SOURCE: Leder, Priscilla. “Men with Women: Gender Relations in Richard Ford's Rock Springs.” In Perspectives on Richard Ford, edited by Huey Guagliardo, pp. 97-120. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2000.

In the following essay, Leder investigates notions of gender in Ford's Rock Springs, paying particular attention to the concept of voice.

But I did not, as I waited, want to think about only myself. I realized that was all I had ever really done, and that possibly it was all you could ever do, and that it would make you bitter and lonesome and useless. So I tried to think instead about [her].

—“Children” 96

In a New York Times Book Review article, Vivian Gornick identifies Richard Ford as a creator of the latest version of “a certain kind of American story that is characterized by a laconic surface and a tight-lipped speaking voice.” Like Hemingway fifty years ago, Ford...