A Piece of My Self: The ‘Wound’ in the Writing of Richard Ford

Abstract

Malcolm Cowley’s hypothesis about the importance of Ernest Hemingway’s WWI wounding to an understanding of his work provides the point of departure for this essay. Richard Ford’s memoir, Between Them: Remembering My Parents (2017), provides revealing information about the importance in Ford’s life of the early death of his father. After discussing the more immediate autobiographical material in Ford’s first novel, A Piece of My Heart (1976), I go on to show how the template created by the wound of Parker Ford’s death informs several stories in Rock Springs and subsequent fiction.