Reading About Ford Madox Ford

Published in 1963, in the very second issue of The New York Review:

If the essays published so far by Richard W. Lid and Richard M. Ludwig
are parts of books yet to appear, as I hear they are, there will
shortly be five books about Ford since 1961. There is still in
manuscript a biography by Frank McShane; and another biography, which I
understand will have the full support of Miss Janice Biala, who owns
the letters and other private papers, will appear in the next few years
from the hand of Mr. Arthur Mizener. If this book comes out, say, by
1966, and Mr. McShane’s not much later than that, there will have been
by 1966 seven full-length biographies and critical studies of Ford
within five years. The staggering disproportion between the number of
books about Ford and the number of his own books that may then be in
print will be an anomaly of Anglo-American literary history. It will be
easier to read about Ford than to read him. . . .

The future of his reputation is further complicated by the critical
distinction of the three books so far published. This may trap us in
the illusion that there is a Ford revival. There may be one soon, if
Mr. Greene’s plan to republish Ford, a few books a year, meets with any
success at all. But for the moment only a few scholars and critics will
be introduced to Ford, and his old admirers edified, by the three books
here under review. It is not likely that the general reader (if he
exists) will get further than hearing about them.

To my knowledge, the Ford revival never occurred. (Can anyone point out otherwise?) Even if there was a revival at some point in the last 45 years, its effects seem to have been mostly erased by now.

Unfortunately (for the "general readers" that Ford has been so well hidden from), I’m finding more and more that this is a novelist very much worth reading. I have previously expressed my great admiration for The Good Soldier. My (currently ongoing) reading of Parade’s End has so far done nothing to detract from the reputation Ford has established with me. (Quite the opposite, actually . . . )

A quick search of Amazon indicates that I am not too strictly limited in my alternatives for reading deeper into Ford’s oeuvre, once I’ve gotten Parade’s considerable bulk behind me. So at least Ford’s in print now. I suppose that’s progress.

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