Oh, What a Texas Billionaire Can Do!

As good as A Season On the Brink was as a starting point, David A.F. Sweet's biography of Lamar Hunt was a pretty good choice for the second book. It was published in 2010 and the writing isn't anything spectacular, but the broad scope of the subject matter covered introduced a variety of other topics that I want to explore further. Lamar Hunt is most famous for being the driving force behind the founding of the AFL, but he also was behind two soccer leagues (the NASL and the still in existence, MLS) and legitimizing pro tennis (WCT, the precursor and competitor of the current ATP). So while I enjoyed learning about Lamar Hunt's life and impact on pro sports in this country, it also gave me great leads on future stories to pursue including but not limited to; George Halas and his role in the early NFL, the opening of Wimbledon and other majors to professionals, the founding of the ATP as by the players for the players pro league, and Pele's time in New York.

For the book itself, it was interesting if not compelling. One of the most compelling parts was the revelation in the introduction that Lamar Hunt's father, L.H. Hunt, had three families in his lifetime. His first two were concurrent. It reminded me of the scene in Fight Club when Ed Norton or Brad Pitt (can't remember which one, but because of the ending, does it matter?) talk about how their father moved from city to city starting new families like he was opening franchises. Beyond that, Sweet doesn't really dramatize any of the key events, everything is laid out somewhat chronologically. I don't want the author to make it melodramatic, but events tend to unfold very quickly with cursory descriptions of any difficulty, but Lamar Hunt was known for his persistence so he wore his opposition down. It might have helped to hear from the perspective of those who were opposing him, either to own an NFL franchise, start his tennis circuit, etc. Generally the only way the opposition is characterized is as corrupt or ridiculous in their position, which I find hard to believe. Why did the NFL, MLB and NHL refuse Hunt a franchise? It could have been his youth and inexperience, but then why when Hunt announced his plans for a Dallas AFL franchise, did the NFL immediately stick the Cowboys in Dallas with another owner? I find it hard to believe that he didn't have more personality flaws or those league's didn't have concrete reasoning for doing that.

Also, part of the problem I had with the book was that I was unconvinced that there was something special about Hunt besides hit billions of dollars. Couldn't just about any super sports fan do what he did if they had an inexhaustible amount of money? He basically took a bath with the NASL and the WTC (not to mention the early portion of the Dallas Texans/KC Chiefs). He just was too big of a fan to give up because he was losing massive amounts of money. Then since he didn't have to work, he could attend massive amounts of sporting events and cherry pick the best ideas/features of other sports/arenas/leagues/etc. So as cool as it was to read about some of the history of the NFL, Soccer and Pro Tennis in this country, I didn't feel like Lamar Hunt was some particularly unique individual for all of this to come together. That being said, I did enjoy the humble persona they described. The billionaire who would rather sit in the upper deck and treated everyone with respect is an entertaining idea.

A Season on the Brink - A Year with Bob Knight

A Season on the Brink is a very appropriate book to kick things off with. It fits all the criteria of what I want out of this undertaking. It details a prominent figure in a sport I am interested in in a time period I don't know too much about (the book was first published in the year I was born). The book is also the first of the "spend a year with a team/person" genre which is now extremely common (and I think it's important to check out the breakthrough/first of any genre to appreciate where everything that came after it originated from).

Also, for a little context, while I am aware of Bob Knights perfect college season and his various other accomplishments, by the time I was a college basketball fan (2001-ish after moving back from Australia), he was the coach at Texas Tech. So my impressions of Bob Knight were from the very tail end of his career as he piled up victories in pursuit of the all-time win record after his legacy was tainted by the incident which led to his Indiana coaching career. I saw his red-faced tirades and some other highlights on ESPN, but I didn't really get a chance to see him coach up his teams to a nationally prominent level and I don't equate Indiana to Bob Knight as much as Mike Davis and the scandals of Kelvin Sampson's era (especially when Sampson, the notoriously dirty recruiter, convinced Eric Gordon to go back on his verbal commitment to Illinois he made as a junior). So being taken back to a time when Indiana University was always relevant in the national conversation and Bob Knight was at the height of his powers filled in a lot of holes I have in my experience/knowledge.

