Going To The Dogs by Richard Ford, 1983
The magic trick:
Spare life told with sparse language, adorned with little nuggets of observational gold
Man, what a great story this is.
Rock Springs Richard Ford is uniformly great and it’s very spare. One senses a huge Carver influence here. Rural setting. A protagonist who if not permanently on the fringes of society is certainly residing there in this story. Sparse language. Zero sentimentality.
Ford’s narrators usually have interesting ideas to share, too, even as they are often navigating life’s low points. These are the little nuggets that support the story but also stick in your mind alone from the story long after you’ve finished reading. Here, I especially appreciated the narrator’s fairly ridiculous but memorable idea that the two large women who have visited his small home do a better job of filling it with jolly energy than his recently departed tiny wife.
It’s odd, a little funny, somewhat offensive, kind of stupid, but also memorable. Just the kind of detail that brings these characters and stories to life.
And that’s quite a trick on Ford’s part.
The selection:
“My wife,” I said.
“Is she here now?” Bon asked, looking pleasantly around the room as if someone were hiding behind a chair.
“No,” I said. “She’s on a trip. She’s gone out West.”
“What happened?” said Phyllis in an unfriendly way. “Did you blow all your money on the dogs and have her bolt off?”
“No.” I didn’t like Phyllis nearly as well as Bon, though in a way Phyllis seemed more reliable if it ever came to that, and I didn’t think it ever could. But I didn’t like that Phyllis knew so much, even if the particulars were not right on the money.
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