num_pages: 451
description: Another title for Ford's 1996 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel might be "The Return of Frank Bascombe." Bascombe, in this sequel to Ford's 10-year-old The Sportswriter, comes close to taking his place with John Updike's Rabbit Angstrom in the pantheon of confused white middle-class American literary protagonists. At age 44 he has entered what Bascombe calls "the Existence Period, the high-wire act of normalcy, the part that comes after the big struggle which led to the big blowup." Bascombe's almost comic indecisiveness has led to the breakup of his marriage, a detached, wary affair, and an achingly fragile relationship with his troubled teenage son, Paul. Ford details Bascombe's Fourth of July weekend in leisurely, measured prose, crafting scenes of muted heartbreak.
language: English
title: Independence Day
titlecomplete: Independence Day
characters: Frank Bascombe
genres: Fiction, Classics, Adult Fiction, Contemporary, The United States Of America, American, American Fiction, Literary Fiction, Literature, Novels
ratings_count: 15917
places: New Jersey
series: Frank Bascombe
awards: awardedAt: 820483200000
name: Pulitzer Prize
category: Fiction, awardedAt: 820483200000
name: PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction, awardedAt: 788947200000
name: National Book Critics Circle Award
category: Fiction
publisher: Knopf