SOURCE: "Richard Ford," in Publishers Weekly, Vol. 237, No. 20, May 18, 1990, pp. 66-7.

[In the following interview, Ford talks about the act of writing, his career, and his life.]

In Richard Ford's fiction, characters wince at a painful moment, extract its grudging truth, and scramble to survive. Ford, whose fourth novel, Wildlife, is due out next month from Atlantic Monthly Press, writes about "the smaller lives," their redeeming aches, and the luck or grit his people need to know themselves.

"I'm an optimist," Ford insists, but is rueful about what he calls, with amused chagrin, his "solemnity." It is something that permeates his stories and novels and also makes its presence felt in the author's soft-spoken yet hard-bitten Southern drawl. "I would rather be the guy who says 'I'm happy,'" Ford avows, "but I'm not much of a hoper. Rather than hope, I try to do something."

Since 1968, doing...