Awards
1996 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction
Synopses & Reviews
Frank Bascombe is no longer a sportswriter, yet he's still living in Haddam, New Jersey, where he now sells real estate. He's still divorced, though his ex-wife, to his dismay, has remarried and moved along with their children to Connecticut. But Frank is happy enough in his work and pursuing various civic and entrepreneurial sidelines. He has high hopes for this 4th of July weekend: a search for a house for deeply hapless clients relocating to Vermont; a rendezvous on the Jersey shore with his girlfriend; then up to Connecticut to pick up his larcenous and emotionally troubled teenage son and visit as many sports halls of fame as they can fit into two days. Frank's Independence Day, however, turns out not as he'd planned, and this decent, appealingly bewildered, profoundly observant man is wrenched, gradually and inevitably, out of his private refuge. Independence Day captures the mystery of life in all its conflicted glory with grand humour, intense compassion and transfixing power.
Review
"Frank Bascombe has earned a place beside Willy Loman and Harry Angstrom in our literary landscape...with a wry wit and a fin de siecle wisdom that is very much his own." The New York Times Book Review
Review
"Each flash of magical dialogue, every rumination a wild surprise....Independence Day is a confirmation of a talent as strong and varied as American fiction has to offer." The New York Review of Books
Review
"A Babe Ruth of novelists....One of the finest curators of the great American living museum." Washington Post Book World
Review
"One of his generation's most eloquent voices." Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times
Review
"Independence Day is an astonishing accomplishment, richly detailed, peopled with compelling and realistic characters, and constructed with heartbreaking care by an enviably gifted writer." David Wiegand, San Francisco Chronicle Book Review
Review
"Ford's achievement in Independence Day and it is a considerable one is to reclaim the strangeness of a country which he knows is at least as beguiling as it is wretched, and to rescue it from its worst own image. Amazingly, this late in the American century, he gives every impression of cruising through a territory nobody has laid claim to, nailing it with such a devouring such an undeceived eye that it begins to seem new again and in need of a writer of Ford's marvellous talents to explain and translate it. It needs a path cut through its potentially muderous complexities with what Ford is not embarrassed to call 'a hungrified wonder'." Gordon Burn, Times Literary Supplement
Review
"Mr. Ford's wit and fine turn of phrase prevent some deep thoughts from ever becoming heavy-going....As in Mr. Ford's previous novels, the characters are ordinary, muddled, drifting, yet described in ways that endow their humdrum lives with significance and sometimes beauty." Economist
Synopsis
PULITZER PRIZE WINNER - PEN/FAULKNER AWARD WINNER - INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER - From one of his generation's greatest writers comes the sequel to The Sportswriter, starring Frank Bascombe, who "has earned a place beside Willy Loman and Harry Angstrom in our literary landscape ... with a wry wit and a fin de si cle wisdom that is very much his own" (The New York Times Book Review).
Frank Bascombe, in the aftermath of his divorce and the ruin of his career, has entered an "Existence Period," selling real estate in Haddam, New Jersey, and mastering the high-wire act of normalcy. But over one Fourth of July weekend, Frank is called into sudden, bewildering engagement with life.
Independence Day is a moving, peerlessly funny odyssey through America and through the layered consciousness of one of its most compelling literary incarnations, conducted by a novelist of astonishing empathy and perception.
Synopsis
The Pulitzer-Prize Winning novel for 1996.
In this visionary sequel to The Sportswriter, Richard Ford deepens his portrait of one of the most unforgettable characters in American fiction, and in so doing gives us an indelible portrait of America. Frank Bascombe, in the aftermath of his divorce and the ruin of his career, has entered an "Existence Period," selling real estate in Haddam, New Jersey, and mastering the high-wire act of normalcy. But over one Fourth of July weekend, Frank is called into sudden, bewildering engagement with life. Independence Day is a moving, peerlessly funny odyssey through America and through the layered consciousness of one of its most compelling literary incarnations, conducted by a novelist of astonishing empathy and perception.
About the Author
The author of five novels and two collections of stories, Richard Ford was awarded the Pulitzer Prize and the PEN/Faulkner Award for Independence Day, the first book to win both prizes. In 2001 he received the PEN/Malamud Award for excellence in short fiction.
Reading Group Guide
The questions, discussion topics, suggested reading list, and author biography that follow are intended to enhance your group's reading and discussion of Richard Ford's Pulitzer Prize-winning
Independence Day. We hope they will aid your understanding of a novel that is at once casual and lyric, hilarious and poignant, irreverent and inspiring. Like its ordinary (and extraordinary) hero,
Independence Day is not always what it seems— though its themes ring as clear as the carillon that wakes the opening day. A narrative celebration of the "hum of the human spirit," illuminated by tacit affirmation of the faith of mankind, this novel is as "bright and chancy" a spectacle as the Fourth of July festivities it portrays.
