The Finality of the Self-Richard Ford's Lay of the Land

Ever the English major, Frank Bascomb, the narrator of Richard Ford's "Lay of the Land," resorts to protesting the inadequacy of words but hardly ever lets a moment of silence enter edgewise. When faced with the big feelings, he's likely to try and say something about them. Language almost might be seen as a diversion from feeling. Of course, technically speaking, Frank is not 'writing' or 'speaking' what we read. He is simply thinking. However, Frank's thinking has a certain congruence with writing. It is composed. It is continually being edited.

The foundational fiction of this book is that Frank is both living his life and at the same time engaged in a conversation upon his experience. This is an internal conversation. Ford doesn't imply or try to weave the reader in as a character, an unspeaking ear to whom Frank is addressing himself.

Of course, this is hardly rare in fiction. Yet, Frank's conversation is distinctive in it's obsessive quality: nothing goes unremarked and all must be made sense of. Furthermore, I refer to what is technically a monologue or soliloquy as a conversation because I think the latter term more accurate. His soliloquy is a conversation in that it involves one aspect of Frank's self addressing another aspect, or version, of that same self.

Also, Frank is often, when not arguing, trying to entertaining so as to divert. To his father's chagrin, Frank's son Paul whiled away many hours of his adolescence with a ventriloquists dummy. As with many things his son does and is, Frank is ashamed of this hobby. Perhaps it is too telling. The desire to hide behind a persona seems something they share.

Again, Frank's argumentative monologue hardly marks him as unusual. I suspect many of us harbor an idealized picture of ourselves, a thoughtful person that speaks the voice of reason and virtue; most likely, this is the person we wish to be seen as but are unable to pull of. Alongside the ideal, is the self we pull off so to speak, the self that manifests itself via experience, a self that often falls sort of the cool, ideal, rational person we aim for. This failed, real self that is forever explaining, justifying and resolving itself anew to the better, wished for self. That self is silent but speaking. We know what it says; it doesn't actually have to say anything. Or, perhaps to put it another way, everyday, fallen, human self is engaged in a conversation with his conscience, with the truth.



It almost seems at points as if Frank just keeps talking/thinking in hopes that he'll somehow, perhaps by sheer dent of words, somehow dwarf, silence or outlast his conscience, his authentic self. But, to no avail. It comes to him at last, and at a time and place he thought safe, far removed from his world: a lesbian bar he chances into on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving. Yet, it is here that the reality he's assiduously evaded forcefully finds him.

His Wednesday's been a mixed one. While Frank estimates that three "occurrences" in his Wednesday have been of a "positive nature...versus only two and a half of a low quality," prone to exaggeration and self pity, Frank maintains that "any of the latter events would be enough to set a man driving to North Dakota, ending up at a stranger's farmhouse...pleading amnesia and letting himself be sheltered for the day"(338). The events he recounts aren't especially out-of-the-ordinary, but...

In an attempt to escape, seeking anonymous, undemanding company, Frank repairs to a bar, The Manasquan. span style="font-style:italic;">The Manasquan almost fifteen years prior as a part of a group of newly divorced men. The bar has changed in the interval. It is now a lesbian bar, a dive, renamed The Old Squatters. Shortly after entering, the bartender ("she...is entirely in black-jeans, boots, tee-shirt, eyeshadow-everything but her silver flat-top, ear decor and TERMITE tattoo" and featuring an "enormous Jim Bowie sheath knife" on her belt(331))asks Frank if "you sure you wuz meetin' your friends in de right place here"(330). Without saying it aloud, far from feeling misplaced, "he couldn't be happier than to be here amidst fellow refugees"(330). By Frank's lights, The Manasquan is perfect: "the light's murky, the smells are congenial, the world's held at bay"(330).

The scene serves as one of many instances where Frank seeks/hides out in places or positions of detachment. Frank is continually trying to find ways to keep the world at bay. Far from simply chasing it away, he seems to welcome some level of contact with other human beings. However, he insists on a certain distance and on some ground rules. Whenever anybody grows to close, or a relationship is in danger of developing, he begins to retreat. Frank fears the responsibility and self-exposure real relationship impose. He fears the feelings involved. He fears the fact that despite those feelings, we have little control over the decisions and fates of those we grow close to. He seeks a middle ground relationship, one that delivers the comfort of human relationship without incurring any of the potential costs.

