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Title: "The Sportswriter" Shoots And Misses
Review: Has Richard Ford ever read a sports page, much less written for one, to assume he has the qualifications to write about a sportswriter? Obviously not. "The Sportswriter" is a misnomer. This book is less about sports than about what seem to be random journal entries from Frank Bascombe, a middle-age grump bemoaning his divorce from the woman he repeatedly calls "X." (See how quickly that gets old.) "The Sportswriter" isn't about sportswriting at all; it fools the book buyer much the way a good pitcher might fool a batter with a curveball. This book and its self-absorbed first-person narrator are so dull is makes one yearn for a good long news story about an arrogant team owner raising ticket prices.
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