Richard Ford

How puerile the writing by Richard Ford in his novel, "Canada."

So puerile it's kind of arresting since the quality of the story almost overcomes the puerility of its telling. The reading, however, overwhelms the reader, the reader not quite willing to continue reading writing so puerile as to border on the unbelievable, but unable to stop reading as well, fascinated equally by the puerility of the writing and the strength of the story.

The first sin: ascribing to the narrator qualities of insight impossible to the narrator's announced age and stage, a boy of 15 years. The second sin: writing composed of sentences of such stunning puerility they bear reading over and over, either to ascertain that their deeper meaning lies somewhere either above or below the surface of the page, or to confirm a reader's suspicion that their puerility is a purposeful aesthetic strategy employed by Mr. Ford in the telling of his story, which is otherwise quite interesting, the puerility of the writing aside.

Given Richard Ford's acclaim as a writer, it's quite possible that the puerility of "Canada" is intentional, a shrewd send-up of our country's own puerility in contrast to our neighbor's.

To Bev Parsons, in the state of mind he'd descended to, there was something so necessary and also unexceptional about the undertaking that there couldn't have been any grounds for objecting--which says something not good about him, I know. And since, again, he didn't consider himself the type of person to commit an armed robbery, actually committing one didn't immediately change his opinion of himself, and possibly didn't right up to the moment the detectives came to our house, walked around the living room discussing a "trip to North Dakota," and then told both our parents, almost casually, they would have to have handcuffs put on and go to jail. (p. 70).