{"product_id":"the-lay-of-the-land-isbn-9780679776673","title":"The Lay of the Land","description":"\u003cb\u003eNATIONAL BESTSELLER • NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD FINALIST • The Pulitzer Prize-winning author of \u003ci\u003eIndependence Day\u003c\/i\u003e and \u003ci\u003eThe Sportswriter\u003c\/i\u003e brings back the unforgettable Frank Bascombe in this astonishing meditation on modern-day America.  \u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eA sportswriter and a real estate agent, husband and father—Frank Bascombe has been many things to many people. His uncertain youth behind him, we follow him through three days during the autumn of 2000, when his trade as a realtor on the Jersey Shore is thriving. But as a presidential election hangs in the balance, and a post-nuclear-family Thanksgiving looms before him, Frank discovers that what he terms “the Permanent Period” is fraught with unforeseen perils. An astonishing meditation on America today and filled with brilliant insights, The Lay of the Land is a magnificent achievement from one of the most celebrated chroniclers of our time.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAlso available in the Bascombe Trilogy: \u003ci\u003eThe Sportswriter\u003c\/i\u003e and \u003ci\u003eIndependence Day\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cb\u003eA \u003ci\u003eNEW YORK TIMES \u003c\/i\u003eBOOK REVIEW BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Ford once again shows why he deserves to be hailed as one of the great American  fiction novelists of his generation.” —\u003ci\u003eThe Washington Post Book World\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e“By now,  we have gotten to know Frank Bascombe well enough to take his measure, and to appreciate  that, like almost no one else in our recent literature, he is life-size.\" —\u003ci\u003eThe New  York Times Book Review\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\"\u003cb\u003eThe Lay of the Land\u003c\/b\u003e\u003ci\u003e . . .\u003c\/i\u003e is distinct not only for its singular  style but also because of its generosity. Ford shows that life is never easy and  never placid. . . . Yet we keep moving forward for that occasional moment of pure  understanding.\" —\u003ci\u003eChicago Sun-Times\u003c\/i\u003eRICHARD FORD is the author of six novels and three collections of stories. He was awarded the Pulitzer Prize and the PEN\/Faulkner Award for \u003ci\u003eIndependence Day\u003c\/i\u003e and the PEN\/Malamud Award for excellence in short fiction. Ford's best known titles are \u003ci\u003eThe Sportswriter\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003eIndependence Day\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003eThe Lay of the Land\u003c\/i\u003e, and \u003ci\u003eLet Me Be Frank with You. \u003c\/i\u003ePart 1Toms River, across the Barnegat Bay, teems out ahead of me in the    blustery winds and under the high autumnal sun of an American    Thanksgiving Tuesday. From the bridge over from Sea-Clift, sunlight    diamonds the water below the girdering grid. The white-capped bay    surface reveals, at a distance, only a single wet-suited jet-skier    plowing and bucking along, clinging to his devil machine as it    plunges, wave into steely wave. “Wet and chilly, bad for the willy,”    we sang in Sigma Chi, “Dry and warm, big as a baby’s arm.” I take a backward look to see if the NEW JERSEY'S BEST KEPT SECRET sign has    survived the tourist season—now over. Each summer, the barrier island    on which Sea-Clift sits at almost the southern tip hosts six thousand    visitors per linear mile, many geared up for sun ’n fun vandalism and    pranksterish grand theft. The sign, which our Realty Roundtable paid    for when I was chairman, has regularly ended up over the main    entrance of the Rutgers University library, up in New Brunswick.    