I loved reading about players like Steve Alford (who I knew as the Iowa and then New Mexico coach), Keith Smart (the Golden state warriors coach), Scott Skiles (former Bulls and current Bucks' Coach), and briefly Sean Kemp (former Seattle SuperSonic and father of innumerable illegitimate children). It is great to read about the perception of these players at that age knowing how things eventually turn out for them. It was also great to be inside the locker room and at practice for a top tier college basketball team. Having grown up playing basketball, reading about the mid-season fatigue and one chilling cold of the playing during the winter months were things I could relate to and understand. But also to see things from the coaches standpoint was revealing. I loved seeing Bob Knight struggle to find the right buttons to push and his delight or frustration depending on how it worked. The amount of work Knight and his staff put in from watching tape to game planning to practicing to recruiting seemed incredible.

I thought Feinstein's game recaps left something to be desired. He often told the reader how things turned out in an abstract sense with a line like, "everything needed to go right for them to win the game, and today, it didn't seem like anything could go right." So he tended to kill the drama but then would retell the game story in all its twists and turns. I realize that the goal of the book wasn't meant to be a scrap book of a beat writer's game recaps, but I did feel like the games were the weakest part of the book, unless there was some particularly Knight good anecdote. I did love the games from the beat writer, Bob Hammel's perspective though. His reaction when things took a positive or negative turn were always great an very entertaining.

How different the media and competitive landscape is today from when it was back then was one of the most interesting parts of the book. Bob Knight could not survive in today's environment and I am not sure he would want to. His tirades directed at players/coaches/fans/administrators would lead sportscenter or be feature in scathing deadspin article's nearly every day. His altercations would be caught on camera phones and be youtube sensations overnight. His propensity for profanity and less than PC terms would offend massive numbers of people and he would refuse to back down or apologize for any of it. He didn't come across as racist, but I think growing up in rural Ohio definitely didn't provide a very diverse or open environment. Also his sexism which Feinstein addresses directly, would cause a massive sensation among equality groups. Not to mention his disdain for the media. If he though the media was stupid or terrible in the mid-80s, I think he would lose his mind today. That is not to say professionals in the industry aren't as good as ever, but now almost anyone can secure a press pass and number of people covering/attending a college basketball game has multiplied enormously since then (after being in locker rooms and post game press conferences I can safely say athletes and coaches are generally justified in their frustration over stupid questions).

All in all, it was a very interesting story and painted a pretty good picture of Bob Knight and the Indiana program. I felt like there were a few times you could read between the lines to some things Feinstein was not going to write about but witnessed as well as how the author felt about a few incidents along the way. I am looking forward to checking out other Feinstein books to get a better idea of his style and how he differs from other writers out there.

Adaptive Re-use

I initially started this blog as an exercise and a resource. I could work on my writing, flesh out ideas for potential papers, and I could have a database of my initial impressions of important literary works to reference if I ever needed reminding. But now I have finished my English undergraduate studies and instead of moving on to pursue a potential Ph.D or teach, I am pursuing my Master's in Multimedia Communications with the intent to pursue a career in sports broadcasting. So this blog is not as useful of an exercise or a resource as I once hoped.

Yet I have recently decided that if I am going to make it in sports, I need to educate myself on the history of sports and sports media in much greater detail. I need to actually read books about sports. Surprisingly, despite my love for both sports and reading, I have never done this before. I either was reading classic literature for school or fantasy/sci-fi novels for fun. I don't think I have ever picked up a non-fiction book about sports ever. Until now. I am re-purposing this blog as a place where I can record my impressions and thoughts about these books of an entirely new genre for me.

I will do some summarizing so I can refresh my memory later, but I also want to delve into the story telling techniques of the authors. Even though I am pursuing a career in television and writing in TV is completely different, I need to become a better story teller. So hopefully by enjoying and dissecting some of the best literary examples of sports story telling, I'll be able to pick up a few things on the way.

If anyone does read this blog, I am always open to suggestions for the next book(s) as well as opinions on the books and/or my analysis. Any feedback is welcome and appreciated. I just hope my newest post is always better than the one before it.


