... novels that take the American game seriously are few and far between. Joiner (1971) is the most promising, and not because James Whitehead played football at Vanderbilt before an injury reduced him to literature. Eugene (Sonny) Joiner, narrator and protagonist, is an offensive lineman rather than a glamor player; he squints up at the game from an unusual position. Ultimately, though, the novel falls victim to post-1968 nonsense. Styling himself a “radical historian,” Joiner teaches calculus and spelling to underprivileged children at a progressive school after he quits pro football, and becomes the disciple of a fifteenth-century Hussite.
Wednesday, February 08, 2012
Game in search of an author ...
... About the Manliest Sport - Commentary Magazine. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
The novelist and poet George Garrett played football in high school and perhaps in college. I have read an essay of his on football as he knew it, collected in Bad Man Blues. I don't know whether he ever treated it in fiction.
ReplyDeleteThere is a brutal sandlot game in Studs Lonigan.
But I find it odd to read Semi-Tough described as bitter. It has the qualities, by which I mostly mean the faults, of the 1970s written into it, but I don't remember it as in any way bitter.