The Sportswriter Enters Autumn

Newsweek, October, 2006 by George Hackett

Important things seem to be escaping me," laments Frank Bascombe in Richard Ford's "The Lay of the Land." It's a familiar refrain for the writer turned real-estate agent, who spends most of his days tooling around suburban New Jersey (in his Suburban) trying to sell houses and worrying over just about everything.

In this third Bascombe book, Frank is in the autumn of his life (age 55) and living alone in a pricey beachfront 3-bedroom in Sea-Clift, N.J., where he's "made a potfull" in the booming 1990s. It's coming up on Thanksgiving 2000 (happily pre-9/11), and Frank, as usual, sees trouble aplenty brewing. Screwy son Paul, 27, is driving up from Kansas City in his "old shimmying Saab" with an unspecified companion; bisexual daughter Clarissa, 25, has hooked up with Thom, a...

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