In pursuit of this middle-ground, Frank attempts all sorts of quasi-relationships, situations involving sincere but disengaged contact. At one point in the novel, his first wife, Anne, recalls how Frank visited her second husband when he was dying of cancer. Ann praises Frank for doing so. Frank doesn't find it a feat; in fact, "it didn't bother me....I could imagine someone having to do it to me-a total stranger- and how nice it would be to have someone there you didn't have to 'relate' to"(152-153).

Frank is always looking for disengaged, impermanent contact. In his former hometown of Haddam, he looks to lunch at the hospital where "restrained but understanding smiles are all that's ever shared...Nobody opens up or vents (you might complain to some poor soul worse off than you)"(78). Feeling the encroachment of family on Thanksgiving morning, Frank makes an impulsive and desperate trip to locate an old flame, Bernice, to bring home for dinner. Bernice is Frank's ideal woman. Around her, he feels witty, handsome, charming and loved. But, he also recognizes that relationships with such ideal women need to be of short duration. According to Frank, such ideal woman "drive him crazy with undeserved approval and excessive, unwanted validation"(427). In summary,

these women are...meant for sweetly intended, affectionate one-nighters (two at the max), after which you both manage to stay friends, conduct yourself even better than before...but never consider getting serious about, since everybody knows that serious ruins everything. (427)

Frank biggest attempt to find disengaged contact is his participation in "Sponsor Line." Modeled after AA, Sponsor Line is a service devised in response to syndicated article which ran in the local paper decrying the fact that a majority of folks polled revealed they had no friends. Sponsor Line attempts to remedy this by allowing Folk to call it at anytime and arrange to have another human being come by, listen to them, and offer them some "sound, generalized, disinterested advice"(92).

Explaining the appealing features of the program, Frank points out that "nothing technical's required to be a sponsor: a willingness to listen, a slice of common sense, an underdeveloped sense of irony, a liking for strangers and a capacity to be disengaged while staying sincerely focused on whatever question greets you when you walk in the door"(92). In addition, Frank claims "sponsoring has never actually produced a greater sense of connectedness in me, and probably not in others...It could happen. But the truth is, I feel connected enough already. And sponsorship is not about connectedness anyway. It"s about being consoled by connection's opposite"(96).

In his account of Sponsoring, Frank offers a varied, somewhat contradictory account of what he believes people who call "Sponsor Line" are after. Initially, he claims they are after a little bit of common sense advice on practical issues: what to do with a boat you impulsively bought without learning how to sail it; how do I handle a nice maid that shirks her work; how do I sharpen this hunting knife (pp. 12-13, 93). However, he mentions in passing that recently three different sponsorees (i.e., one of the folks requesting a sponsor) has been looking for something other than "plain, low-impact good counsel and assistance"(93). All three wanted to know whether Frank, a sponsor, a stranger of sorts, thought "he or she was an asshole." And, as would most compassionate folks sitting face-to-face with another human asking that question, Frank answers "[he] definitely didn't think so"(94). Those who know any of us might not be able to offer us a similarly unqualified and consoling answer.

Frank never calls "Sponsor Line" himself. Partly it's pride. Partly, despite all his dishonesty and efforts to evade the truth, Frank seems irresistibly drawn to it, to a rigorous if delayed self-assessment. His self, with all it's history of failure and pain, finds him despite all his efforts to hide from it. The process begins with his chancing upon a real estate ad in a free paper he picks up at Old Squatters. In the free weekly, he happens upon a real estate ad in which there is bio of an agent who lost a child. The ad triggers something in Frank. Suddenly, he finds himself "immobilized on my stool...heavy-armed...my highball glass...small and distant," and he finds "my [deceased] son Ralph Bascombe, age twenty-nine (or for accuracy's sake, age nine), comes seeking audience in my brain"(343). Protesting the inadequacies of language, Frank confesses "I am then truly immobilized. And with what? Fear? Love? Regret? Shame? Lethargy? Bewilderment? Heartsickness? Whimsy? Wonder? You never know for sure, no matter what the great novels tell you"(343).

