S.L. Price, a Senior Writer at Sports Illustrated from 1994-2019, has written five books—including the newly released The American Game: History and Hope in the Country of Lacrosse, a wide-ranging examination of the continent’s oldest and most representative sport.
At Lit Hub the author tagged four top "sports books that aren’t really about sports." One title on the list:
A Fan’s Notes by Frederick ExleyRead about the other entries on the list.
Diner may be my favorite film, not least because the sports-centric screenplay—Barry Levinson originally had it culminating at the 1959 NFL championship with its Baltimore Colts-obsessed protagonists hanging victoriously fromthe goal posts—got completely hijacked by the subtext of desperate male friendship. Exley’s 1968 novel was one of the first to blow up the sports book, make the faceless mass in the stands the story; his main character’s stalking of his own white whale, Giants running back Frank Gifford, is actually a picaresque and merciless meditation on ambition, booze, fading youth, male ego, and the gut-dropping moment when fandom becomes fate. It’s painful how beautiful it is, and vice-versa.
(See also: Among the Thugs by Bill Buford and Jimmy Connors Saved My Life by Joel Drucker)
A Fan's Notes is among Bruce DeSilva's six favorite books about sports, Laura Kipnis's six favorite books about wounded masculinity, and Dan Barden's six top stories of addiction.
--Marshal Zeringue
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