SOURCE: "A Nomad's Ode to Soffit and Siding," in The New York Times, August 22, 1995, pp. C13, C17.

[In the following interview, Smith talks to Ford about his life, his career, and his novel Independence Day.]

After a lifetime of itinerancy, living in 9 states and some 14 homes, the novelist Richard Ford knows the language of real estate by heart. "I try to be someone upon whom nothing is lost," he said the other day in his present hometown, New Orleans, borrowing a phrase from Henry James.

"Richard watches everything," said his wife, Kristina.

In Independence Day, his sixth work of fiction, Mr. Ford has tapped into the imagination of his contemporaries in their late 40's and early 50's who are obsessed with real estate and the buying and selling of houses. It is a generation for whom real estate has become a metaphor for human fulfillment.

He takes Frank...