ARTS The Michigan Daily Ford roots for his novel cause Tuesday, April 21, 1992 Page 5 I by John Morgan Today Richard Ford will deliver the annual Hopwood lecture, where the winners of the University's cre- ative writing prize will be an- nounced. Once a professor at the University, Ford has authored five prominent novels over the last six- teen years, including Wildlife, his most recent. Despite his difficulty in sununa- rizing his ideas for the lecture, Ford was able to offer an outline of his general intent. "I suppose I'll talk about how young writers might go about choosing what they do or don't subsequently write about," he said, "and what influences them negatively and positively, and what things they ought to pay attention to. What things they must feel empow- ered to write about, even though there might be strong currents in the culture asking them not to write about them." The theme of Ford's lecture will be the way in which our culture cen- sors writers. He said that he will touch on issues of multiculturalism and gender. "The nature of Ame- rican culture is typified by plu- ralism," Ford said. "A quality of pluralism is that interest groups - to the extent that they can - exert quite a lot of public and subliminal pressure upon people to think a certain way." Ford asserted that this effect isn't always negative. "Much of this is to the good," he said. He cited cultural phenomena such as feminism as having a "large and positive effect in our society" as it has increased in its ability to articulate its own concerns. It is Ford's opinion that this sort of cultural influence can either limit or delimit what people are able to discuss, and can also limit the kinds of offenses that such causes war against. Ford said he sees writers as the agents of cultural change, and stresses the importance of artistic freedom. "As a writer, you must 'A quality of pluralism is that interest groups - to the extent that they can - exert quite a lot of public and subliminal pressure upon people to think a certain way.' -Richard Ford, author have the freedom, and exercise the- freedom, to question conventional wisdom," he said. "Writers must be aware of how to pull apart the fine threads of re- straint, and the bounds of restraint, to determine which are useful and which are not. The earlier you are apprised of this responsibility and how the culture influences you, the more likely you are to be lively in your discriminations ... "Many writers are people who are highly sensitive to what is going on in their culture, and make some- thing up out of it. The stories and poems that they make have, in a dis- tilled way, all of those forces within the society at work in them in a very vivid way. "Writers have a responsibility that many other people in the culture don't, because writers are unbe- holden to people," Ford said. "We don't employ people, we don't have clients ... The writer's relationship to a completely voluntary audience is somewhat different." Citing an example from his own writing, Ford described how his background may have influenced the way in which members of non-white races are portrayed in his work. "I grew up in racist Mississippi, but I also grew up reading Faulkner and Eudora Welty, so that the special kinds of care that one has to take in writing, for instance, about another race was impressed upon me at a very early age." Ford could not explain exactly how this sensitivity was instilled in him, but says he has definitely no- ticed it through his writing. He is, however, "not trying to take up a cause." Ford doesn't see younger writers as being any more susceptible to this form of cultural censorship than older ones, claiming that as writers age, they "trade their freedoms and limitations in for a whole new set of freedoms and limitations." The author characterizes his own writing career by its diversity. As a veteran writer of novels, short sto- ries, magazine articles and screen- plays, this is difficult to argue. He recently wrote a novella, enti- tled The Womanizer, that will appear in Granta. Another short story will be published in the New Yorker around Thanksgiving. In addition, Ford has continued his essay writing, edited the 1990 Best American Short Stories and has written the introduc- tion for the upcoming Granta Book of the American Short Story. "I do whatever I want to do that comes in the door," Ford explained, Wildlife Richard Ford Vintage/paperback Wildlife, told from the perspec- tive of a 16-year-old named Joe Brinson, depicts the gradual decline of Joe's three-member family. Joe's father, a well-meaning and practical man whose only desire is to fulfill his paternal obligations, is balanced by his mother, who becomes dissat- isfied with her life and takes up a re- lationship with another man. Set against the landscape of Great Falls, Montana in 1960, Ford cap- tures the atmosphere of the small town while restricting the story al- most exclusively to his four main characters. The town is threatened by a huge forest fire, and Joe's fa- ther, perhaps in an attempt to find a identifiable enemy to battle, goes off to fight the fire. Joe feels increas- ingly alone and confused as his mother's relationship with her lover deepens, shattering the world he has known all his life. The descriptions, told through Joe's perspective, are simple and ve- ry effective. Joe's narration is quite convincing, exhibiting the unique features that his point of view offers. In one