Richard Ford

"First, I'll tell about the robbery our parents committed. Then the murders, which happened later." So begins Canada, the unforgettable story of a boy attempting to find grace, written by the only writer in history to win both the Pulitzer Prize and Pen/Faulkner Award for a single novel. This is the story of Dell Parsons, whose parents rob a bank and fracture his life into a before and an after, crossing the threshold that cannot be uncrossed. After his parents' arrest and imprisonment, Del and Berner, his twin sister, face a blank future of foster care and social services visits. Berner, willful and burning with anger, runs away - orphaning Del completely. In the midst of his abandonment, a family friend intervenes, spiriting Del across the Montana/Saskatchewan border. There, in a dilapidated town floating in the sea of the Canadian prairie, he's taken in by Arthur Remlinger - an enigmatic, charismatic man whose own past exists on the other side of a similarly uncrossable border. Undone by the calamity of his parents' robbery, Del struggles under the vastness of the prairie sky and the stark, unforgiving landscape to realign his sense of self and his perception of the parents he thought he knew, even as he moves on an inexorable collision course with the slow-simmering violence trembling just beneath Arthur Remlinger's cool reserve. A resonant and luminous masterwork of haunting and spectacular vision, CANADA is an elemental novel of boundaries traversed, innocence lost, and of the mysterious and powerful bonds of family. Told in spare, elegant prose but rich with emotional clarity, lyrical precision, and an acute sense of the grandeur of living, it is a masterpiece from one of the greatest American writers alive.

‘A work of understated power, intelligence and not a little mischief’ INDEPENDENT‘Funny, touching and profound’ FINANCIAL TIMES‘Another seemingly effortless Ford masterpiece’ DAILY MAILA FRANK BASCOMBE COLLECTIONChristmas brings Frank Bascombe to the Default Period of his life. Now sixty-eight, Frank resides again in the New Jersey suburb of Haddam, and has thrived – seemingly but not utterly – amid the devastations of Hurricane Sandy, which has left countless lives unmoored, and is remarkably the perfect occasion for Ford and Bascombe to relay four Christmas stories.With a flawless comedic sensibility and unblinking intelligence, Ford ranges over the full complement of universal subjects: ageing, race, loss, faith, marriage, the real estate debacle – the tumult of the world we live in.

From American master Richard Ford, a memoir: his first work of nonfiction, a stirring narrative of memory and parental love How is it that we come to consider our parents as people with rich and intense lives that include but also exclude us? Richard Ford's parents--Edna, a feisty, pretty Catholic-school girl with a difficult past; and Parker, a sweet-natured, soft-spoken traveling salesman--were rural Arkansans born at the turn of the twentieth century. Married in 1928, they lived "alone together" on the road, traveling throughout the South. Eventually they had one child, born late, in 1944. For Ford, the questions of what his parents dreamed of, how they loved each other and loved him become a striking portrait of American life in the mid-century. Between Them is his vivid image of where his life began and where his parents' lives found their greatest satisfaction. Bringing his celebrated candor, wit, and intelligence to this most intimate and mysterious of landscapes--our parents' lives--the award-winning storyteller and creator of the iconic Frank Bascombe delivers an unforgettable exploration of memory, intimacy, and love.

The letters of Richard Ford, 1797-1858 has been regarded as significant work throughout human history, and in order to ensure that this work is never lost, we have taken steps to ensure its preservation by republishing this book in a contemporary format for both current and future generations. This entire book has been retyped, redesigned, and reformatted. Since these books are not made from scanned copies, the text is readable and clear.

Edna Akin and Parker Ford married young. For fifteen years they traveled the American south of the 1930s as Parker went about his work as a traveling salesman, selling laundry starch. Life was hotels rooms, roadside bars and always each other. Then a single child was born to them, and a life went a new way. Blending his parents' lives, drawing on memory, history, anecdote, Richard Ford's Between Them is a stirring contemplation of love's mystery and of loss.

From American master Richard Ford, a memoir: his first work of nonfiction, a stirring narrative of memory and parental loveHow is it that we come to consider our parents as people with rich and intense lives that include but also exclude us? Richard Ford's parents--Edna, a feisty, pretty Catholic-school girl with a difficult past; and Parker, a sweet-natured, soft-spoken traveling salesman--were rural Arkansans born at the turn of the twentieth century. Married in 1928, they lived "alone together" on the road, traveling throughout the South. Eventually they had one child, born late, in 1944.For Ford, the questions of what his parents dreamed of, how they loved each other and loved him become a striking portrait of American life in the mid-century. Between Them is his vivid image of where his life began and where his parents' lives found their greatest satisfaction. Bringing his celebrated candor, wit, and intelligence to this most intimate and mysterious of landscapes--our parents' lives--the award-winning storyteller and creator of the iconic Frank Bascombe delivers an unforgettable exploration of memory, intimacy, and love.

