Richard Ford: "With age you gain wisdom, but there comes a time when you start to lose it"

BarcelonaReality insists on changing the plans of novelist Richard Ford (Jackson, 1944). If a couple of years ago, coinciding with the publication of the fifth and last book starring Frank Bascombe, Be mine (2023; Sé mía in the Spanish translation published by Anagrama), he hinted that he was giving up writing, he is in Barcelona presenting a new work, How I got on (2026; En palabras sencillas in Spanish by Feltrinelli), an essay of about a hundred pages that starts with a stimulating question: how can we live decently in a world where politics tends to be dishonest?

Also then, with his fingers crossed and speaking cautiously, Ford wished that Donald Trump would not return to the White House, and

he ended up winning the last presidential election in the United States. "Trump is afraid of intellectual life – he said this Tuesday at the CCCB, hours before giving a conference there. A few months ago I was reading a biography of Stalin where it explained how he had a lot of poets and professors killed. Fortunately, I don't think that can happen in the United States. We must confront Trump with as much determination as we can." The way Ford does it is through writing. "The starting point of this new book actually began 25 years ago, when a friend asked me if what I was writing was socialist realism – he recalls. My first answer was a resounding no, but then, thanks to comments from readers, I kept thinking about it and came to the conclusion that yes, my novels had a political dimension, and that instead of denying it, I should strengthen it.

A second chance

Since for Ford "politics floats in daily life", the characters in novels like The lay of the land (2006; "Thanksgiving" in Catalan in Empúries) and Canada (2012; in Catalan in Empúries), are often marked by the context in which they live. "Since I've been aware of this dimension, the books I've written are better and more interesting," he comments. Although he tried his luck as a novelist with A piece of my heart (1976) and The ultimate good luck (1981), Richard Ford temporarily left literature to dedicate himself to sports journalism. Two unexpected events invited him to write a third and final novel: "First, the magazine I was writing for closed. Then, my wife, with whom I've been together since I was 19, recommended that I go back to writing – he recalls –. I listened to her. I don't think I had an alternative: what would have been normal is that she would have told me to find a better job, not to write another novel." Thanks to The Sports Chronicler (1986; Columna), Ford's career took off and, since then, he has published a dozen more books. "It's better to depend on chance than on destiny – he states –. I grew up as a Presbyterian and they taught me that everything was predetermined, but life has shown me that it's not so."

"If you're not John Keats, who knows how to show great talent very early and dies at 25, you improve book by book – Ford assures –. With age you gain wisdom, but there comes a point when you start to lose it." One must realize the beginning of the decline, he says, and that is why Ford reserves "the right to stop" whenever he feels like it. "Sooner or later we all have to stop – he continues –. After publishing "Be Mine

", I thought that moment had arrived. I thought I was leaving fiction and that from then on I would dedicate myself to writing more articles in the press about American politics, a topic that never ceases to be current."

In addition to Feltrinelli's commission to prepare the conference that has grown into the volume In simple terms, Ford has found a new story he is already working on. "It all started when a good friend opted for assisted suicide – he says –. He gathered his family before dying to say goodbye. I thought that if I chose this way of dying, I would like to invite family, but also friends, as if it were a party. It seemed to me that I had the beginning of a comedy novel". Ford jotted down the idea in a notebook that always accompanies him, in case he felt like building up the character and his life's journey. By now he knows that the protagonist of Never better will be a university professor –"One of the funniest times of my life was when I was teaching at Columbia," he admits– and that the novel will not exceed 200 pages. "When I see that other colleagues are also publishing short novels, I think I'm on the right track – he says –. We don't need any more Moby Dick".