scene, Joe's mother, Jeanette, drives to the edge of the blaze and has Joe climb out to "see what it feels like." As always, the portrait the scene paints is clear and concise, inter- twined with Joe's own confusion about his parents: "The small yellow fires and lines of fire were flickering in the underbrush close enough that I could've touched them just by rea- ching out. There was a sound like Curve Doppelgdnger Anxious/Charisma Doppelganger, the debut album from the British duo Curve, does the unthinkable. It goes above and be- yond all expectations - a dazzling tornado just this side of perfection. Curve takes the whole "shoe- gazing" sound of so many Brit outfits and smashes it to bits. There's no spacy, wombadelic jin- gle-jangle here. Wave after wave of buzzsaw guitars pummel you sense- less, while the drums do the sonic boom dance over sub-station bass- drones that show just how low they can go. And then there's the VOICE. Toni Halliday wraps her words around your throat like a smooth, silky scarf, squeezing tighter and tighter until you can't breathe, dizzy, scared, and loving every minute of it. Her proclamations of manipula- tion, pain, and desire perfectly nar- rate the primal physicality of the music swirling around her. At one moment quiet and low, the next soaring and spiraling out of control, Halliday's pipes hypnotize. The 11 songs on this album are all gorgeous, jagged bolts of noise, at once comforting and terrifying. Picking one song that stands out would be virtually impossible if it wasn't for "Horror Head." This is the one that is so awe-inspiring it makes you want to go out and do bad things. Halliday's seductive croon gently caresses the ears with a soft "hey," while an explosive soundwave slams you between the eyes like an electric tire iron. Pure aural ecstasy from start to finish. - Scott Sterling The Soup Dragons "Divine Thing" (12" single) Big Life / Mercury IPolyGram I'll give the Soup Dragons this: they bring together the Rolling Stones and the current rash of divas belting out a word or two on pop singles. How? In somewhat cliched See RECORDS, Page 8 Richard Ford reserves his right to write about all the non-PC stuff he wants to. Yet he still maintains such a sensitive demeanor. Bravo, Mr. Ford. referring to his writing. He doesn't believe that writers should limit themselves to any one aspect of the field. He won't be working with any more anthologies for a while, since he has no interest in becoming a "judge," although he enjoys assisting his colleagues and beginning writers in this way. Ford now wishes to concentrate on his own writing. "You have to find new things to write," he said. "By the middle of your life, you've used up a lot of stuff. You have to be fairly industrious to find really im- portant things that you want to write." He spent more than two years preparing and "collecting stuff" for his current project, a novel titled Independence Day. "In Ann Arbor in 1971, one of my great fears was to start a book and then run out of stuff to write about," Ford said. He has done his best to avoid that situation, and his five works are the result. He claims that his objective is to write the best books he can, and that he is not in a "derby" to write as many as possible. "I dedicate my life entirely to what I want to do," Ford said. His career as a writer certainly reflects this. He will undoubtedly prove fas- cinating to anyone interested in the future of literature and his or her own place in it. RICHARD FORD will deliver the HOPWOOD LECTURE at 3:30 p.m. today in Rackham Auditorium. wind blowing, and a crack of limbs on fire. I could feel the heat of it all over the front of me, on my legs and my fingers. I smelled the deep, hot piny odor of trees and ground in flames. And what I wanted to do was get away from it before it overcame me." Another strength is Ford's use of dialogue. Each character has his or her own distinctive voice, and every line drips of the speaker's personal- ity and state of mind. For example, after Joe's father departs, his mother enters a self-centered spirit of regret over the course her life has taken, and asks Joe if he would like her better if her name were Lottie. "'I don't like it,' I said. 'I like Jeanette.' 'Well, that's sweet,' my mother said, and smiled at me. 'You have to like me the way I am. Not as Lottie, I guess."' Her incessant ques- tions to Joe reflect her own insecu- rity and confusion: "'What will you think about me after I'm dead?"' The novel is wonderfully struc- tured, building consistently until it reaches its impressive climax. The tone of degeneration and confusion that pervades the book works well with the many conflicts occurring within Joe's family. A reader feels s/he is watching the characters all heading towards some horrible fate of their own making, one that cannot be avoided. It is impossible not to sympathize with Joe's fear and confusion as his world violently collapses all around him. Ford has created a work about the shattering of innocence that is powerful and entertaining. Bored in Ann Arbor? Write for the summer Daily! Call Alan at 763-0379 NOW ---LY---- SUPERCUTU ONLY $8001 I ~ Simply bring this ad to Supercuts. As usual, no appointments are necessary. I But come soon, this offer ends 5/15/92. I SUWPERCUlTS I 715 N. UNIVERSITY VOID WITH ANY OTHER PROMOTIONAL OFFER. 7 . GOOD AT PARTICIPATING SHOPS. 668-8488 m 1991 supercuts, Inc. 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