Today, I’m happy to see it’s where it belongs.New rows of three-storey white-and-pink condos line the mainland    shore north and south. Farther up toward Silver Bay and the state wetlands, where bald eagles perch, the low pale-green cinder-block    human-cell laboratory owned by a supermarket chain sits alongside a    white condom factory owned by Saudis. At this distance, each looks as benign as Sears. And each, in fact, is a good-neighbor clean-   industry-partner whose employees and executives send their kids to    the local schools and houses of worship. Management puts a stern    financial foot down on drugs and pedophiles. Their campuses are well    landscaped and policed. Both stabilize the tax base and provide    locals a few good yuks.From the bridge span I can make out the Toms River yacht basin, a    forest of empty masts wagging in the breezes, and to the north, a    smooth green water tower risen behind the husk of an old nuclear    plant currently for sale and scheduled for shutdown in 2002. This is    our eastern land view across from the Boro of Sea-Clift, and frankly    it is a positivist’s version of what landscape-seascape has mostly    become in a multi-use society.This morning, I’m driving from Sea-Clift, where I’ve abided the last    eight years, across the sixty-five-mile inland trek over to Haddam,    New Jersey, where I once lived for twenty, for a day of diverse duties—some sobering, some fearsome, one purely hopeful. At 12:30, I’m    paying a funeral-home visitation to my friend Ernie McAuliffe, who    died on Saturday. At four, my former wife, Ann Dykstra, has asked to    “meet” me at the school where she works, the prospect of which has    ignited piano-wire anxiety as to the possible subjects—my health, her    health, our two grown and worrisome children, the surprise    announcement of a new cavalier in her life (an event ex-wives feel    the need to share). I also mean to make a quick stop by my dentist’s    for an on-the-fly adjustment to my night guard (which I’ve brought).    And I have a Sponsor appointment at two—which is the hopeful part.Sponsors is a network of mostly central New Jersey citizens—men and women—whose goal is nothing more than to help people (female    Sponsors claim to come at everything from a more humanistic\/nurturing    angle, but I haven’t noticed that in my own life). The idea of    Sponsoring is that many people with problems need nothing more than a    little sound advice from time to time—not problems you’d visit a    shrink for, or take drugs to cure, or that requires a program Blue    Cross would co-pay. Just something you can’t quite figure out by    yourself, and that won’t exactly go away, but that if you could just    have a common-sense conversation about, you’d feel a helluva lot    better. A good example would be that you own a sailboat but aren’t    sure how to sail it very well. And after a while you realize you’re    reluctant even to get in the damn thing for fear of sailing it into    some rocks, endangering your life, losing your investment and    embittering yourself with embarrassment. Meantime it’s sitting in    gaspingly expensive dry dock at Brad’s Marina in Shark River,    suffering subtle structural damage from being out of the water too    long, and you’re becoming the butt of whispered dumb-ass-novice    cracks and slurs by the boatyard staff. You end up never driving down    there even when you want to, and instead find yourself trying to    avoid ever thinking about your sailboat, like a murder you committed    decades ago and have escaped prosecution for by moving to another    state and adopting a new identity, but that makes you feel ghastly    every morning at four o’clock when you wake up covered with sweat.Sponsor conversations address just such problems, often focusing on    the debilitating effects of ill-advised impulse purchases or bad    decisions regarding property or personal services. As a realtor, I    know a lot about these things. Another example would be how do you    approach your Dutch housekeeper, Bettina, who’s stopped cleaning    altogether and begun sitting in the kitchen all day drinking coffee,    smoking, watching TV and talking on the telephone long-distance, but    you can’t figure out how to get her on track, or worst case, send her    packing. Sponsor advice would be what a friend would say: Get rid of    the boat, or else take some private lessons at the yacht club next    spring; probably nothing’s all that wrong with it for the time being—these things are built to last. Or I’ll write out a brief speech for    the Sponsoree to deliver to Bettina or leave in the kitchen, which,    along with a healthy check, will send her on her way without fuss.    She’s probably illegal and unhappy herself.Anybody with a feet-on-the-ground idea of what makes sense in the    world can offer advice like this. Yet it’s surprising the number of    people who have no friends they can ask sound advice from, and no    capacity to trust themselves. Things go on driving them crazy even    though the solution’s usually as easy as tightening a lug nut.The Sponsor theory is: We offer other humans the chance to be human;    to seek and also to find. No donations (or questions) asked.    