The Sportswriter

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The Sportswriter
RichardFord TheSportswriter.jpg
First edition
Author Richard Ford
Cover artistLouie (design), Rick Lovell (illustration)
LanguageEnglish
Publisher Vintage
Publication date
March 1986
Publication placeUnited States
Media typePrint (Hardback & Paperback)
Pages375 pp
ISBN 0-394-74325-3
OCLC 13093238
813/.54 19
LC Class PS3556.O713 S6 1986
Preceded byThe Ultimate Good Luck 
Followed by Rock Springs  

The Sportswriter is a 1986 novel by Richard Ford, and the first of five books of fiction to feature the protagonist Frank Bascombe. [1] In The Sportswriter, Bascombe is portrayed as a failed novelist turned sportswriter who undergoes an existential crisis following the death of his son. The sequel to The Sportswriter is the Pulitzer Prize-winning Independence Day , published in 1995. After the third installment in the series, titled The Lay of the Land , was published in 2006, the three books together are sometimes identified as "The Bascombe Trilogy." Ford called them "The Bascombe Novels." [2] In 2014, a fourth book in the series, titled Let Me Be Frank With You, was published. [3] The latest book in the Bascombe series, titled Be Mine, was published in 2023.

Contents

In 2007, HBO announced that it was adapting the books into a six-hour HBO miniseries, [4] but HBO subsequently dropped their option, and any future plans to adapt the novels for the screen have been shelved. [1]

When it appeared in 1986, The Sportswriter was Ford's third published novel.

The Sportswriter is mentioned several times in Lee Ranaldo's JRNLS80s. [5]

Awards and nominations

The novel was named one of Time magazine's five best books of 1986 and was a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction. In 2005, Time also named it one of the 100 best novels in English from 1923 to 2010. [6]

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References

  1. 1 2 "Living with Frank Bascombe: An Interview with Richard Ford". The New Yorker. 5 November 2014. Retrieved 20 November 2014.
  2. "The Bascombe Novels". PenguinRandomhouse.com. Retrieved 2 August 2015.
  3. "Frank and me: Richard Ford on his Bascombe novels". Financial Times. Retrieved 2 August 2015.
  4. Fleming, Michael (4 May 2007). "Variety report of HBO series". Variety. Retrieved 20 November 2014.
  5. JRNLS80s (Paperback) - Lee Ranaldo, Soft Skull Press (1998), ISBN   978-1-887128-31-5
  6. "Time list of 100 best novels". Time . 16 October 2005. Retrieved 20 November 2014.