Independence Day, Richard Ford contemplates the human character with wry precision and luminous prose.

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  • such a wonderful author but what's the deal with the irritating post-box filming??

  • Great writer

  • Richard Ford and Jonathan Franzen are my "real" images of America (I've never been there) and this video corresponds perfectly ....super!

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