The Sportswriter

"Along with Updike, Ford has of course been the great chronicler of the modern American male. I relished the Bascombe Trilogy, beginning with The Sportswriter . Frank Bascombe worked his way under my skin."

"I like the part where he runs into this guy, Walter Luckett, at a bar. He talks about the other times he’s run into him. And he says, There’s one time when he sat down, and after we exchanged a few things, it went into this horrible silence of us just staring at each other – it went on for five minutes or so until he got up and left without saying a word."