Comments on: Teaching and Fantasy Literature: Babe the Barbarian (Ruth, That Is)

By: Black Gate » Blog Archive » Teaching and Fantasy Literature: So I Guess It’s My Blind Spot, Too

Fri, 01 Mar 2013 03:28:19 +0000

[...] week I wrote about trying to understand sports writing as if it were a subgenre of sword and sorcery. For my students’ sakes, I’ll read just about anything–and usually when my [...]

By: Sarah Avery

Sarah Avery — Sat, 23 Feb 2013 03:29:49 +0000

Daran, you’ve called it in one. These boys want to read about basketball, and only basketball. Michael Jordan is the only guy they’re interested in whose name I recognized.

From my occasional bout of Olympics viewing, I know just what you mean about finding the epic vs. making up drama. You’ve put very clearly something that’s probably going to come up in conversation with the students again and again. So far, the most brilliant examples of finding the epic have been from the 1934 Olympics in Germany. No need to manufacture drama there.

By: Sarah Avery

Sarah Avery — Sat, 23 Feb 2013 03:21:39 +0000

Mark, I’m finding out every day that you’re right. There’s some great stuff in those collections. Reading it feels a bit like reading Patrick O’Brian’s Aubry/Maturin novels–sometimes I have to cling to the plot through paragraphs at a stretch looking for any phrase I can parse, but I can still perceive the brilliance through the haze of unfamiliar terms.

By: Sarah Avery

Sarah Avery — Sat, 23 Feb 2013 03:19:00 +0000

Matthew, thank you for the link to that wonderful article. That’s just the thing.

I lived a bunch of years just outside DC, land of the Redskins. The Redskins have a fight song, and despite myself, I know all the words. Ask anybody who has lived in or around that town, and odds are they’ll burst into song, if only ironically. There is a weird, or perhaps wyrd, relationship between a team and its city.

By: darangrissom

darangrissom — Fri, 22 Feb 2013 00:17:50 +0000

There’s not much difference between sports writing and heroic fantasy. Both require conflict, character, a sense of grim determination, and a narrative.

In fact, one of the things that I hate about ESPN is that they turn every sports event into the Iliad. This player or that off sulking because of a disagreement with a coach or another player.

A good sports writer finds the epic stories in games, a bad one just makes up drama.

I would recommend some good sports writing, but I’m guessing your students are going to want to read about particular players, much as I spent my middle school years only wanting to read about Superman. I must say, I don’t envy you your task–the heyday of American sports writing was about the same time as the heyday of pulp adventure magazines.

By: markrigney

markrigney — Thu, 21 Feb 2013 16:10:52 +0000

Paper Lion. Friday Night Lights. Great sports writing DOES exist.

By: Matthew David Surridge

Matthew David Surridge — Thu, 21 Feb 2013 13:02:50 +0000

I’m a huge hockey fan, and I’ve never been entirely sure why. Some of it has to do with the beauty of the sport, sure, but there are a lot of beautiful things in the world and I’m not a fan of all of them. Some of it has to do with the way in which my city’s team embodies the city, with the way the team’s had real historical and political significance. But that only kicks the can down the road. Why does the team matter so much? It’s frequently been said that in the 1950s the Montréal Canadiens meant something special particularly to Francophone fans — that the team became a symbol, that their winning became a way for a largely disadvantaged people to see themselves as winners. But in doing so they also became larger-than-life even to non-Francophones like me.

I suspect ultimately that a lot of sports is about symbolism. If you look at boxing as two guys beating each other up for money, it’s trivial. If you look at Moby Dick as a story about a guy trying to kill a fish (well, large seagoing mammal) then it’s trivial too. I think sports come to matter to people who aren’t playing the game because one invests meaning in the sport beyond the literal importance of a contest. So a good sports story, like any good story, catches some kind of symbolic essence through the depiction of specific events.

That said, I personally haven’t had the experience of reading a lot of great sports writing (I know it’s out there, I just haven’t read much). Dave Bidini’s Original Six anthology had some good hockey writing. And I loved, loved, *loved* Paul Quarrington’s Logan in Overtime. That might be bit raw for eighth-graders, though I remember my high school had me read (and watch) A Clockwork Orange when I was about 14, so who knows. But if you’re looking for non-fiction, there’s also this piece …

http://blogs.thescore.com/nhl/2012/04/25/something-magic/

… which I thought was wonderful, and which also seems to me have something to say about magic and fantasy and heroes. And is really directly relevant here, as it explains much more elegantly than I just did the level of significance a sport and a trophy can have.