"I decided early on that I wanted to participate in the greater American experience, rather than the parochial one," says Richard Ford. (Robert Jordan)
In the quarter-century since publishing "The Sportswriter," Richard Ford has established himself as one of the finest contemporary novelists in America.
The settings for his novels crisscross the country, from the suburban comforts of New Jersey to small towns in the West. This is appropriate, given his own peripatetic life. Ford was born in Jackson, Miss., in 1944. After his father's heart attack, the youth split time between Jackson and New Orleans, where his grandfather, a former boxer, ran a hotel.
His adulthood has seen stints living in Montana, New Orleans (where he still maintains a part-time home with Kristina, his wife of 44 years), and his residence in Maine.
Ford is perhaps best known for his Frank Bascombe trilogy: "The Sportswriter," "Independence Day" and "Lay of the Land." "Independence Day," published in 1995, was the first book to win both the Pulitzer Prize and PEN/Faulkner Award.
He is also a lauded short-story writer for "Rock Springs" and "A Multitude of Sins."
His latest novel, "Canada," is the story of Dell Parsons, a teenager who flees to Saskatchewan from his Montana home after his parents rob a bank. It's a stark coming-of-age story, but also a tale of redemption.
Ford appears Wednesday at 7:30 p.m. at the Tattered Cover Book Store, 2526 E. Colfax Ave.
In a recent phone interview, Ford talked about the craft of writing, the Western landscape, an afternoon involving the late writer Raymond Carver and a girl with a hatchet, plus a childhood neighbor named Eudora Welty.
Q: Can you talk a bit about your new novel's genesis?
A: It was 1989 and I was living in Denton, Mont., waiting for the manuscript for "Wildlife" to come back from the publisher, which it was slow to. I thought I could write something in that time so I rented a room above a gas station and wrote about 20 pages of a short story called "Canada." When the book came back I stopped work on the story.
About 20 years went by, and when I got to the end of "Lay of the Land" I thought, here's my chance. I looked at the notes for "Canada" and thought, here's a novel. That's not usually the way I write.
Q: Being on the move is a big theme in "Canada." Does that reflect your own life?
A: Probably quite a bit. I decided early on that I wanted to participate in the greater American experience, rather than the parochial one in Mississippi. But I have an urge as a writer to meld the Southern experience into the larger American one.
Q: It's been said that many of your characters are people living on the margins.
A. I don't think people live on margins. They may live on the cusp, perilously close to dissolution, but they're still living a real life. These people are as entitled to our empathy as the most upstanding people we know.
Q: Your new book's first sentence dares you not to read on: First, I'll tell you about the robbery our parents committed. Then about the murders, which happened later.
A: I found it an irresistible hook. I didn't think giving the events away was a risk, but created its own suspense. And it was a way to get readers interested in the consequences of a robbery and how these things work out.
Q: Have you spent much time in Saskatchewan, the novel's setting?
A: When I lived in Montana, I spent a lot of time there. The first time I went up there with Ray Carver I thought, 'My god, what a place.' Just the vastness. We were goose hunting, and after the hunt took the birds to a local goose plucker. He wasn't there, but he had this beautiful daughter who came out with a hatchet, took the geese and told us to come back in three hours.
We got back in the vehicle, and I turned to Ray and said, "I'll race you to see who gets this girl in a story first." I won.
Q: The great writer Eudora Welty was your boyhood neighbor in Jackson.
A: I didn't really know her. She was in a different social echelon. Years later I was at a book signing in Jackson and she came by and said, "I just had to come pay my respects." We became friends, and during the last years of her life I was her literary executor.
Q: You won a Pulitzer. Your thoughts on this year's Pulitzer committee declining to name a fiction winner?
A: They just lay down on their job. It was spineless and pathetic. They're there to announce a winner. I'm obviously not expecting to win it again. But they dogged it.
Q: You recently turned 68, so a big zero birthday is looming. What are your plans for the next 32 years?
A: Mostly dead, I guess. Which is fine with me. I've been mainly a happy boy in my life. I married the right girl and we did what we wanted to do.
William Porter: 303-954-1877 or wporter@denverpost.com
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