**EDIT - As an additional note (adding to the title of the post), I want to read as many of these book second hand as possible. I think the genre is pretty money driven and often is a way for former players/coaches to partner up with a sports write and make a little extra on the side. So I'd like to avoid contributing to the money grab by paying a little less than retail when I am buying the book. Of course, I won't complain when I receive them as a gift like I did with my next book (Lamar Hunt). A few other reasons, it is fun to shop at second hand book stores and I like knowing someone else has read the exact copy I am holding in my hand (Although I guess they weren't too crazy about the book if they sold it or donated it).

How Pure is Baseball?

W.P. Kinsella's novel, Shoeless Joe, is the final novel we read in my senior seminar class. Unfortunately for Kinsella, the four books which preceded it were by some of the most lyrical and talented authors of the 21st century. As a result, this book was compared to other narratives well out of its league and did not fair very well in that comparison. The writing style seemed simplistic and the metaphors clunky. Of course, we were used to Morrison, Updike, Erdrich and O'Brien, so there are not many writers who could follow up satisfactorily. But my issues do not solely rest in style. I take issue with much of the content as well. Most people know this story in the form of the Kevin Costner movie, Field of Dreams. It is a heart warming tale about the purity of the American dream and the value of small town America. I loved the movie as a kid and still can't bring myself to change the channel if I flip to it on cable. That could partly be because I am inexplicably a sucker for Kevin Costner movies, but there is also something seductive about this story.

The movie does take the typical artistic license in its telling of the story. One interesting change which I imagine has something to do with some sort of legal issue is casting James Earl Jones as the author figure rather than including J.D. Salinger as the book does. Besides any legal issue, it may also have been more convenient for the Hollywood story. Instead of Ray having to travel all the way to Boston to find J.D. Salinger like he does in the book, he only has to go to Chicago to find James Earl Jones character. Yet something is definitely lost because the book dwells a lot on the similarities between Holden Caufield and the protagonist of Shoeless Joe, Ray Kinsella. Also the presence of J.D. Salinger connects the narrative to the history of the American novel in a way the fictional author who James Earl Jones plays does not. Yet what is retained is a meditation on the nature of creativity and creation itself. Ray seeks out J.D. Salinger because he believes he has received a divine message that Salinger has a secret pain that needs to be resolved before he can write again. Ray believes Salinger owes it to his many fans to continue to create the narratives which people have identified with and love. That is a belief which Salinger himself greatly resents since it is Salinger's gift to use as he sees fit not because the American public demands more. Despite Ray's conviction that Salinger should write more, he reacts in a similar manner to the author when faced with a similar dilemma. Ray becomes quite upset that Salinger is invited to leave the ballpark which Kinsella built with the ball players. Ray believes it is his right to see what is beyond the corn because he built the venue in which the ghostly ballplayers play. He is forced to realize that the actual act of creation does not guarantee him control over what is created.

One change which Hollywood made which actually improved on the novel was included a more rounded character as Ray Kinsella's wife. The women of the novel are beyond deplorable. They are either completely compliant to their man's desire and beautiful or ugly, disagreeable and highly religious. Ray's wife Annie constantly supports him in whatever he desires and then waits in bed for when he is ready. Ray's identical brother's partner, Gypsy, provides the same unfailing supports as Annie, despite the fact both men could use a hard dose of reality at times. Also Ray's father and Moonlight Graham both give up their dreams centered around baseball to settle in a small town with the women they have met. Their wives are the proverbial ball and chain. As Ray never fails to remind us, it was Annie's idea to rent the farm. Other women such as Annie's mother and Eddie Scissons' daughters, hide behind their religion and care for no one but themselves. There is not a single woman in the entire text who has any authority, input or real voice at all. In the movie version, Annie has some opinions and a little backbone. She is still blind in her support of Ray, but she is still an improvement over the book version.

