Subject: Re: game, set & match
From: Paul Kennedy (kennedyp@toronto.cbc.ca)
Date: Wed Aug 01 2001 - 10:05:56 GMT
So tennis racquets (rather than rapiers) have been selected as the weapons
of choice. (I guess that means someone should tell the caterers about the
switch from sherry to G & T, or perhaps Pimms ought be offered as an
alternative? Do we have plenty of cucumber?) And Scottie now seems to have
switched from Nietzsche to Wagner for his source of philosophical
inspiration. (The section about rape and war was particularly thrilling. I
could almost hear inspirational strains from Tannhauser swelling up from the
orchestra pit of my stomach as I perused those heroic sentiments....)
> My contemptuous dismissal includes
> all sporting activities - except those involving the sea
> where, of course, we renew our spirits in that primal
> environment from which we all spring.
Beach volleyball, anyone?
> This hunger for regularity lies like an unsuspected worm
> at the heart of many an American literary rose: Hemingway
> & Mailer, of course, but Salinger too. Just think of that
> dreadful baseball mitt, not to mention the poor little
> buggers in The Laughing Man - as Paul has just reminded
> us.
I don't know, Scottie. I guess you just don't get it. You can't quite
crack the power of certain sporting (perhaps particularly Baseball)
metaphors, although I'll bet you'll defend to the Tristanian death Count
Leo's unexcelled description of a horse race in Anna Karenina. And please
don't accuse me of trying to put Jerry into any category with Leo and the
other immortals. All I'm trying to say is that baseball is certainly in a
category will almost every other sport. They're all fit subjects for
literature--as dozens of writers have proven for longer than even
white-haired old geysers like you and me have been aware.
> Could anything be more arch, more nauseating, more
> apple-pie-&-Mom than: 'Mary Hudson, [who smoked
> cork-tipped Tareyton cigarettes, and] happened to be
> a girl who knew how to wave to somebody from third
> base ...'
> Oh my God. The Tragic Heroine as One of the Guys.
I rest my case.... Although I wonder whether the old Caledonian curmugeon
isn't somehow still smarting over what folks below the 49th tend to call
"The War of Independence".... Although you won't find this particular
observer often admitting it, something new WAS created on this continent,
back in 1776--and at it's fundamental best, this new entity was subversively
democratic. One way to be a democrat is to see yourself and everyone else
as "one of the guys". I'd frankly rather read American writers who have
struggled to incorporate this fact, than snore through more
Brideshead-Wannabe British hacks seeking warmth and consolation from the
fading embers of the Empire.
Pass the Pimms.
Cheers,
Paul
-
* Unsubscribing? Mail majordomo@roughdraft.org with the message
* UNSUBSCRIBE BANANAFISH
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b25 : Mon Sep 10 2001 - 15:42:12 GMT