Few journals of that or of any time served the latter cause as clear-sightedly and as well. A fair percentage of the works Ford printed in both journals have joined the ranks of the permanent literary possessions of our time.
The great novels apart, nearly every other book Ford wrote remains controversial. He has the qualities we expect of a major writer, yet according to Arthur Mizener, who builds his comprehensive biography around the idea that the writer's "achievement was not what his gifts would lead us to expect," Ford's is "the saddest story." This contention may or may not be true; Janice Biala, who lived with Ford the last decade of his life, believes Mizener's portrait misrepresents its subject. But one thing is certain--every one of his many books offers special pleasures to the reader. As he said of himself, "If I had not written so many books, I might have written better." Most of Ford's work has been out of print and unavailable for years, even in otherwise well-stocked libraries. The problem has been alleviated in the last few years by the republications of Ford's books by the Carcanet Press of England and the Ecco Press of America, but it remains hard for an individual reader to form an opinion of Ford's worth.