The poor depiction of women is just one element of what I feel is the biggest failing of the novel. To me, the novel romanticizes a past which is dominated by white men. There are two themes which jump out immediately to the reader, the first is baseball as an allegory for religion and the second is an undercurrent of anti-authority. It pits small town America against corporate, urban America. Despite being set in Iowa, the narrative almost has a North verse South feel. Baseball is not only an allegory for Religion but the true American dream. Baseball is supposed to represent the purity of the American dream, small town American and rural life. Yet that begs the question, how pure is Baseball? That question is particularly relevant in Today's world of steroids and HGH. But it is revisionist to think Baseball was any more pure in the days where only whites were allowed to play. Despite Baseball's elevated status as America's pastime, it has never been an entirely pure or good thing. In this novel in particular, it seems to represent a misogynistic pastime. There is a yearning for a time when things were simple, women obeyed and blacks weren't allowed to play.

I still managed to enjoy this book overall (I still blame my being a sucker for Kevin Costner movies), but there are obviously parts I have take exception to as well. It is a nice story if you can get beyond the sexism (which most of my class could not). There are some really interesting parallels with Religion which have been explored to a great degree. Overall though, I think I'll stick with the movie version.

Tracking Mythology, Identity and Family.

Part of our assignment for my Senior Seminar class (the class for which I have read the past four books) was to familiarize ourselves with Chippewa myth and also to come to class able to talk about several critical approaches to this text. Google searches did not turn up very reliable sources on Chippewa myth, so I ended up looking at several books in Ames (Illinois Wesleyan's library) on Ojibwa religion and mythology. A few books had some really good information about the creation myth which is centered around Nanabozho who is also known as Nanapush. These myths obviously have relevance since Nanapush is also the name of one of the narrators of the novel. The Water Monster, Mishebeshu, is also a major figure in Chippewa myth and appears in the novel as the Lake Man who Fleur is purportedly in league with. Water and wind also figure heavily in the mythology. Wind is personified by four brothers who are controlled at various times by Nanapush through his tricks. All these motifs play heavy roles in the narrative and are worth brushing up on if you were previously unaware of their significance.

There are a lot of parallels between Tracks and Toni Morrison's Song of Solomon. Both novels feature non-white protagonists attempting to find their identity and happiness in a society dominated by whites. Tracks differs from Song of Solomon because the characters in Tracks are trying to keep alive their own society and are in touch with their traditional culture. The characters in Song of Solomon try to get back in touch with a culture they never knew and are trying to subsist within white society rather than creating their own. Ultimately, African-Americans are Americans since they were bereft of their own heritage for so long. Native Americans on the other hand were left their culture but not their land. Yet that does not mean that the characters in Tracks are in any less of a search for their identity, especially the young. Characters like Pauline, Fleur, Eli and Nector Kashpaw watch their culture fail to survive in the face of western oppression and greed. They struggle to reconcile what they are being told by their elders, what they believe about their heritage and the realities they face every day. Much like Milkman and Guitar try to orient their history and their family's history within their current experiences, the youth in Tracks do the same with a much more concrete reminder of what was.

The narrative also illuminates the damage done to the traditional family/clan structure which was very important in Native culture. None of the main characters have a nuclear family intact. In particular, there is a distinct absence of biological fathers in the text. Even Eli's status as Lulu's biological father is put into question. The families have been destroyed by disease, alcohol and hardship. As a result there is no hierarchy of authority or an established process for decision making. There is no natural check to improper behavior or built in defense against the encroaching lumber company. In-fighting features heavily in the novel as the Native community comes under constant attack from both internal and external pressures. I believe those threats are only made possible by the disintegration of the family and the loss of authority that results. Before that disintegration, there is no possible way the Lazarre and Morrisey boy assault Margaret Kashpaw like they do. Nor is Nector allowed to betray Fleur in the way he does. The break down of the family robs the community of its ability to protect itself. Nanapush, Fleur, and the Kashpaws do what they can to form a substitute family, but it can only do so much and the bonds are not as strong as blood.

I am writing a longer paper on this book that will touch upon the ideas I have sketched out in here. I am going to compare Pauline from Tracks's and Macon Dead from Song of Solomon's attempt to find their identity and how that attempt impacts their status within the community. I'll probably post a few updates from the paper at various points, but I also hope to continue to read and make posts about other books. Right now, my agenda is to post about W.P. Kinsella's Shoeless Joe and Love Medicine.

