When I was a first-semester freshman in college, I checked out an enormous hardbound copy of Richard Ford's entire Frank Bascombe trilogy from the school's library (I'm aware it's not a trilogy anymore, but I haven't accepted that in my heart). Every day, I would go to the gym and read Ford while doing cardio. I'm still not sure how I did that without vomiting from dizziness, but my point is that I can't process the brilliance, sadness, and mundanity of Ford without being at once physically exhausted and exhilarated.
This habit caused a personal crisis. Ford is someone on whom you can think, but should never overthink. Thus to consume this work, you should relax rather than run, and sip rather than chug.
In case you haven't read it (and I really think you should): the Frank Bascombe series is about a man named, you guessed it, Frank Bascombe. He was a married sportswriter at one point, with a son, but he went through a bitter divorce and refers to his ex-wife only as 'X' throughout the series; later, he finds a career in real estate which is thrown out of whack by Hurricane Sandy. The books are very 1980s-2000s New Jersey, though Ford himself comes from a blue-collar Mississippi family. Frank is honestly an asshole, but that's besides the point. Richard Ford has made a life for him in these books (The Sportswriter, Independence Day and The Lay of the Land comprise the aforementioned trilogy; the complete Bascombe works include the fourth book, Let Me Be Frank With You), and it's incredible to imagine that this man exists only in another man's mind. There's no sense in a plot summary, because the books are moved by intimate detail rather than by story. That's something I like; again, that's a sip, not a chug. Feel the way the taste changes in your mouth the longer it sits. How it changes from the front of the palate to the back. You aren't here to get drunk. You are here to taste a drink, a tincture, a preparation.
That being said, I tried to get my grandma to read the series and she gave it up, said it "didn't go anywhere and didn't have a moral." Figures: her drink of choice is Pinot Noir, pronounced in her thick accent as Peanut Noor.
For a drink that you can (and should) drink as slowly and thoughtfully as you read Ford's masterful, Pulitzer Prize-winning trilogy, we recommend Swift Distillery's Single Malt Texas Whiskey, served neat.
Story by Ryan Murphy
Photographs by Jodi Cash