Pilar Martin.
Madrid, June 7 (EFE).- The American writer Richard Ford believes in imagination, in goodness, and that is why he claims to be “fed up and bored” with Donald Trump, the possible next president of the United States, the country where he was born a long time ago. 80 years old and for him he is in “decline.”
This was stated this Thursday, in a meeting with journalists, by the 2016 Princess of Asturias Award for Literature during her visit to Spain on the occasion of the publication of what, she assures, will be the last installment of the saga starring her character. Frank Bascombe, ‘Be mine’ (Anagrama), with whom he has covered the history of the last 50 years of his country.
A personal look at North America that is always like a “background”, because when in Bascombe’s novels (there are five in total) he talks about Bush, Obama, Trump or the September 11 attacks, he does so as “secondary elements” regarding the characters, whom he always puts in the foreground.
And that is what he always does in his novels, putting the story at the service of the plot, although the Pulitzer Prize winner (1966) when he talks about his country makes it loud and clear: “The best thing would be for us all to realize that we are fed up with Donald Trump, that he already bores us and that, therefore, we must move to a much more gradual change.
That is to say, according to the writer (Jackson, USA, 1944), it is necessary for something to happen that “unifies”, although “unfortunately” what usually unifies “is the outbreak of violence of some type of violence, whether violence with an international war or with a civil war”.
As he adds, the United States is currently in “decline” in, something he regrets saying but feels when he sees “the number of homeless people, the government’s inability to respond to the needs of poor people, the point at which the public schools, the trust in the institutions and the character of the leaders.
Of course, what worries him most is “the division” in the United States regarding “what is good, what is correct, and not about the good.” “But that does not mean that it is over, as long as public institutions can survive.” “As long as we can continue voting, as long as we can express our discontent without being punished, I remain optimistic.”
Likewise, for Ford today, populism has become a “kind of curse” that, as “guardian of language,” he combats by affirming that it is nothing more than another word. Therefore, he recommends opting for “useful words.” “It has practically become an insult, it is like synonymous with not thinking, when before it was more like what people thought.”
Back to his novel, this time, and with an “older” Bascombe like him, he jokes, the plot revolves around a trip he takes to Mount Rushmore with his son Paul, who is sick with ALS.
A story bathed in an intelligent reflection on happiness, a concept he works in a “conscious way” and that makes him confess that one of his happiest life moments was when he enlisted in the Marines or when the singer Bruce Springsteen recommended one of his books. .
Regarding the destination chosen for that trip, which turns the novel into a kind of ‘road movie’, Ford acknowledges that national monuments, like Mount Rushmore, always seem “ridiculous” to him because “they tend to simplify very complex things.” .
“When I see the faces of those four presidents on the side of a mountain, which is sacred to the Indians, I think, how ridiculous,” he adds.
A professor at Columbia University until last year, when he talks about youth he does so thinking about “specific” people, about each of his students, in whom he sees things he likes and others not so much.
For example, like the “fear” they have of the criticism that their works may provoke: “We should be able to write and talk about everything we can imagine,” claims this writer who tomorrow will be together with Mariana Enríquez at the Feria del Madrid book. EFE
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