Novelist Richard Ford on dyslexia, musical heroes and his heavyweight literary feuds

Richard Ford’s celebrated Frank Bascombe novels are about a failed novelist turned sports journalist. I don’t think of myself as a savant but writing novels, the little crucible that writing novels is, and the torque and the intensity of trying really hard to say something to interest the reader, sometimes causes you to say something smarter than you would have said otherwise.” Questions about Ford’s own long-ago controversies are a well-trodden path – the time he sent a reviewer a copy of a book with bullet holes in it, the spitting at Pulitzer-winner Colson Whitehead – but they make me wonder if Frank is deliberately less volatile than his creator. Ford says that Randy Newman is one of his “great heroes”, adding that “somebody told me once that Randy likes a book I wrote and I don’t think I have ever got over it”. He’s also a jazz fan – Chet Baker and Sidney Bechet are two favourites – although does not go to a lot of live gigs because “I’ve always got my nose to the f***ing grindstone”. Or the least bit believable?” open image in gallery Carey Mulligan and Jake Gyllenhaal in ‘Wildlife' At present, Ford is not working on anything new – he tried not to leave Be Mine “too open” – and agrees with Frank and Paul’s opinion that “legacies are a crock of s***”.