The celebrated American writer Richard Ford is a frequent visitor to Ireland and on his most recent trip to our shores, he dropped in on Dearbhail McDonald to talk about his new novel, Be Mine. The book is a fifth instalment in Ford's Frank Bascombe series, which began with The Sportswriter in 1986. Dearbhail asked what it is about the character of Frank Bascombe that people are so attracted to.

"From my point of view, from the guy who’s writing it, it’s that he’s talking about things that are deadly serious to him. The death of his son in the case of this book, but also that he’s funny at the same time. There’s this old Borscht Belt chestnut which says, 'If nothing’s funny, nothing’s serious.’ And that’s kind of the way I go at these books and it’s the way I go at the world."

Of course, it’s difficult for a writer to know precisely what about a character connects with readers. As far as Ford is concerned, when the book’s written, it’s no longer his sole property:

"You send a book off into the world. You do your best, you hope that people will read all of it, read all the words and once they read all the words, what they like about it is impenetrable to me."

Dearbhail wonders how the book is funny, given that it deals with Frank looking after his dying son, Paul. The novel, she says, has heartbreak, conflict and love. But it’s also funny. That’s a hard trick to pull off, one suspects.

"I don’t know how one faces death. I’ve seen, at my age obviously, I’ve seen people face death, but I would like to think that if I were going to face death, this would be my natural mode. I would try to find something a) interesting about it and I would try to find something that’s a laugh about it because the other alternative is just, to me, unacceptable."

Be Mine features – as did the Pulitzer Prize-winning Independence Day in 1995 – Frank and Paul taking a road trip across the US. Dearbhail asked what the attraction of the open road is for Ford and his characters.

"Well, one thing is that you get two people and you stick them in a car and then it ups the level of drama. It ups the intensity of what’s going on between them. So that’s certainly one thing. Also, not being a great plotter in books – I’ve never thought that that was my great strength – if you put somebody in a car and send them someplace, you have a kind of plot built in there."

In the novel, Frank Bascombe’s son Paul is suffering from Motor Neurone Disease – also known as ALS – and Dearbhail is struck both by the two characters’ conversations and by what’s left unsaid between them. Ford suggests that the road trip needed more than just a rundown of Paul’s symptoms:

"You can’t just have a father and son who – underlying all love each other – just driving across the country talking about the grimness of symptoms of ALS, which are inexorable and various. I mean, you have to find something else to say, as one would, if you were going to do that."

Ford says he drew from Independence Day and the young Paul, looking at what he’d made of himself, notwithstanding the ALS diagnosis.

"It seemed consonant to have him be this kind of irreverent, unpredictable, eccentric kind of man."

Be Mine opens with Frank Bascombe, now 74, contemplating his own mortality and reflecting on happiness. Dearbhail asked Richard Ford, now 79, if he’s happy. Yes, he says, he is, albeit with a slight caveat:

"Yes, I am happy, but as I say to people, I was raised a Protestant, so it’s possible I’ve never been happy... To me, happiness is something that you define for yourself. It’s not, you know, Christmas morning happy or Disneyland happy or ice cream cone happy, it’s that you look around and you see, in my case, I married the girl I was in love with when I was 17. I’ve done the things that I wanted to do with my life up to now, writing these books. I haven’t got sick yet, you know, all that stuff. So, I look around and I think, yes, yes, in fact, this is what happiness is to me."

Ford tells Dearbhail that his philosophy – and it could apply to anyone at any age – is that he doesn’t know how long he’s going to be here, but he’d like to think that he’s going to like it while he is. Which seems pretty reasonable. And not unlike something Frank Bascombe might say.

You can hear Dearbhail and Richard Ford’s full conversation by going here.

Be Mine by Richard Ford is published in June by Bloomsbury.