At the Hotel de la Reconquista, in Oviedo, there were many nerves this morning on the occasion of the XXXVI edition of the 2016 Princess of Asturias Award for Letters, to which authors of 16 different nationalities chose (from China to Argentina).
Finally, the envelope has revealed that the winner was Richard Ford, a 72-year-old American author known for stories that form a collage of the Yankee society evoked to perfection in books such as A piece of my heart or The sports journalist, works with autobiographical overtones.
The art of being slow
Born in 1944 in Jackson (United States), Ford was a dyslexic child prone to poor grades and allergic to reading. In fact, he began to read from the age of 18, although his reading comprehension has led him to recognize on numerous occasions that "he will not get to read all the books he wanted" due to the drag of his childhood deficiencies.
However, the proof that it is never too late came when Ford, excited about this new world of letters, decided to become a writer, rather a narrator of the hardships and dramas of an American society that the author defined in his first work, A Piece of my heart (1976), an example of a crime novel set on the Mississippi River, and The Last Chance (1981), centered on an ex-Vietnam War veteran.
After studying creative writing, he dedicated himself to writing for sports publications, being the rejection of the prestigious Sports Illustrated the one that pushed him to recycle himself into fiction. At this time he would publish El journalista deportivo, focused on a writer who decides to work as a sports journalist, which would soon after become his most recognized work.
All these stories, which try to extract the most intimate longings of that North American society seen through the eyes of a late but determined Ford, has been the reason why this morning the author received the 50 thousand euros of the Princess of Asturias Award, a medal, the sculpture of Joan Miró and praise by a jury that has blamed its decision on a work "that makes Ford a deeply contemporary storyteller and, at the same time, the great chronicler of the mosaic of cross stories that is American society."
Have you read anything from Ford?
Hello Alberto.
How curious the story of Richard Ford. A very American last name, by the way. If when he was a child or adolescent, he told the author's parents, neighbors and friends that he would get this award, they would have laughed out loud. Therefore, nothing can ever be said. Sometimes the improbable or the impossible happens.
I never read anything from Ford. In fact, it doesn't sound like anything to me.
Did I tell you about a MOOC course on Gabriel García Márquez?
From Oviedo, a literary greeting.
PS: "Ford" in English means "wade." In his case, it can be said that he has successfully overcome his difficulties with the language and that he has not been carried away by the current of dyslexia and poor grades.