Carnegie Music Hall, Oakland
December 8
7:30 p.m.
Monday night just got a lot more interesting.
Lovers of contemporary fiction who thought that Pulitzer Prize-winning author Richard Ford had retired his iconic character Frank Bascombe are rejoicing over the publication of Let Me Be Frank With You. Fresh on the heels of publishing his latest novel, which was an Amazon Best Book of the Month for November 2014, celebrated writer Richard Ford will be the featured speaker for Pittsburgh Arts & Lectures‘ next Literary Evenings event.
Though Ford had stated that he was done with the protagonist Bascombe, the universal character now returns in print where he “faces Hurricane Sandy and attempts to “reconcile, interpret and console a world undone by calamity.”
In his trio of renowned novels portraying the life of a pivotal American generation, Ford created Bascombe, an everyman of sorts described as “protean, funny, profane, wise, often inappropriate.” It is through Bascombe that Ford’s gifts as a writer come to life, allowing readers to observe the “aspirations, sorrows, longings, achievements and failings of an American life in the twilight of the twentieth century.”
Appearing as part of Literary Evenings, Monday Night at the Lectures, which is co-sponsored by the University of Pittsburgh Press, Ford will bring back to life one of the most widely discussed and compelling characters in modern literature. With Let Me Be Frank with You, Ford reinvents Bascombe in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy. Audiences will follow the character through four vivid interconnected novellas–all narrated by Bascombe–as he experiences a “moving and wondrous and extremely funny odyssey through the America we live in at this moment.”
Born in 1944 in Jackson, Mississippi, Ford has had a prolific career that includes writing, teaching, editing and publishing, and his work has been compared to iconic writers such as John Updike, William Faulkner, Ernest Hemingway and Walker Percy. He now lives in East Boothbay, Maine. Among Ford’s award-winning words are the novel The Sportswriter (1986) and its sequels, the PEN/Faulkner Award- winning Independence Day (1995) and The Lay of the Land (2006), as well as the short story collection Rock Springs (1987), which contains several widely anthologized stories. In 2012, Ford became the Emmanuel Roman and Barrie Sardoff Professor of the Humanities and Professor of Writing at the Columbia University School of the Arts.
For a double header literary evening, join Pittsburgh Arts & Lectures before Richard Ford’s talk at their Writers LIVE @ CLP-Main event, featuring short story author Kent Nelson. The 2014 Drue Heinz Literature Prize winner, and author of the new book, The Spirit Bird, Nelson will speak at 5 p.m. in Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh’s first floor Quiet Reading Room.
