Frank (Richard Ford)
Frank (American original title: Let Me Be Frank with You ) is a social novel by the US author and Pulitzer Prize winner Richard Ford from 2014. Frank Heibert translated the original edition into German in 2015.
content
The novel consists of four short stories. The main storyline is Hurricane Sandy , which caused considerable damage to its track over New Jersey in 2012 . The protagonist of the novel is again Frank Bascombe, a former sports reporter and real estate agent, as in Ford's novels The Sports Reporter , Independence Day and The Location of the Country .
First novella: "I'm here"
Ex-realtor Frank Bascombe (68) receives a call from Arnie Urquhart, who bought his house in Sea-Clift six years ago. Hurricane Sandy devastated the house and Arnie is afraid of speculators emerging. Frank drives to Sea-Clift as Arnie's “witness” and becomes an eyewitness to the devastation: A carpet of sea and sand beach has been washed onto the streets and open spaces and distributed among all the devastated cars as if the coast here had turned into a riad overnight . It is a post-battle war zone and everything in its own way is absolutely peaceful and orderly.
Second novella: "It could all be much worse"
At his home in Haddam, Frank Bascombe receives an unexpected visit from a person he does not know, Mrs. Pines. The former teacher, a black woman, is a victim of Hurricane Sandy and wants to see the house where she used to live with her parents and brother. Little by little she reveals the secret of the house, the father had killed her mother and brother here. She herself had only escaped the attack because she had come home late. Frank takes a distant note of this woman's personal catastrophe.
Third novella: "The new normal"
Frank visits his ex-wife Ann in an exclusive retirement home: It is brave of her to receive me here, because I register the progression of her suffering like one of the sensors that document her decline, from the blossom that is always so attached to her Seemed to be just downhill. Ann has Parkinson's disease, but still manages to demean Frank. The marriage with Frank broke up due to the early death of their son Ralph.
Fourth novella: "The Death of Others"
Frank watches a radio show in which Eddie "Olive", a former Frank employee, speaks up and speaks of his impending death. Frank overcomes his disgust at the infirmity and visits the terminally ill Eddie. The latter admits to a previous affair with Ann. Frank takes note of the confession quite indifferently: a wound that cannot be felt is not a wound. Time heals everything, almost everything.
History of origin
Richard Ford explains in an interview with Richard Stein in Die Welt on September 30, 2015 that he drove to Toms River with his wife Kristina in November 2012. Since the police had already blocked the bridge to the barrier island, he had nowhere to go and also did not notice much of the hurricane. He had started to think about the consequences of the hurricane, including the aftermath that could not be seen. So he decided to write some stories about the effects of the disaster that would not be on the news. Frank Bascombe seemed to him to be the natural narrator of these stories because he had always lived in this area in his virtual life. In addition, as a conversation partner, he already had a large readership.
style
The narrated time of the novel is a few days after the occurrence of the natural disaster. The first-person narrator argues about age, time and death. Both the personal disasters of the people involved and the natural disasters are a reflection of Ford's views on life and society. Richard Ford paints a melancholy picture of personal crises and the crises of his country, the United States of America , in a self-deprecating tone .
reception
The German literary criticism received Ford's novel Frank almost without exception. Joachim Scholl from Deutschlandradio Kultur likes the self-deprecating tone of the work and his positive conclusion is: You want to age just like this Frank: Quite satisfied, clear in the pear and always good for a quick slogan. Gerrit Bartels from Tagesspiegel sees a lot of comedy and a self-deprecating distance on the part of the author behind the serious views of life and America. You can hardly get Frank's voice out of your head even after reading it. In the review of the novel in the Spiegel , Christian Buß mentions that Richard Ford awakens this wonderfully smooth matter-of-fact sound, with which Bascombe describes the most severe crises in the lightest possible way. Christoph Bartmann notes in the Süddeutsche Zeitung that Richard Ford does not always succeed in reconciling the figure speech with his own cultural criticism and then speaks of Frank, the cheeky everyday philosopher . Bartmann's criticism culminates in the realization: And what does all this tell us about America? Maybe just that the medium-sized society novel will have to retire at some point. And that after that it is far from over.
Individual evidence
- ^ Richard Ford: Frank. Hanser, Berlin / Munich 2015, ISBN 978-3-446-24923-3 , p. 27.
- ^ Richard Ford: Frank . Hanser, Berlin / Munich 2015, ISBN 978-3-446-24923-3 , p. 148.
- ^ Richard Ford: Frank. Hanser, Berlin / Munich 2015, ISBN 978-3-446-24923-3 , p. 215.
- ↑ Hannes Stein: Conversation with Richard Ford. In: Die Welt. dated September 30, 2015, accessed November 26, 2015.
- ↑ Joachim Scholl: Frank. In: Deutschlandradio Kultur from September 28, 2015, accessed on November 26, 2015.
- ↑ Gerrit Bartels: The strong hand of the hurricane. In: Der Tagesspiegel. September 28, 2015, accessed November 26, 2015.
- ↑ Christian Buß : Ruined houses - ruined life. In: Der Spiegel. October 2, 2015, accessed November 26, 2015.
- ↑ Christoph Bartmann: It smells like disaster. In: Süddeutsche Zeitung. October 15, 2015, accessed November 26, 2015.