1. You may have laughed out loud while reading Independence Day. Possibly the novel's serious purpose came as a surprise. What is the temper of Frank Bascombe's interior monologue as opposed to that of the novel's themes? How is Ford's pervasive use of humor integral to his development of plot and theme?
2. Haddam, New Jersey, is introduced as idyllic, but reality soon counters the idyll. How does Independence Day1s catalog of past and present Americana juxtapose the ideal and the real? Does the novel express the American character?
3. Frank Bascombe believes he is "more or less normal-under-the-microscope" [p. 7]. But his ex-wife, Ann, says he may be "the most cynical man in the world" [p. 184]. Sally, his girlfriend, finds him "too smooth" and "noncommittal" [p. 272]. What kind of person is Frank? Does his profession suit him? He says, "I'm no hero" [p. 438]. In what ways is he heroic?
4. Frank labels Ann a "bedrock literalist" [p. 103]. Sally, he says, lives "a life played out in the foreground" [p. 153]. Does he perceive these women fairly? Are they alike? Unlike? Do they understand him?
5. How would you answer Paul when he says, "Don't you really think something's wrong with me" [p. 328]? How does his accidental "detachment" [p. 374] describe his problem? Is Clarissa also affected by the divorce? How does the novel mourn the loss of the nuclear family?
6. When Frank met Karl Bemish along the road, he decided to help him. What American characteristics does this "old nostalgian" [p. 136] typify? What does the rescue and rehabilitation of the hot dog stand signify?
7. The Markhams suffer from regret, indecision, inability to act, isolation, and a "current predicament of homelessness" [p. 55]. Should they be content at 212 Charity with a prison beyond the backyard fence? Should they stay permanently in a motel? Will they find solace in Frank's "colored rental" [p. 406]? Are they "out-of-the-ordinary white folks" [p. 423] in their racial outlook? How representative of Americans are they?
8. Of what narrative and thematic significance is the murder at the Sea Breeze Motel? Why are Frank and Tanks "unable to strike a spark" [p. 216]? What is the cause, and function, of Frank's remorse at the end of Chapter 6? Do you think the weekend journey has both literal and symbolic levels?
9. Which dictionary definition of "sanctuary" would you apply to the Deep River Bird Sanctuary: shrine, refuge, or protection? How else does the novel examine these forms of sanctuary?
10. "Do you believe in progress, Bascombe?" [p. 113] asks old man Schwindell. How does Frank come to define "progress?" Do the weekend's events chronicle Frank's spiritual growth as a kind of "progress"? What stages does he pass through from Haddam to Cooperstown?
11. What does the Baseball Hall of Fame represent to America and to Independence Day? How is Cooperstown a "replica" [p. 293]? What is Frank's objection to simulation?
12. Irv appears out of the blue when Paul is struck. Who is Irv? How does he minister to Frank? What problem does he express when he says, "I feel like some bad feeling is sort of eating away at me on the edges" [p. 389]? How do people like Irv fare in today's world? Does the photo in his "tiny wafer wallet" [p. 391] sanctify family? Does Frank accept Irv's invitation to return to family status? When Ann and Irv mouth "hope" together [p. 402], is Frank's spiritual journey advanced?
13. How is Paul's accident a catalyst for change? Is change "conversion"? How does Paul's eye injury alter Frank's vision? Consider "blindness" as metaphor. What vision does the author seek to restore?
14. Frank's imaginary syllabus topic, "Reconciling Past and Present: From Fragmentation to Unity and Independence" [p.259], might describe the trip's (and the novel's) goal and result. Is reconciliation accomplished?
15. "I don't believe in God" [p. 432], Frank insists. Does this mesh with the Christian tone of his thinking, his journey, and the novel? Karl answers, "You seem one way and are another." In what way does Ford similarly craft both character and novel?
16. Real estate is a central metaphor in Independence Day. Who are the metaphorical tenants and landlord? Is any form of shelter not described? Which characters seek shelter? Is it structure or solace? Does Frank really believe "place means nothing" [p. 152]? Which of the novel's many "mansions" does Ford recommend? What is suggested by Frank's comment: "What more can you do for wayward strangers than to shelter them" [p. 424]? Frank's former mansion is now an Ecumenical Center. In what sense is the novel also ecumenical?
17. Consider definitions of "independence." Is there irony in being "free to make new mistakes" [p. 60]? What does Independence Day really mean for Frank?
18. At novel's end, Frank says to an unidentifed phone caller, "Let me hear your thinking" [p. 451]. Does it matter who the caller is? What might Frank's response indicate about his thinking?
19. In 1776, John Adams wrote of Independence Day, "It ought to be solemnized with pomp and parade, with shows, games, sports, guns, bells, bonfires, and illuminations, from one end of this continent to the other..." How does Ford's novel meet all of Adams's requirements? With its varied allusions to light, what source of "illumination" does Independence Day offer to modern America?