📚 On Richard Ford

1. Richard Ford and the Fiction of Place by Ian McGuire (2006)

Probably the best book-length study of Ford's corpus up through The Lay of the Land.
Focuses on the importance of geography, mobility, rootlessness, and place as existential conditions.
Doesn't press hard into philosophy per se, but Ford's metaphysical drift — toward resignation, absurdity, a kind of cracked stoicism — is present between the lines.

2. Understanding Richard Ford by Douglas Albright (2002)

A very readable introduction to Ford's early and middle work.
Less analytical, more explanatory — better for mapping recurring themes: failure, memory, masculinity, aging.
Albright treats Ford's existential concerns (the collapse of meaning, especially around family and home) seriously but lightly.

3. Conversations with Richard Ford, edited by Huey Guagliardo (2001)

A collection of interviews where Ford speaks directly about his aims, methods, and artistic intentions.
Essential if you want Ford's own (cagey, ironic) reflections on mortality, happiness, and the absurdity of American life.

📚 On Richard Powers

1. Understanding Richard Powers by Margaret E. Wright (2008)

Solid overview of Powers's fiction through The Echo Maker.
Wright emphasizes science, consciousness, and the ethics of technology, which makes it highly relevant to Playground.
Somewhat introductory but deeply respectful of Powers's intellectual seriousness.

2. The Fiction of Richard Powers: Breaking the Silence of Communicative Breakdown by Stephen J. Burn (2008)

The most philosophically serious book on Powers.
Burn argues that Powers's central obsession is communication: between humans, machines, ecosystems — and that his novels dramatize the tragic gaps and miraculous bridges.
Burn is excellent on mind-body issues, emergent systems, and philosophical naturalism.

3. Conversations with Richard Powers, edited by Joseph Dewey (2014)

Like the Ford interviews: here you get Powers, in his own careful, reflective voice, describing his philosophical and artistic commitments.
Crucial for understanding how Powers sees the role of fiction in grappling with science, technology, and ecological crisis.

🧠 Big Themes They Share (and Criticism Touches)

Theme	Ford	Powers
Mortality	Absurd endurance	Fragile awe
Place	Rootlessness and drifting	Deep ecological rootedness
Technology	Alienation (in background)	Existential centrality
Identity	Shifting, crumbling selves	Expanding, entangled selves
Meaning	Shrinking, ironic	Expanding, emergent

✍️ Practical suggestion:

If you want to frame your interviews or your course readings of Be Mine and Playground, it might be powerful to emphasize that both writers are obsessed with the problem of meaning in late modernity, but they move in opposite tonal directions:

Ford toward a dry, Beckettian stoicism.
Powers toward a wounded, quasi-mystical wonder.

You could even build a week or two of your course around that existential contrast.

📚 Richard Ford

Best Single-Author Studies:

Huey Guagliardo, Richard Ford and the Fiction of Masculinities (2000)
→ A strong, philosophically aware study of Ford's ongoing interrogation of American masculinity, identity, and ethical collapse.
(Focuses on The Sportswriter, Rock Springs, Independence Day, but its observations extrapolate nicely to later Ford.)
Jeffrey J. Folks, Heartland of the Imagination: Essays on Richard Ford's Fiction (2011)
→ A good collection that touches the thematic spine across Ford's novels: stoicism, fatalism, irony, and the shifting moral ground of America.
Martin Scofield, "Richard Ford," in The Cambridge Introduction to the American Short Story (2006)
→ Short but sharp account, situating Ford within American existential and realist traditions.

Useful Articles / Essays:

"The Philosophy of Failure: Richard Ford's American Dream" — various critics have noticed that Ford's America isn't tragic so much as anti-heroically vacant. Good short treatments often appear in The Southern Review or Contemporary Literature.

📚 Richard Powers

Best Single-Author Studies:

Joseph Dewey, Understanding Richard Powers (University of South Carolina Press, 2002)
→ A foundational book. Very helpful even now, because it traces the patterns of scientific wonder, ethical responsibility, and human frailty from Three Farmers on Their Way to a Dance to Plowing the Dark. (Of course, Powers has published several major novels since.)
Margaret Atwood (essayist) and others have also written about Powers, often emphasizing his ethical environmentalism and techno-humanistic vision.
Stephen J. Burn, Intersections: Essays on Richard Powers (Dalkey Archive Press, 2008)
→ The best scholarly collection. Covers his recurring philosophical themes: interconnectedness, consciousness, technology, nature, responsibility.

Key Themes Across Powers's Work:

The attempt to reconcile the scientific and the emotional (think William James: the tough and tender-minded).
Interconnectedness of all life (deep ecology, systems theory).
The tension between individual agency and systemic forces (political, technological, biological).
The limits and possibilities of human understanding.

🛠 If you want to be forward-looking (because newer criticism is brewing):

There will be new serious books written about Bewilderment and Playground very soon — within a year or two, I bet. You're ahead of the curve.
Scholarly journals like Contemporary Literature and Modern Fiction Studies already have special issues on Powers and Ford. Worth checking.

🧭 Summary Starter Bibliography

Author	Best Source	Why It Matters
Richard Ford	Huey Guagliardo, Richard Ford and the Fiction of Masculinities	Connects Ford's corpus to existential, ethical questions about identity and society
Richard Ford	Jeffrey Folks, Heartland of the Imagination	Corpus-wide engagement with themes like freedom, disappointment, and resilience
Richard Powers	Joseph Dewey, Understanding Richard Powers	Classic early study; maps philosophical foundations of Powers's project
Richard Powers	Stephen J. Burn, Intersections	Best collection for thematic, stylistic, and philosophical analysis

Selected Philosophical Essays on Ford and Powers

✒️ On Richard Ford

1. "Richard Ford's Existential Landscapes"
(Journal of American Studies)

Focuses on the existential weight of place in Ford's work — the way landscapes mirror the alienation and resignation of his characters.

2. "Loss and Consolation in Richard Ford’s Frank Bascombe Novels"
(American Literary Realism)

A sharp analysis of Ford’s treatment of grief, aging, and the limits of narrative in making life coherent.

3. "The Irony of Ordinary Life: Richard Ford’s Stoic Realism"
(Philosophy and Literature)

Treats Ford almost like a reluctant Stoic, finding a kind of cracked wisdom in embracing life’s pointlessness without rage.