Apparently, this moment is the moment that Frank acknowledges his son's death, truly accepts it, almost twenty years after the fact. Moments later, in his car and unable to find the keys, he experiences "the somberest of thoughts; the finality of one's self in defeat of all distractions put in the way"(349). Later, alone in his home, he admits that

"all [his] years and modes of accommodation, of coping, of living with, of negotiating the world in order to fit into it...now seem not to be forms of acceptance the way I thought, but forms of fearful nonacceptance [of]...the fact that my son...would never be again in this life we all come to know too well"(357)

At one point, Frank tells his friend Wade "There's been a lot of 'it's' this year,"(320), meaning testing personal disasters and catastrophes. Frank's had cancer, been left by his wife, had a confused daughter move-in, ect. While Frank's being self-deprecating in his comment to Wade, he is sort of a Job-lite figure. Yet, the it that truly littles him is the death of his son, that he can't face, proves to be the death of his son. Of course, early on, he lets on that this it is a part of the past. He mentions it. Speaks of the pain of it. Yet, he hasn't accepted it. Hasn't been able to process it. He now claims that he's reached an acceptance of it, the permanence of the death of his son. Yet, his eager desire to 'accept' it, to feel that he's reached the limit of the confusion and pain it causes him, may be just another in his attempts to negotiate, accommodate, an it that refuse to be negotiated, accommodated, made sense of.

Impermanence-Richard Ford's The Lay of the Land

Readers of Richard Ford's The Lay of the Land are privy to three days worth of the minute by minute thoughts of the books central character, ex-sports writer, NJ sea-shore realtor, Frank Bascombe. Given such access readers may expect a tidy, comprehensive portrait of a man. Yet, having finished this fabulous novel, I think its fair to say, they won't come away with such a picture. In fact, that's a bit of the point. Novels have tidy characters. Real people are vaster and more confusing than the folks we typically find in novels.

It's not that Ford fails to present a reality. Frank Bascombe's very real; I'm sure folks must ask Ford how Frank's doing. However, he lacks the definition we associate with the characters found in novels. Instead, like many of us, he's a character of contradictions, secrets, layers, and evasions. He's a little bit good, bad, and confused. He's kind, thoughtful and resolute one moment, coarse, cowardly and impulsive the next. To the extent you can fix him in this fun-house mirror of a novel, you're likely to see yourself. If you're brave. Or, if under fifty, maybe you'll mistake him for your dad. But, that would be a mistake.

Readers read to find characters. At the outset of this book, a detailed, stream of consciousness[ok, free indirect discourse], charting his Thanksgiving weekend circa 2000, Frank claims to be such a character. He presents himself as a with a self that is recognizable, without a clearly defined outline that is stable over time. This is not an accident, but rather the product of a decision he took in about 1992. At that time, he

realized....[very little]...except what I'd already done, said, eaten, etc.-seemed written in stone, and all of that meant almost nothing about what I might do. I had my history, okay, but not really much of a regular character, at least not an inner essence I or anyone could use as a predictor.. And something, I felt, needed to be done about that. I needed to go out and find myself a recognizable and persuasive semblance of a character.(53)

By Frank's estimate, he came to such a juncture by way of waiting, by hanging back from life. As he relates, "I'd felt since military school in Mississippi-as if life and its directives were never quite all they should be, and in fact, should have meant more"(52). According to him, faced with this sense, Frank launches himself into what he labels "the permanent period," or, a phase that might be seen as the psychological equivalent of Francis Fukuyama's much lampooned notion of the 'End of History.'

As Frank himself comments at one point, "...there are too many ways to say everything."(53) This is certainly true of the permanent period, which at various turns is presented as a phase, a choice, a virtue, a vice, a feeling, a belief and a philosophy. More a state of mind than a precisely worded creed, Frank nevertheless is attached to it with a religious devotion.

