The Sportswriter

The Sportswriter

First edition
Author Richard Ford
Cover artist Louie (design), Rick Lovell (illustration)
Country United States
Language English
Publisher Vintage
Publication date
 March 1986
Media type Print (Hardback & Paperback)
Pages 375 pp
ISBN 0-394-74325-3
OCLC 13093238
813/.54 19
LC Class PS3556.O713 S6 1986
Preceded by The Ultimate Good Luck
Followed by Independence Day

The Sportswriter is a 1986 novel by Richard Ford, and the first of four 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 "The Bascombe Trilogy." Ford himself refers to them as "The Bascombe Novels."[2] In 2014, a fourth book in the series, titled Let Me Be Frank With You, was published.[3]

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.

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 the preceding 82 years.[5]

Footnotes

  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. ↑ "Time list of 100 best novels". TIME.com. 16 October 2005. Retrieved 20 November 2014.


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