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Richard Ford

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Author

The Resume

    (February 16, 1944- )
    Born in Jackson, Mississippi
    Best known for his novel 'The Sportswriter' (1986) and its sequels 'Independence Day' (1995), 'The Lay of the Land' (2006), and 'Let Me Be Frank with You' (2014)
    Also wrote the novels 'A Piece of My Heart' (1976), ''Wildlife' (1990), and 'Canada' (2012) and the short story collections 'Rock Springs' (1987), 'Women with Men' (1997), and 'Sorry for Your Trouble' (2020)

Why he might be annoying:

    He claims that due to his dyslexia, he never finished a book until he was nineteen.
    He admitted to using racial epithets in his private correspondence into the 1980s.
    When Raymond Carver lamented that his daughter was in an abusive relationship, Ford offered to drive down to the town where the daughter lived, kill the boyfriend, and leave, noting it would be the perfect murder. (Carver declined the offer.)
    After Alice Hoffman wrote a negative review of 'The Sportswriter,' he and his wife shot bullets into one of her books and mailed it to her. ('People make such a big deal out of it..... It's not like I shot her.')
    Similarly, he reacted to another bad review by spitting in the face of Colson Whitehead.

Why he might not be annoying:

    Growing up, he lived across the street from Eudora Welty; later, he was one of the pallbearers at her funeral and the executor of her literary estate.
    'Independence Day' was the first novel to win both the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction.
    He is the favorite author of Bruce Springsteen,, who presented him with the Paris Review's lifetime achievement award (2009).

Credit: C. Fishel


Featured in the following Annoying Collections:

Year In Review:

    In 2022, Out of 3 Votes: 33.33% Annoying
    In 2021, Out of 4 Votes: 75.00% Annoying