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Richard Ford in conversation with David Ulin

In the beginning was The Sportswriter. Then he declared Independence Day. Next, he gave us The Lay of the Land. And now, people, Let Me Be Frank With You: Richard Ford brings us a new work with one of American contemporary literature's most nuanced and relatable characters, Frank Bascombe. From despairing to poignant to utterly hilarious, his literary progression from his debut in The Sportswriter to the new novel, The Lay of the Land, Frank leads us through midlife confusion, turbulence, exhilaration, and of course, challenge. Bascombe's quartet is the story of a generation, of a postwar America on an intimate scale. As we see in The Lay of the Land, Frank Bascombe's bit of America is a hurdle of calamity, of challenge, and Ford's lay of the land is really really funny.

In conversation with David Ulin. David is the book editor for the Los Angeles Times, is the editor of numerous great literary anthologies, both noir and luminous, and is the author of several books dealing with disaster and recovery, books that I'm sure Frank Bascombe read and worried about: The Lost Art of Reading: Why Books Matter in a Distracted Time; and The Myth of Solid Ground: Earthquakes, Prediction, and the Fault Line Between Reason and Faith.