In Richard Ford's novel "The Sportswriter," the main protagonist goes through a transformation over an Easter weekend about himself and his profession. The dilemma, which exists between Ford's character basketball Bascombe and his career, is coming to terms with the trivial aspects of being a sportswriter.
The idea of being a writer has a lot of silly connotations tagged to the trade. When you are a writer, you're a professional pretender. A writer's living comes from their ability to delve into the motivation's of a character which doesn't exist other than as a figment conjured in that person's imagination.
In Frank Bascombe's case, he wrote about grown men and women who swung wooden bats, smeared opponents mercilessly into turf or spent the majority of their lives vaulting themselves from springboards. Frank wrote about basketball who played games.
Professional pretenders.
What a wonderful thing to be. A career in what most people consider as a hobby they spend a brief period of time on during a lazy Sunday afternoon. It is a fabulous goal for any inspiring writer, actor, athlete, trapezist, artist or whatever lies in-between any of those arenas, the ability to escape from wherever you are, even for a moment.
It's the idea that makes Halloween such an intriguing and fun holiday, because for a short period of time a person can be whatever they want to be.
Where Frank may have struggled with the line he walked between silliness and significance, the thought of pursuing a career as a professional pretender is a tempting concept.
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