Rating: 
Summary: Venerable American Masterwork
Review: Shuttled through the brilliant, candid, and effusively sensitive tone-of-voice that is Frank Bascombe, Ford's *Independence Day* is a beautiful and devastating look at America in the waning years of its Reagan/Bush-induced 1980's optimism. Seeking a more gratifying and grounded romanticism than the anxious dreaminess of his past years or the plastic promise of selling real estate, Bascombe sets out, with his son, Paul, on a road tour of America's northeastern halls of fame. The trip becomes a visionary odyssey across the thematic topographies of father and son, man and wife, solitude and community, all voiced with lush observation and crackling wit. Ford's writerly empathy, his subtle sense of the ways life sounds, smells, and *feels*, are so crafted and earnest and real that they can be wrenching in their honesty. We may not always admire Bascombe, but we can relate to his mistakes and admire, thoroughly, his decent desire to just make life work as well as it can. I believe our children's children will be reading this book; you ought to as well.
Rating:
Summary: Other Reviewers are Missing Alot
Review: I happened across the reviews of Independence Day by chance while looking for another book. Independence Day is a very good book. It is possible to dismiss it quickly as some of these reviews do as simply an unoriginal, tired story, unworthy of its awards. To do so would be incorrect. The analysis here, the descriptions of thoughts, feelings, and how people interact is at least as good as anything else being written today. I won't argue that it's the greatest book, but considering there are books with much poorer writing and less insight into the human condition that are winning awards, I don't see why people are getting so upset with this one.
Rating: 
Summary: Most boring book I have ever read.
Review: If the purpose of this book was to make the reader experience three of the most boring days, in the most excruciating details, with a pompus, pretentious, and simpleminded idiot, it was a success. I couldn't stand this book. And I didn't even have to read it, I listened to it on tape. After 5 tapes I skiped to the 10th, then quickly to the last tape. I don't feel as though I missed out ony any important information in the book, just my life. What a waste of my time.
Rating:
Summary: Yuk.
Review: Was left only with a feeling of "who cares?"
Rating:
Summary: Brilliant and True
Review: I just felt the need to up his star averages! The people who don't like this book don't seem to get that this is the way we live. Our stories don't have to 'go anywhere' to amount to something powerful, as Frank Bascombe's does. This is Ford setting out life's logic as he sees it. You don't have to agree, or even be interested. You can put the book down. But to my mind it is lyrically told and true.
Rating: 
Summary: Chilly!
Review: If anything, that book has taught me what I don't want to be when I grow up: an empty soul in search of an anchor of some sort. "Independence Day" served as a great kick in the butt, and I am thankful for that!
Rating:
Summary: A great study of the disenchanted
Review: Richard Ford's passion for the English language is equal to Frank Bascomb's dispassion for living. That he is able to juxtapose such crackling prose, such vivid language while drawing such a gloomy creature is amazing to me. Although I liked THE SPORTSWRITER better, I have to say INDEPENDENCE DAY excavates deeper into the soul of a person seeking meaning in that which seems insubstantial. And the irony of all this doom and gloom taking place during an Independence Day weekend...Brilliant, man. Just brilliant. Frank Bascomb shows us that, like in Mudville, there is no joy in being truly independent.
Rating:
Summary: A Pulitizer for this???
Review: Frank never collects his rent. He works too hard for nothing. He helps people out only to endure their contempt. The book is filled with descriptive prose that goes no place slowly. A great many characters are introduced who don't figure. A great many words are written alluding to something that is to happen many pages away, and it fizzles. The book just fizzles. The hero is emotionally crippled and he just stays that way. A better title would have been The Frog Pond, because he's waiting for someone (a woman) to fish him out.
Rating:
Summary: a post-Lolita road trip deeluxe
Review: All the Ford-bashers among the Amazon.com reviewers seem mightily offended that Ford's awards and published reviews have placed him and Independence Day among American greats. I don't think you have to like or accept all of the mannerisms of Frank Bascombe, the former Sportswriter-turned-real estate agent, to admire Ford's wit in Independence Day, and his amazing skills at describing people, towns, and the American landscape. Frank's drive with his messed-up son through the Northeast flirts with the same excesses as Humbert and Lolita's excursions. No Ford-Nabokov equal billing here, academic chums, just pointing out that Ford's overall conception of this strained father-son trip overcomes the big fat slices of Americana that seem to gag many reviewers, who evidently prefer leaner stuff. And if you're from New Jersey, you'll *definitely* understand!
Rating: 
Summary: compelling
Review: Whether he be your father or next door neighbor, we can all relate to Frank Bascombe. It turned out to be a touching an emotional story of a father trying to re enter a life years after he is expelled from it. Franks relation to his son, is so true to life and fascinating that it made me grin and shudder. The writing is impressive, with Bascombe coming to life and fighting a mid-life battle, while trying to tame and understand his son. I only wish I read the Sportswriter before this. Ford definetly deserves our attention.
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