To enter into the Permanent Period is to be opposed to the idea that ones world is in the process of becoming. To be in the Permanent Period is to let the past rest, to forego thinking about or trying to right wrongs from the past. A person in the Permanent Period is focused on accepting himself; he is resigned to looking in the mirror and saying 'this is who I am.'

By his admission, Frank is launched into it by "a hunger for necessity, for something solid, the thing character stands in for"(54), by a sense of being finally brought "hard up against what felt like my self"(53), it is not necessarily a self-improvement program. Instead, frank maintains the Permanent Period is opposed to the everyday, detail-shot, worry-misery-gnawing mind-set"(159) and "dedicated to saving you from [it] by canceling unwanted self-consciousness, dimming fear-of-the-future in favor of the permanent, cutting edge of the present"(160).

In the distilled form, reduced to the nutshell I've just fitted it to, Frank's philosophy/lifestyle/religion reveals its...flaws. As he presents it in bits and pieces, with humor, and in response to events, it comes across as wise and feasible. However, as one can see in retrospect and upon reflection, his philosophy is an impossible one.

Frank's attempts to seal himself off in the present, safe from the past, the future, and the unmanageable disasters and responsibilities attendant upon them, proves fruitless. It's almost as if his attempt to do so invites an inordinate amount of chaos and disaster upon him. His past refuses to lie down: his wife leaves him for her ex-husband who they'd presumed dead; his ex-wife confesses that she's come to realize he's a kind man and tells him she wishes to remarry him; and memories and feelings surrounding the death of a son at age nine refuse to go ignored. The August previous he's discovered he has prostate cancer. His real-estate associate, Tibetan immigrant Mike Mahoney (Ford rather slyly contrasts but mostly compares Mike's Tibetan Buddhism with Frank's Permanent Period thinking)decides it's time for him to expand his professional horizons. His daughter breaks off a long-time relationship with a woman and returns home to get her bearings. He and his son seem to share an antipathy, but his son refuses to simply stay put, away, in Kansas City, where, to Frank's shame, the son employed writing smart-ass card copy for Hallmark and engaged to a one-armed Anita Ekberg look-alike. Frank assumes the relationship is intended to provoke him.

Thanksgiving weekend brings all these difficult situations to a head. Ultimately, under the stress of events, of a past that refuses to go away and a future that won't hold off, Frank cracks. Specifically, he comes to realize his entire Permanent Period outlook is an attempt to block out the death of his nine year-old son's some twenty years before. The passages when he finally faces this past, recalls the death, the grieving, contain terribly heart-wrenching writing. Frank recalls, "When our sweet, young son Ralph breathed his last troubled breath...Ann and I, in one of our last, free-wheeling marital strategizings-we were deranged-sought to plot an 'adventurous but appropriate' surrender of our witty, excitable, tenderhearted boy to time's embrace"(356).

Frank confesses to "years and modes of accommodation, of coping, of living with, of negotiating the world in order to fit into it" and admits "these now seem not to be forms of acceptance the way I thought, but forms of fearful non-acceptance, the laughing/grimacing masks of denial turned to the fact that...my son, too, would never be again"(357). Yet, while Frank claims to be wiser, to have come to a self-knowledge, the reader is less likely to feel so sanguine, to trust that one can ever entirely, or always, accept death, loss and suffering. Frank is constantly trying to come to a point where he's touched his hurt in its entirety and it can hurt him no more, or no differently. Yet, he starts out so convicted only to discover he's fooled himself. And, one can't help fearing that he'll come to find he fools himself again. As any us would. As any of us do.

Story versus history- Notes on Daniel Mendelsohn's "The Lost"

Earlier, in writing of Daniel Mendelsohn's history "The Lost," I wrote of Mendelsohn's contention that History is dependent on story, or narrative, despite the fact that the past often lacks elements one might suppose crucial to narrative: a certain level of detail, order, coherence, and shape. It is these elements that make story and History compelling.

