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Model Fords Richard Ford follows up Independence Day with three novellas by JULIET WATERS
Martin Austin, the central character of "The Womanizer," seems at first to be the archetypal innocent abroad. He isn't exactly a womanizer in the popular sense of the word--he doesn't have much of a history of sexual conquests. But in Paris he becomes obsessed with the unfortunate Josephine Belliard, who has recently become the subject of her ex-husband's salacious revenge novel. Although Austin knows better, he can't stop his ridiculous professions of love to her. And the stupider they become, the more compelled he feels to make them seem true. Ford does a brilliant job of getting to an essential dishonesty at the root of naïveté and of exposing the embarrassing ways in which the American male psyche grapples with reality, compared to Parisians and women who seem to have a stronger sense of what's at stake.
While both these novellas can be read in one evening, they have obvious parallels and are are meant to be read in relation to each other. So "Jealousy," which is more like a long short story, seems not much more than filler. It starts with a 17-year-old from Montana who seems to have more than a few similarities to Timothy McVeigh. His mother has left him with a father who is a hermit and conspiracy theorist. But the interesting set-up never really develops into anything until Ford uses the old Raymond Carver all-purpose plot twist--when in doubt, have a man walk into a room with a gun. He creates a frightening scene, but it doesn't seem to add much meaning to the story. But in the two stronger works, Ford delves into some deep and terrifying moments. Those moments when suddenly the people who are closest to you seem more engulfing than a city-sized ship full of black slimy creatures. Those moments when, as Martin Austin notes, "ordinary life seems to have the power to grind you into dust." These are works that can be read in one sitting, but which have effects that will linger much longer than even the best special effects. Women With Men by Richard Ford, Little, Brown, hc, 255 pp. $29.95 |
Women With Men, Ford's latest, is a collection of three novellas. I'm sure that none of them will ever be the subject of a summer blockbuster. But in my own futuristic fantasy, Ford's collection will somehow revive the popularity of the novella and reintegrate those of us who read too much back into the normal world.
In "Occidentals," the main character Charley Mathews has written a novel about the wife who has recently left him. He's in Paris because his novel has been unexpectedly bought by a French publisher. But Mathews arrives with Helen, a lover who has a darker agenda for their trip than he realizes.