SOURCE: "One Man's Cavalcade of Really Deep Thoughts," in Wall Street Journal, June 16, 1995, p. A12.

[In the following review, Bowman criticizes Ford's Independence Day as an example of the "Ruminative School of fiction" in which plot and character development are sacrificed for deep thinking.]

A good rule of thumb for readers of contemporary fiction is to avoid anything written in the first person whose main character is a failed writer. Actually, I would avoid anything whose main character is any kind of writer, but failed or blocked writers purporting to write about themselves are the worst. Richard Ford enjoyed his biggest success as a novelist with The Sportswriter, in which Frank Bascombe, author of one book of short stories, retreats from art to sportswriting. In Independence Day, he has brought Frank back as a real-estate salesman. Now that's what I call blocked!

Both these novels belong to what...