BE MINE, by Richard Ford (Bloomsbury, $36.99)
Life's not really a journey, but it resembles one, and thus many stories of people's lives recount journeys too. There's Odysseus making his slow voyage back to Ithaca, Don Quixote armouring up and becoming a knight errant, Captain Ahab in pursuit of the white whale and Huck Finn and Jim lighting down the Mississippi. The modern embodiment of this genre is the road-trip novel, and nowhere more so than in the US, the natural home of the automobile, where Eisenhower's interstate highways unite and divide the nation's inhabitants. Richard Ford's new novel fits somewhere between the lyricism of On the Road and the bleakness of The Road, continuing the story of his perennial protagonist and first-person narrator Frank Bascombe, a kind of hyper-literate everyman.
Now old but not that old, Frank devises a road trip with his terminally ill son from Rochester, Minnesota, to Mt Rushmore. There's a reflexive irony at work here, in the novel and the trip itself: Bascombe's son, Paul, has long dreamed of visiting as many conceptually weird or oddly named places - Whynot, Mississippi; Stinking Springs, New Mexico; Cape Flattery, Washington; Sopchoppy, Florida - as possible. What's possible, of course, has diminished in the face of his rapidly advancing illness, so Mt Rushmore it is.
Denne historien er fra August 26, September 1 2023-utgaven av New Zealand Listener.
Start din 7-dagers gratis prøveperiode på Magzter GOLD for å få tilgang til tusenvis av utvalgte premiumhistorier og 9000+ magasiner og aviser.
Allerede abonnent ? Logg på
Denne historien er fra August 26, September 1 2023-utgaven av New Zealand Listener.
Start din 7-dagers gratis prøveperiode på Magzter GOLD for å få tilgang til tusenvis av utvalgte premiumhistorier og 9000+ magasiner og aviser.
Allerede abonnent? Logg på
First-world problem
Harrowing tales of migrants attempting to enter the US highlight the political failure to fully tackle the problem.
Applying intelligence to AI
I call it the 'Terminator Effect', based on the premise that thinking machines took over the world.
Nazism rears its head
Smirky Höcke, with his penchant for waving with a suspiciously straight elbow and an open palm, won't get to be boss of either state.
Staying ahead of the game
Will the brave new world of bipartisanship that seems to be on offer with an Infrastructure Commission come to fruition?
Grasping the nettle
Broccoli is horrible. It smells, when being cooked, like cat pee.
Hangry? Eat breakfast
People who don't break their fast first thing in the morning report the least life satisfaction.
Chemical reaction
Nitrates in processed meats are well known to cause harm, but consumed from plant sources, their effect is quite different.
Me and my guitar
Australian guitarist Karin Schaupp sticks to the familiar for her Dunedin concerts.
Time is on my side
Age does not weary some of our much-loved musicians but what keeps them on the road?
The kids are not alright
Nuanced account details how China's blessed generation has been replaced by one consumed by fear and hopelessness.