When he is considered at all, Ford Madox Ford suffers the partially correct repute of having written one of the most memorable first lines in modern fiction: “This is the saddest story I have ever heard,” from THE GOOD SOLDIER. Ford is usually considered an impressionist writer, and it is useful to remember that his other books include PROVENCE, LADIES WHOSE BRIGHT EYES, IT WAS THE NIGHTINGALE, and the novels of his masterwork tetralogy, SOME DO NOT, NO MORE PARADES, A MAN COULD STAND UP, and THE LAST POST. Ford had great faith in the power of the evocative title.
Six years ago I spent a few days driving along the coast of the Gulf of Mexico, and stopped in a café bar on Boca Grande, an island thick with giant banyans and a strictly imposed milieu (there are no gas stations or motels, and golf carts rule the streets). Behind the bar a very large woman in her late forties told me that I would be ordering a cheeseburger and a beer. I felt compelled to contradict her, and ordered a steak sandwich and a vodka tonic, but that only made her laugh. We talked for half an hour, by the end of which she was more confidential than I might have expected, and reported that she had had her boyfriend leave her recently, after eighteen years living together. I gave her a look I hoped would express chagrin and sympathy, but she had something more with which to beguile me.
“And he left me for an older woman. Isn’t that the sorriest goddamned story you’ve ever heard?”
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