Tracking Erdrich

Tracks is Louise Erdrich's third novel and includes the same characters from the first two, Love Medicine and the Beat Queen. Even though it is the third published novel, it is not an extension of the story lines from the first two but rather a prequel to Love Medicine. Apparently Tracks was the first novel Erdrich started writing but either shelved it to write the other two or just published it last. Either way, anyone who has read Love Medicine and/or the Beat Queen needs to pick up this book and delve into the events leading up to those two books. I have only read a part of Love Medicine in another class, but my brief exposure to it really made me appreciate how revealing Tracks is.

For anyone who is not familiar with Erdrich's trilogy, Tracks still stands up fantastically on its own. It took me a while to become oriented in the text, so I enjoyed the second half of the book far more than the first. That phenomenon would probably be resolved by reading the other two books first, but I do not think it is necessary. The story centers around a Native American woman, Fleur and the destruction of the community she is apart of from internal and external pressures. The story is told through two narrators, Grandfather Nanapush and Pauline Puyat, who switch off between chapters. Nanapush is telling the story to Fleur's daughter Lulu but I am still unclear as to who Pauline is telling her story to. It is clear that choosing to structure the novel as a frame narrative was very deliberate since the act of story telling is incredibly important to Native American tradition. The frame narrative also gives the reader reason to question the narrators' reliability though as both Pauline and Nanapush lie or are accused of lying at different points of the text.

We begin with Nanapush recounting how he rescued Fleur as a young girl when her entire household succumb to disease. She is a Pillager, a feared family considered in league with the Lake Man who lives in Machimato (the lake in the reservation). She and her brother Moses were the only survivors from an outbreak of tuberculosis. Only Nanapush was brave enough to go into the house and bring Fleur out. He takes he home to live with him as his daughter and her brother is taken in by another family but he eventually leaves the community entirely and lives by himself in the woods as a medicine man. Fleur herself is only half tamed and is described in both male and female terms. When she is old enough, she heads into the local white town, Argus, to earn enough money to pay the allotment tax to the government on her family ancestral property. Here the narrative switches over to Pauline, who is a mixed blood and does not feel at home among the tribe. She convinces what is left of her family to send her into town so she can learn to make lace with the nuns. She is sent to town but ends up sweeping the floor of the butcher shop which Fleur ends up working in rather than learning to make lace.

Already you can see some of the binary aspects of the text emerge. The two narrators, one being male and the other female, one telling the story to a child about things taking place in the native community, the other possibly telling it to no one for no other reason than her own vanity about the white community. Yet it is important not to get too caught up in the binary divisions of this novel because nothing is black and white. It is a western temptation to draw hard lines between characters and characteristics. In the Native tradition Characters frequently possess contradictory traits. In Chippewa mythology, Nanapush is also the name of the primary agent in the creation story. He is often described as Culture-hero and trickster which are difficult to reconcile if you are judging him in a binary sense. There is not the same sense of pure good and pure evil in Native culture, life is more of a mixture of a variety of traits. Having said all that, Erdrich is mixed and has grown up with both traditions, including a large exposure to Catholicism. So binary oppositions and judgments do not need to be thrown out the window entirely, but it is helpful to ignore your first impulse to classify characters as either this or that and familiarize yourself with some Chippewa culture and myth to really understand what is happening in the text.

Between the two narrators, we follow the formation of a new family structure with Fleur at its center. Nanapush's mentee, Eli Kashpaw, becomes enamored with Fleur when she returns from Argus and eventually becomes her lover. Eli moves into the Pillager homestead and Fleur gives birth to Lulu. Margaret Kashpaw, Eli's mother, initially disapproves of the match, but with the arrival of her granddaughter, she comes around as well. Margaret and Nanapush develop a relationship and a family is formed from the remnants of many other families. Pauline eventually becomes a nun and has her own place in this family despite being unwanted. The story follows to communities struggle to stay afloat amid pressure from a white logging company who wants their land. Their bonds are tested and broken at various points of the text as they try to figure out how to navigate in a world which is white dominated while holding onto their Native American identity, if they can. I will leave this post here as mostly a summary and pick up a new post in the near future to do some more analysis and talk about what I got out of this text. (which was a lot, so I hope it is even coherent!)

How well does Magical Realism age?

