Rock Springs

I recently read one of Richard Ford's short stories, "Winterkill", in an anthology of contemporary "Western" short stories. "Winterkill" was the best story in the anthology, so I tracked down this 1987 collection of Ford short stories from which it came.ROCK SPRINGS contains ten stories. With the possible exception of one, all are set in the West, most in Montana. They serve as an antidote for the popular, romantic image of the West as the realm of rugged and proud individualists who heroically forge lives of success and quiet dignity. Instead, the characters in ROCK SPRINGS are merely hanging on, some pathetically, and most are whining about it. Many are unemployed and/or sponging off their girlfriends who are working at airport bars. Most come from failed marriages and are scarred veterans themselves of failed relationships. Some are living outside the law (Deer Lodge Prison, Montana is mentioned in half the stories). The characters of ROCK SPRINGS don't heroically forge anything in their lives; instead, things happen to them. And they want out. As one says, "I don't know why people came out here. The West is [screwed] up. It's ruined. I wish somebody would take me away from here."The stories are gritty, and they are realistic. For the most part, they are not uplifting, though they aren't terribly depressing either. There are some good lines. (For example: "I don't know what was between Edna and me, just beached by the same tides when you got down to it.") In general, Ford's prose is straightforward and serviceable. But the attraction of the book is more the stories than the prose. I thought the blurb on the back of the book - calling ROCK SPRINGS "a masterpiece of taut narration, cleanly chiseled prose" - a tad hyperbolic.As I said, it was having read "Winterkill" that prompted me to pick up and read ROCK SPRINGS. It turns out that "Winterkill" is also one of the two best stories in ROCK SPRINGS - in part, perhaps, because it is one of the funniest and most cheerful, involving three middle-aged loners who seem to be relatively content with their lives of drinking, dancing, fishing, and casual sex (though one of the three is wheelchair-bound). The other truly excellent story in the book is "Sweethearts", from which the title to this review was taken.

A good writer but I guess what I needed at the time were more upbeat stories.

I've read all the Richard Bascombe novels and so it is obvious that I like Richard's style. He , for me, has just the right touch when it comes to developing characters. He gives you a little at a time, just the way you get to know people in the real world. These stories are all good, although they are not happy ones. They are about people who are down on their luck, scratching out a living in and around Montana. Real people with very common problems. Divorce, infidelity, petty crimes and unemployment are featured in most, but there is a kind of optimism in some of them too. They are existential in the extreme-time moves on and little really matters.

Mr Ford writes with the heart and mind of a true westerner. His prose and characters are as clean and space as the very landscapes themselves.

I enjoyed most of the short stories but I thought they were the same and once I read two or three the others seemed repetitive. There is a similarity with Raymond Carver's short fiction but Ford's is, in a way, simpler and more stagnant. That is to say that he always follows the classical structure intro-problem-solution, and does not attempt audacious moves or experiments, which I'm sure he has the skills to deliver. Some kind of obsession with the makes and models of cars, booze, hunting and fishing, as well as poor people in all kinds of situations.

Having grown up in a small Wisconsin farming town, Ford captures the somber melancholy that such places impart to its young inhabitants. His spare and unvarnished style lays bare the inner dialogue that one experiences until exiting to a more hopeful future, leaving behind those unlucky enough to stay.

I am not a literary critic. In fact I read very little so consider this when reading my survey. I can read articles and short stories, but get too distracted to read many things, which has been a problem over the years. However, I saw a television show that I like and the host recommended this book because of the short stories, so I gave it a try. Most, if not all of the stories are set in Montana and they all seemed to have a common theme of some guy or gal down on their luck, out of work, divorced, hanging out in bars, living on the edge of just getting by, committing suicide or going to prison. This is my first read of Richard Ford's work, so maybe I'm missing something, but unless you just want to be bummed out, don't read it.

Joyce Carol Oates' laudatory review of this collection of stories is on the cover and I understand her enthusiasm. I bought this book since I had read, and loved, Independence Day and The Sportswriter. The best of the collection are totally absorbing, both as to style, plot and characters. At times the prose is just hypnotic. Being from New York City, to read about "hard luck" life in Montana and Wyoming opens a new world. But Ford derives from this milieu universal themes.

Ford writes with deceptive ease- a flowing prose style with beautiful descriptive passages - but his gift is articulating big ideas in the course of relatively simple stories involving ordinary people, often driven to their limits, or figuratively trapped in prisons partly of their own construction. These stories are set in the unforgiving terrain of the Western U.S., often gritty backwaters and spare, harsh places. Some are little more than vignettes, like lost pages from an abortive screenplay. They’re rich in colour and characterisation, providing piercing insights played out over a few pages. Others are more fleshed out, like the opening chapter of a novel. Most of the stories feature people who have been propelled to extremes, or to behaviour that is, for them at least, unusual. There’s a car thief on the run with his lover and daughter; a rail worker who accidentally kills a friend of his wife’s after a stressful shift; and a man who cheats on his wife with a female soldier while on an overnight train journey… these are furtive glimpses of troubled lives, rendered in rich detail. If you like them, try Ford’s recent short story collection Sorry For Your Trouble.

Amazing ways of finding the strengths of human spirit in the margins of society and in the depths of human difficulties. However self-inflicted their problems, the characters are shown with compassion. This does not cloud the clear-eyed evaluation of their weaknesses. Despite many of the characters seeming to be at the end of the road or making disastrous choices, the overall impression is positive.The writing is superb, concise, but giving characters room to breathe

One of the very best collections of shorts I've read. Not as polished as Carver or Wolff. Not as deep as Cheever. But it stands on it'd own merit as a fantastic piece of dirty realism. Yes the stories have similar themes. Loss, love, abandonment, adultery, betrayal. But each one explores these in different ways. Don't just read if you love Carver. Just read.

I loved all the stories in this kindle edition, but a star has to be knocked off for the numerous typos - perhaps one every five pages - which is way over the line of acceptability.