His search for facts surrounding the life and death of his great Uncle Shmeil, Shmeil's wife Ester, and their four daughters (Lorka, Frydka, Ruchele, and Bronia), proves frustrating. So much seems lost. Once the Germans moved into Shmeil's hometown of Bolechow, many of the folks who survived fled or went into hiding. In both cases, there was nobody left to witness the fates of those who perished. Testimony is sparse and mostly second hand. Witnesses contradict each other, even when it comes to what would seem simple facts, such as how many daughters Shmeil and Ester had. One group of survivors insists Shmeil died in 1942, with Ester and Bronia, in Belzec concentration camp. Another set seem in a rough agreement that he joined the partisans with Frydka, and they died together at a later date. Then, there is a third story.

Providing a wonderfully concise statement of one of his book's central themes, Mendelsohn prefaces Part Four of Lost with a quote from Jose Saramago:

But the disadvantage with sources, however truthful they try to be, is their lack of precision in matters of detail and their impassioned account of events...The proliferation of secondary and tertiary sources, some copied, others carelessly transmitted, some repeated from hearsay, others who changed details in good or bad faith, some freely interpreted, others rectified, some propagated with total indifference, others proclaimed as the one, eternal and irreplaceable truth, the last of these the most suspect of all.

A proliferation of memory surrounds Frydka's short life. She is the one member of the family that all the Bolechow survivors claim to remember. Everyone's eager to talk about her. However, memories contradict a bit. She is remembered as "'a modern woman...living in the wrong time'"(298), popular with the boys, a hummingbird, as easy, as hard to get, as capable, as conniving. Recalling her stride and the way she carried her bookbag some sixty years after the fact, a contemporary of hers goes so far as to mimick the way she carried herself. Faced with this storm of memory, Mendelsohn begins to conceive of her as "the kind of girl...to whom stories and myths naturally cling"(298).

One story that emerges early on is of Frydka's love for a Polish boy (Cizko Syzmanski) and of how this boy loses his life in the course of trying to save hers. No two survivors have heard the exact same story. In some versions, she and Cizko are partisans. In another, he hides her in his house till a neighbor betrays the two. In another, he hides her at the home of a Polish art teacher. In some, she's with her father and in others she's by herself. In a couple of stories she's pregnant. One witness claims she was pregnant, but not with her lover Cizko's baby.

Speaking with a survivor and his wife about what he's discovered, Mendelsohn recalls how "because there was something about this couple that appealed to me, I wanted to say something that would please her, and would be true"(385) I think this a common impulse and one of the foibles of history.

Trying to create an acount that appeals, Mendelsohn finds himself at times tempted to render an account that has the comforting shape of story. He begins to try to work the facts he manages to glean from the various memories folks have shared with him into a resolving story. He spends a great deal of time trying to pin down and square details and testimony, in the hopes that ultimately, he will be able to tell the truth of Frydka, however partial, and the story of Frydka. That, the two will be nearly synonymous or congruous.

Referencing the temptations faced by another writer writing of her grandmother who was also a Holocaust victim, Mendelsohn writes

To become a story, the details of what happened to the grandmother, what happened in real time, in real history, to a real person, would have to be subordinated to the overall outline that already existed, for whatever idiosyncratic reasons of personality and preference and taste, in the mid of her granddaughter.(437)

He wants to tell a story; he considers the grandfather who he reveres, who "could go to the grocery store to buy a quart of milk and come back with an amazing and dramatic story to tell"(438). He even comes to the point where he thinks that while "he hadn't gotten the whole of the story...hoped for, I considered it all and I thought, It's enough. I thought, Genug is Genug"(438).

Ultimately, he resists this temptation. He comes to reject it at the moment when he comes closest to the subjects of his search, Frydka and Shmeil. In the end, he discovers with a fair degree of certainty where they were shot, and as he stands in that place, he feels the specificity of their lives and the ultimate separation of his own: "their experience was specific [Mendelsohn defines specific as: that which is particular to an individual] to them and not to me"(502). He eloquently concludes: "we do know that they were, once, themselves, specific, the subjects of their own lives and deaths, and not simply puppets to be manipulated for the purposes of a good story for the memoirs and magical-realist novels and movies"(502).