A brilliant new work that returns Richard Ford to the hallowed territory that sealed his reputation as an American master: the world of Frank Bascombe, and the landscape of his celebrated novels The Sportswriter, the Pulitzer Prize and PEN/Faulkner winning Independence Day, and The Lay of the Land.In his trio of world-acclaimed novels portraying the life of an entire American generation, Richard Ford has imagined one of the most indelible and widely discussed characters in modern literature, Frank Bascombe. Through Bascombe--protean, funny, profane, wise, often inappropriate--we've witnessed the aspirations, sorrows, longings, achievements and failings of an American life in the twilight of the twentieth century.Now, in Let Me Be Frank with You, Ford reinvents Bascombe in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy. In four richly luminous narratives, Bascombe (and Ford) attempts to reconcile, interpret and console a world undone by calamity. It is a moving and wondrous and extremely funny odyssey through the America we live in at this moment. Ford is here again working with the maturity and brilliance of a writer at the absolute height of his powers.

Finalist for the Pulitzer PrizeA brilliant new work that returns Richard Ford to the hallowed territory that sealed his reputation as an American master: the world of Frank Bascombe, and the landscape of his celebrated novels The Sportswriter, the Pulitzer Prize and PEN/Faulkner winning Independence Day, and The Lay of the Land.In his trio of world-acclaimed novels portraying the life of an entire American generation, Richard Ford has imagined one of the most indelible and widely discussed characters in modern literature, Frank Bascombe. Through Bascombe--protean, funny, profane, wise, often inappropriate--we've witnessed the aspirations, sorrows, longings, achievements and failings of an American life in the twilight of the twentieth century.Now, in Let Me Be Frank with You, Ford reinvents Bascombe in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy. In four richly luminous narratives, Bascombe (and Ford) attempts to reconcile, interpret and console a world undone by calamity. It is a moving and wondrous and extremely funny odyssey through the America we live in at this moment. Ford is here again working with the maturity and brilliance of a writer at the absolute height of his powers.

The only writer ever to win both the Pulitzer Prize and Pen/Faulkner Award for a single novel (Independence Day) Richard Ford follows the completion of his acclaimed Bascombe trilogy with Canada. After a five-year hiatus, an undisputed American master delivers a haunting and elemental novel about the cataclysm that undoes one teenage boy's family, and the stark and unforgiving landscape in which he attempts to find grace.A powerful and unforgettable tale of the violence lurking at the heart of the world, Richard Ford's Canada will resonate long and loud for readers of stark and sweeping novels of American life, from the novels of Cheever and Carver to the works of Philip Roth, Charles Frazier, Richard Russo, and Jonathan Franzen.

I sin nya bok, som på många sätt är hans litterära memoar, följer Richard Ford en livslinje där det privata och det politiska hela tiden korsar varandra. Med avstamp i uppväxten i Mississippi, och med William Faulkner, George Eliot och Walter Benjamin som samtalspartners, skriver Ford fram romanens särart: dess förmåga att bära tvivel, motsägelser och levda konsekvenser utan att förenkla eller bagatellisera. Richard Ford har i ett halvsekel varit en av USA:s mest betydande prosaister, känd för sin precisa realism och sin lyhördhet för hur liv formas av klass, plats och historia. I sina texter rör han sig mellan minne och idé, mellan språket vi lär oss att tala och det vi lär oss att tiga om. Hans utgångspunkt i Hur jag hamnade här: en memoar är enkel och krävande: litteraturen blir politisk inte genom budskap, utan genom sin noggrannhet – genom att visa vad som händer med människor när världen drar åt sitt håll.

"Wonderful in the ways of] Mark Twain, Faulkner and Flannery O'Connor."--Philip Roth WINNER OF THE PEN/MALAMUD AWARD - WINNER OF THE ARNOLD GINGRICH SHORT FICTION AWARD From "one of the most exciting voices of the post-Faulkner generation" (William Styron), Barry Hannah's triumphant classic Airships is a freewheeling and energetic collection of stories about love, loss, and legacy in the American South Lauded as one of the most important writers of the South's post-Faulkner generation, Barry Hannah was a master of the American short story. He introduced readers to a world in which Mississippi pier fisherman, small-town prevaricators, and veterans of American wars--Civil, Vietnam, and Gulf--met a mythic, mold-breaking voice with echoes of Beckett, bepop, and the Bible. Hailed by none other than Larry McMurtry as "the best young writer to appear in the South since Flannery O'Connor," Barry Hannah's Airships is a virtuosic ode to the art of storytelling. One of the most revered short story collections of the past fifty years, Airships remains a vital text in the history of the American short story. The award-winning contemporary classic features twenty wildly original, exuberant, often hilarious stories that celebrate the universal peculiarities of the new American South--a land of high school band contests where good old boys from Vicksburg are reunited in Vietnam, and petty nostalgia and the incessant pain of disappointed love prevail in spite of our worst efforts. Burning with racial unease, sex, love, and hell-raising, Airships is a testament to Hannah's status as a "mendacity-battling Colossus" (Atlanta Journal-Constitution) and one our most brilliant writers to date. " Airships] struck me--as a great upheaval of our literary expectations, a liberating force . . . Hannah's language is audacious, bracing and insistent, often at the ragged brink of control. Words flash in ways no one had thought of before. Not ever."--Charles Frazier, Paste