At the dose of “The Sportswriter,” Frank Bascombe wondered aloud, “Will I ever live in Haddam, New Jersey, again? I haven’t the slightest idea. Will I be a sports-writer again and do those things I did and loved doing when I did them? Ditto.” Revelations are at hand. Ford returns to Frank Bascombe with Independence Day (451 pages. Knopf. $24), elevating him to a great mythic American character and producing a long, exhausting but finally exhilarating sequel to “The Sportswriter.” Bascombe does indeed live in Haddam, and he’s as rueful and ornery as ever. But now he’s a real-estate agent trying to give people what he wants most for himself: shelter. The novel is set around Fourth of July weekend. Bascombe tries to bond with his surviving son, a malfunctional teen named Paul, on a trip to the basketball and baseball halls of fame. And he tries to sell a house to the Markhams, a glowering couple who’ve seen 46 houses and are wondering if maybe they should just rent after all (“Phyllis and Joe are obviously nearing a realty meltdown,” says Bascombe). So nothing happens, but everything happens. Namely, Bascombe tries to give up some ghosts and to survive “the Existence Period, the high-wire act of normalcy, the part that comes after the big struggle which led to the big blow-up.”
“Independence Day” is slow going early on. Bascombe spends 50 pages showing the Markhams one renovated farmhouse, suffering Joe’s hostility and Phyllis’s queasy revelations about her hysterectomy. (People invariably tell Bascombe more than he cares to know. In Ford’s world, as in ours, you can know everything about strangers but nothing about the ones you love.) “Independence Day” doesn’t shoot off real fireworks until Bascombe tools up to his ex-wife’s house to pick up his son. Bascombe and his ex have a magnificently weary go-round–he still loves her and wants to make her mad, sad, happy, anything, but she’s remarried and has no time for his B.S. Then Bascombe heads for Cooperstown with Paul, hoping there’s at least one relationship he can get right. There isn’t. The halls-of-fame sequence is a genuinely heartbreaking study of a screwed-up father trying to reach his screwed-up kid, Paul is a fantastic creation. He’s violent. He’s in therapy. He barks for no apparent reason. And he baits Dad endlessly: Bascombe goes down swinging in a neighborhood batting cage, and Paul calls him “The Sultan of Squat.”
The Bascombes never actually make it inside the Baseball Hall of Fame. (“I’m not hall of fame material,” Paul jokes. “It’s the story of my life.”) Their road trip ends with a harrowing near tragedy. Bascombe is to blame, and when he goes to his ex-wife for absolution – and you’re sure she’ll tear his head off–she gives it to him. It’s here that you’re struck by what an empathetic writer Ford is, He’s watched his hero stagger through two novels, and he finally gives him an A for effort, finally bestows on him something like peace. In the end, Bascombe says he may marry again and segue out of the Existence Period and into the Permanent Period. Frank Bascombe, a full-fledged citizen? Better that than an accidental tourist.
title: “Seems Like Old Times” ShowToc: true date: “2022-12-08” author: “John Burton”
The week had begun routinely, if emotionally, with the lawyers wrapping up their arguments in a duel of rhetorical flourishes. Then the jury retired to deliberate on whether Simpson is responsible for the deaths of Nicole Brown and Ron Goldman. It was soon clear that this jury was not about to repeat the criminal jury’s quick judgment–maybe intentionally, to avoid the same criticism. As deliberations stretched into days, jurors asked to review an array of trial evidence, including a video of the crime scene, Simpson’s bedroom and technical DNA testimony.
Then the trial reverted to the chaotic days of the criminal case. First there were reports of possible jury tampering. Two jurors were approached–one by fax, one by phone–and urged to contact an agent, Bud Stewart, who had represented two former criminal jurors. Stewart and the former criminal jurors, Brenda Moran and Gina Rosborough, deny sending the letter; it was supposed to have been sent after the trial, they said. “Only a fool” would release it now, Stewart told NEWSWEEK. Meanwhile, Moran’s father, James Moran Sr., said he had warned his daughter to “stay away” from Stewart. But the controversy just happened to publicize a book by Moran and Rosborough, scheduled for April.
Fujisaki wasn’t amused. The jurors’ names are supposed to be secret. He sent sheriff’s deputies to search Moran’s home and the publisher’s office. Still, the judge, feeling no harm was done, didn’t remove any of the civil-trial jurors. That happened the next day, for a totally unrelated reason. He dismissed Rosemary Caraway, 62, the only African-American juror, for failing to disclose during jury selection that her daughter works as a legal secretary for the Los Angeles district attorney’s office–the same one that prosecuted Simpson at his murder trial. The D.A.’s office said it had just discovered the connection, though it didn’t say how. Caraway was replaced by a 37-year-old Asian-American male computer programmer who has done postgraduate work. In jury selection he described himself as “neutral,” though he said there was a possibility blood was planted. Black females strongly supported Simpson at his criminal trial, but plaintiffs viewed Caraway favorably–her late husband was a retired parole officer–and had tried to keep her on the jury.
Fujisaki didn’t want a mistrial. He expressed concern, telling the jury that sometimes in long trials “things unravel.” But he wouldn’t sequester the jurors and instead somberly warned them against watching TV or reading news accounts. (He also nixed weekend deliberations. “You’re a New York lawyer,” he told the Brown family’s attorney John Kelly. “I guess you’re not familiar with California law.”) The Goldman family’s lawyer Daniel Petrocelli had another reason for urging sequestration. News reports at the end of the week said that Roger Martz, an FBI laboratory technician who was a key witness in Simpson’s criminal trial, had been disciplined after criticism of his work in the Oklahoma City bombing case. A source on the plaintiffs’ side told NEWSWEEK that they “would be concerned” if jurors heard about Martz’s problems. Even at this stage in the Simpson trial, it seems, there’s no rest for the wary.
