Richard Ford

Rumor has it that Richard Ford threw the final Galley of his latest novel in the fire one week before it was due back to the publisher. The unidentified, unverifiable source (yes, this is pure insider gossip) claimed that Richard said:

This is too much damn work! This is the last fucking novel I will ever write!

Or something to that effect.

Anyone who has ever written a novel would certainly agree with Richard, no doubt. But the idea that Richard Ford—a Pulitzer Prize, Pen/Faulkner Award winning author whose work has been translated into 16 languages—still thinks that it is hard to write a good novel, well, that’s just absolutely terrifying.

The Lay of the Land is the manuscript Richard threw into the fire that night. It was also a NYT Book Review Best Book of the Year, but even more telling is the fact that you can give this 485-page book to a man who doesn’t read fiction and he will read it all the way to the end in less than 48 hours (I do have a verifiable source for this fact).

Simply put: The Lay of the Land is a really good read.



And so are his other books

The Pulitzer Prize Winner:


This book will be Reissued in January 2010. It's about infidelity and golf...hmmm that sounds familiar:

And his first novel:




Richard has also won the PEN/Malamud Award for his short fiction:

This is a great collection put together by Richard...