A  drive across the coastal incline back to Haddam is not at all    unusual for me. Despite my last decade spent happily on the Shore,    despite a new wife, new house, a new professional address—Realty-Wise    Associates—despite a wholly reframed life, I’ve kept my Haddam    affiliations alive and relatively thriving. A town you used to live    in signifies something—possibly interesting—about you: what you were    once. And what you \u003ci\u003ewere\u003c\/i\u003e always has its private allures and comforts.    I still, for instance, keep my Haddam Realty license current and do    some referrals and appraisals for United Jersey, where I know most of    the officers. For a time, I owned (and expensively maintained) two    rental houses, though I sold them in the late-nineties gentrification    boom. And for several years, I sat on the Governor’s Board of the    Theological Institute—that is, until fanatical Fresh Light Koreans    bought the whole damn school, changed the name to the Fresh Light    Seminary (salvation through studied acts of discipline) and I was    invited to retire. I’ve also kept my human infrastructure (medical-   dental) centered in Haddam, where professional standards are indexed    to the tax base. And quite frankly, I often just find solace in the    leaf-shaded streets, making note of this change or that improvement,    what’s been turned into condos, what’s on the market at what    astronomical price, where historical streets have been revectored,    buildings torn down, dressed up, revisaged, as well as silently    viewing (mostly from my car window) the familiar pale faces of    neighbors I’ve known since the seventies, grown softened now and re-   charactered by time’s passage.Of course, at some unpredictable but certain moment, I can also feel    a heavy curtain-closing sensation all around me; the air grows thin    and dense at once, the ground hardens under my feet, the streets yawn    wide, the houses all seem too new, and I get the williwaws. At which    instant I turn tail, switch on my warning blinkers and beat it back    to Sea-Clift, the ocean, the continent’s end and my chosen new life—   happy not to think about Haddam for another six months.What is home then, you might wonder? The place you first see    daylight, or the place you choose for yourself? Or is it the    someplace you just can’t keep from going back to, though the air    there’s grown less breathable, the future’s over, where they really    don’t want you back, and where you once left on a breeze without a    rearward glance? Home? Home’s a musable concept if you’re born to one    place, as I was (the syrup-aired southern coast), educated to another    (the glaciated mid-continent), then come full stop in a third—   spending years finding suitable “homes” for others. Home may only be    where you’ve memorized the grid pattern, where you can pay with a    check, where someone you’ve already met takes your blood pressure,    palpates your liver, slips a digit here and there, measures the    angstroms gone off your molars bit by bit—in other words, where your    primary care-givers await, their pale gloves already pulled on and    snugged.    My other duty for the morning is to act as ad hoc business adviser    and confidant to my realty associate Mike Mahoney, about whom some    personal data would be noteworthy.Mike hails from faraway Gyangze, Tibet (the real Tibet, not the one    in Ohio), and is a five-foot-three-inch, forty-three-year-old realty    dynamo with the standard Tibetan’s flat, bony-cheeked, beamy    Chinaman’s face, gun-slit eyes, abbreviated arm length and, in his    case, skint black hair through which his beige scalp glistens. “Mike    Mahoney” was the “American” name hung on him by coworkers at his    first U.S. job at an industrial-linen company in Carteret—his native    name, Lobsang Dhargey, being thought by them too much of a word    sandwich. I’ve told him that one or the other—Mike Lobsang or Mike    Dhargey—could be an interesting fillip for business. But Mike’s view    is that after fifteen years he’s adjusted to Mike Mahoney and likes    being “Irish.” He has, in fact, become a full-blooded, naturalized    American—at the courthouse in Newark with four hundred others. Still    it’s easy to picture him in a magenta robe and sandals, sporting a yellow horn hat and blowing a ceremonial trumpet off the craggy side of Mount    Qomolangma—which is often how I think of him, though he never did it.    