On Election Highway

Richard Ford8217;s very personal novel, the third in the Sportswriter series, draws a brilliant political portrait of an America on the cusp of Republican rule. With change imminent in that country, it8217;s timely

Frank bascombe has been a familiar figure for two decades now. Richard Ford first introduced him in his novel Sportswriter in 1986, and followed up nine years later with Independence Day, which fetched him the Pulitzer Prize. Bascombe, now in The Lay of the Land in his mid-fifties and well established in his realty business, is a very American fictional creation. He provides an update on the American tradition of novelists drawing profiles of moments in the life of their country through everymen.

It is the November of 2000 and America is drawn into a fit of self-inquiry brought on by the extended uncertainty over the result of the presidential election. Bascombe, stridently anti-Bush, is trying to reconcile to the possibility of the election being taken away from Al Gore. This juncture coincides with a spell of stocktaking in Bascombe8217;s own life. His realty business is well established. His own reconciliation with personal losses 8212; the death of his son long ago and the more recent failed marriages 8212; is signified by his comfortable home on the Jersey shore, the softening aroma of freshly brewed coffee alerting him to the start of another possibly good day at the business.

But a news report jolts him into introspection. An instructor at a teachers college has been shot dead by a student. The killer8217;s last question to her was: 8220;Are you ready to meet your Maker?8221; She had responded: 8220;Yes. Yes, I think I am.8221;

For Frank, it sets off list-making of all that he hopes to still do. This stocktaking comes on the eve of a Thanksgiving trip already planned to the cities and people of his life that he8217;s moved away from. As Frank takes a road trip, as the book catches his slowly thought out thoughts and the generalisations he is prone to making every few minutes, he is kept off-equilibrium by the impasse on the Florida recount, on which the result of the presidential election depends. To counter this edginess born of political drift, he tries to regain a sense of control by stringing together these random thoughts that come to him with the changing landscape into a coherent snapshot of a patch of America most of it inclined towards the Democrats at a time when it is passing into the rule of Republicans.

For Frank, the unspoken enterprise is reminiscent of old pilgrim/pioneer stories. For this successful salesman of high-end property, it brings the old questions of belonging in a country that so values the ability to make oneself over with geographical movements. 8220;What is home, then, you might wonder? The place you first see daylight, or that place you choose for yourself? Or is it the someplace you just can8217;t keep from going back to, though the air there has grown less breathable, the future8217;s over, where they really don8217;t want you back, and where you once left on a breeze without a rearward glance?8221;

As he is set up for what is a rather contrived brush with death in another shooting episode, he is prepared for the moment. Having revisited old homes, the fabled key moments of his life have already been replayed in his mind.

In putting together this time capsule of impressions, Frank gains greatly from the company of his business partner, a Tibetan come to the US by way of Calcutta and now in possession of a strange sense of Irish immigranthood after having rechristened himself Mike Mahoney from Lobsang Dhargey. Mike8217;s political and social views baffle him, as do the impressions of Frank himself that Mike carries.

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The Lay of the Land is a novel that unfolds slowly, and readers unaccustomed to Ford8217;s style or to the patience required to draw a picture of a polity from suburban and highway vistas are likely to be put off. Which would be sad, because this novel in a very sure and elegant way does explore the process of becoming centred.