This post will pick up the Widows of Eastwick but a post on Tracks will be coming soon because I am over half way through the book and have a lot of thoughts on it. But for now I'd like to stick with the Widows of Eastwick and explore the book in terms of Magical Realism. It is particularly interesting to me because at this point in their lives, the women have come to regard their foray into witchcraft as a foolish preoccupation of their youth. Maybe that characterization is a little harsh, but they do not believe in the power in the same way they did when they were recent divorcees.

In the first novel, the women attempt to downplay the role their hex played on Jenny Gabriel's fate by questioning the magic which they had stood by previously. They reasoned that Jenny died due to a natural manifestation of terminal cancer. It was purely coincidental it was only after they placed a hex on Jenny that she began to show symptoms of the disease. So it is no surprise the women continued to distance themselves from witchcraft from that point forward. Lexa herself does not feel the same connection to nature she once did and at the start of the novel she disparages the importance she placed on both nature and witchcraft in her youth. Sukie and Jane feel similarly and make comments to that effect at various points at the novel. Yet when the do finally take a trip together it is to return to Eastwick and get back in touch with their "witchy-roots". Still, it is only Lexa who takes it seriously when they decide to try to erect a cone of power for the first time in thirty+ years. The other two dally on their way back from Jane's hospital visit and are not fully invested in the process which Lexa has so painstakingly set up. The magic is reluctant in this novel when it was abundant in the previous one. There are no transformations of tennis balls or love charms at all. Yet when the women do erect the cone of power, the magic is more undeniable than in any other instance. Sukie's former lover's hand begins to regenerate, Joe Marino's Daughter conceives a baby and Jane dies in a violent fashion. Yet there is a medical explanation for Jane's death not to mention her advanced age. It is a constant conflict and is left unresolved by Updike as to what is actually taking place, how much is magic and how much is scientific.

This conflict is embodied by Darryl Van Horne's replacement, Chris Gabriel. The scene in which Chris is originally summoned by Gretta Neff is a very magical scene and yet when it is later explained by Chris, it was nothing more than a phone call. It is similar to the attacks which Chris makes on Jane and then Lexa. His electron shooter springs from work he did with Darryl and alludes to the devil's work from the original novel, yet Chris himself admits that he doesn't think it works. The discomfort which Jane felt that was originally attributed to Chris could have very well been just her aged body failing her.

So my question is, do these plausible or semi-plausible explanations for the magical elements remove the novel from being considered Magical Realism? If it doesn't, would it be considered more Magically Real or less than the first novel? I believe the novel still can be considered Magical Realism. Updike's characters' propensity to search for logical answers for the magical elements is reflective of the western mindset. It is that propensity which is at the heart of many Latin American author's belief that White America cannot write within the genre. Yet in my opinion, Updike accomplishes just that. By allowing his characters to question what is actually happening, he creates a realistic western reaction to magic. But moments like the regeneration of Sukie's former lover's hand or Jane's death at the price moment she drew her tarot card, suggest that the magic is real and it is more than just a coincidence. So there is the natural questioning of anything which does not follow logic and accepted reality, but the narrative suggests that these moments are actually taking place. The result is a viable form of Magical Realism written by a White American. For the second question, I feel that the second novel is actually more Magically Real than the first. The first novel may contain more actual instances of magic, but it ends with the women trying to undermine the reality of that magic to help alleviate their own guilt of Jenny Gabriel. In this novel, they take the opposite road as they try to get back in touch with the power they once enjoyed. Of course the attempt to distance themselves from that power yet again after Jane's death, but the events that follow (the pregnancy and healing of the hand), provide an affirmation which cannot be denied.

Switching gears, I did enjoy the Witches of Eastwick more. This novel wrapped up a few loose ends from the first, but it tended to meander a little more. It took the first two thirds of the book for the women to even get back to Eastwick. It also covered a greater amount of time through the course of the narrative. Months turn into years before the story gets from start to end. I think those gaps disrupt the flow of the novel. The continuity of time in the first one created a different energy level. In the Widows of Eastwick, the energy ebbs and flows as different story lines reach their full arc before a new one begins. I did enjoy both though and they are worth a read.