Family Corruption In The Big Easy - Day 8

American Everyman

On a bright afternoon in Edinburgh, the Pulitzer-prize-winning novelist Richard Ford is wearing a new purple sweater, a pristine white shirt and a pair of trousers that give just a hint of stylish sock. There is therefore no danger of identifying him with his creation, Frank Bascombe, who has been wearing the same frumpy clothes throughout his long fictional existence, buying his outfits - loafers, chinos - from catalogues.

With The Lay of the Land, published last year, Ford completed his trilogy about Bascombe, former sportswriter turned estate agent and American literature's most convincing everyman; Ford's most recent project, a new edition of The Granta Book of the American Short Story, has just been published.

He has flown in to give a reading, and will be returning to the States the next day, but a man never looked less plane-soiled. His speech is elegant, too: he has the kind of precise Southern accent that makes punctuation audible. |Read more|