You’d be right to say I never in a hundred years expected to have a    Tibetan as my realty associate, and that New Jersey homebuyers might    turn skittish at the idea. But at least about the second of these,    what might be true is not. In the year and a half he’s worked for me,    since walking through my Realty-Wise door and asking for a job, Mike    has turned out to be a virtual lion of revenue generation and    business savvy: unceasingly farming listings, showing properties,    exhibiting cold-call tenacity while proving artful at coaxing balky    offers, wheedling acceptances, schmoozing with buyers, keeping    negotiating parties in the dark, fast-tracking loan applications and    getting money into our bank account where it belongs.Which isn’t to say he’s a usual person to sell real estate alongside    of, even though he’s not so different from the real estate seller    I’ve become over the years and for some of the same reasons—neither    of us minds being around strangers dawn to dusk, and nothing else    seems very suitable. Yet I’m aware some of my competitors smirk    behind both our backs when they see Mike out planting Realty-Wise    signs in front yards. And though occaisonally potential buyers    experience a perplexed moment when a voice inside them shouts, “Wait.    I’m being shown a beach bungalow by a fucking Tibetan!”—most clients    come around soon enough to think of Mike as someone special who’s    theirs, and get over his unexpected Asian-ness as I have, to the    point they can treat him like any other biped.Looked at from a satellite circling the earth, Mike is not very    different from most real estate agents, who often turn out to be    exotics in their own right: ex-Concorde pilots, ex-NFL linebackers,    ex-Jack Kerouac scholars, ex-wives whose husbands run off with    Vietnamese au pairs, then wish to God they could come back, but    aren’t allowed to. The real estate seller’s role is, after all, never    one you fully \u003ci\u003eoccupy\u003c\/i\u003e, no matter how long you do it. You somehow    always think of yourself as “really” something else. Mike started his    strange life’s odyssey in the mid-eighties as a telemarketer for a    U.S. company in Calcutta, where he learned to talk American by taking    orders for digital thermocators and moleskin pants from housewives in Pompton Plaines and    Bridgeton. And yet with his short gesturing arms, smiley demeanor and    aggressively cheerful outlook he can seem and act just like a    bespectacled little Adam’s-appled math professor at Iowa State. And    indeed, in his duties as a residential specialist, he’s comprehended    his role as being a “metaphor” for the assimilating, stateless    immigrant who’ll always be what he is (particularly if he’s from    Tibet) yet who develops into a useful, purposeful citizen who helps    strangers like himself find safe haven under a roof (he told me he’s    read around in Camus).Over the last year and a half, Mike has embraced his new calling with    gusto by turning himself into a strangely sharp dresser, by fine-   tuning a flat, accentless news-anchor delivery (his voice sometimes    seems to come from offstage and not out of him), by sending his two    kids to a pricey private school in Rumson, by mortgaging himself to    the gizzard, by separating from his nice Tibetan wife, driving a    fancy silver Infiniti, never speaking Tibetan (easy enough) and by    frequenting—and probably supporting—a girlfriend he hasn’t told me    about. All of which is fine. My only real complaint with him is that    he’s a Republican. (Officially, he’s a registered Libertarian—fiscal    conservative, social moderate, which makes you nothing at all.) But    he voted for numbskull Bush and, like many prosperous newcomers,    stakes his pennant on the plutocrat’s principle that what’s good for    him is probably good for all others—which as a world-view and in    spite of his infectious enthusiasm, seems to rob him of a measure of    inner animation, a human deficit I usually associate with citizens of    the Bay Area, but that he would say is because he’s a Buddhist.A Novel","brand":"Vintage","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46301960929509,"sku":"NP9780679776673","price":20.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9780679776673.jpg?v=1767740180","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/es\/products\/the-lay-of-the-land-isbn-9780679776673","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}