Upon Further Review: Sports in American Literature

(Hardback)

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Over the course of the last century, American fiction writers and poets have used sports figures and sporting events in order to make significant points on themes of identity as they are connected to gender, race, class, and nationality. The contributors to this volume examine American literature that uses sports as a trope to explore or disturb core values of this country. They explore individual works in order to uncover the rich connections between those works' use of sports and issues of importance to American culture from approximately 1920 to the end of the twentieth century. Focusing on four general themes, this volume offers a range of commentary on a variety of American literature. The first section features essays that explain how sports are used by writers to explore or critique American values. The next two sections contain essays that investigate the ways in which writers have used sports to express ideas about race, class, and gender. The final section turns to questions of aesthetics, featuring essays that concentrate on form, technique, and language itself. Together, contributors cover a number of literary works that feature a wide variety of sports, from the expected (baseball) to the more surprising (body building and wilderness adventuring).

Reviews

.,."[T]he Cocchiarale and Emmert collection of sports and literature essays is...postmodern and to the point. These essays recognize that sports possess "a special kind of density...that belies its seeming superficiality." The essays in this collection and the works of sports literature that they decode are case studies of the ongoing contest between reality and cliche that sports represent. Cocchiarale and Emmert referee that contest extremely well."-William J. Palmer, Professor of English Purdue University
.,."[T]his text is a much welcomed addition to the small but distinguished body of critcism of sports literature, still foundational and useful to be sure but in need of some reinforcement to deal with the Niagra of current writing about sports, especially in fiction and poetry."-Robert J. Higgs, Professor Emeritus East Tennessee State University
.,."American writers have often employed sport to explore those aspects of life in America that, for better or worse, have made us what and who we are. Whether examining sport as a source of metaphors shaping how we understand the world or as a window onto class, gender, and racial assumptions and inequities, these essays remind us that in the best sport literature the most telling victories and defeats have little to do with big games or box scores, slam dunks or superstars."-Brooke Horvath, Professor of English Kent State University
"Upon Further Review is the next generation in sports literature criticism. The essays are challenging, cogent, and informed. Sports literature is alive and well and so are its younger critics. Perhaps the widest-ranging collection of essays ever amassed on the subject. Gender, race, and class perspectives underwrite deft cultural and aesthetic analysis. Will instantly become an indispensable guide to sports literature."-Chris Messenger, Professor of English University of Illinois at Chicago author of Sport and the Spirit of Play in Contemporary American Fiction
[A] collection of important and thoughtful essays that remind us that American novels that have tapped into the generous metaphoric possibilities of sports, competition, victory, and defeat reward, indeed demand scrutiny....[t]his volume will be an important resource work for any undergraduate sports literature program and an important starting point for those scholars in the field interested in seeing how such analyses can be profitable and engaging....Any sports literature class would appreciate the volume--not merely the essays but the general regard and respect the editors clearly have for the genre itself. The volume itself rewards further review.-Aethlon: The Journal of Sport Literature
Examining sports literature in the context of American literature, these 17 essays consider the novels, short stories, poems, and films on sports that dot the American literary landscape....Few critical studies have taken on the subject of sports in literature, and this volume is a good start, particularly because it examines both noted writers (Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Kerouac, and Roth in addition to those already mentioned) and writers less well known (John Tunis, Mark Winegardner, Paul Beatty, Arna Bontemps, and Eric Greenberg)....Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through researchers and faculty.-Choice
"A collection of important and thoughtful essays that remind us that American novels that have tapped into the generous metaphoric possibilities of sports, competition, victory, and defeat reward, indeed demand scrutiny....this volume will be an important resource work for any undergraduate sports literature program and an important starting point for those scholars in the field interested in seeing how such analyses can be profitable and engaging....Any sports literature class would appreciate the volume--not merely the essays but the general regard and respect the editors clearly have for the genre itself. The volume itself rewards further review."-Aethlon: The Journal of Sport Literature
"[A] collection of important and thoughtful essays that remind us that American novels that have tapped into the generous metaphoric possibilities of sports, competition, victory, and defeat reward, indeed demand scrutiny....[t]his volume will be an important resource work for any undergraduate sports literature program and an important starting point for those scholars in the field interested in seeing how such analyses can be profitable and engaging....Any sports literature class would appreciate the volume--not merely the essays but the general regard and respect the editors clearly have for the genre itself. The volume itself rewards further review."-Aethlon: The Journal of Sport Literature
"Examining sports literature in the context of American literature, these 17 essays consider the novels, short stories, poems, and films on sports that dot the American literary landscape....Few critical studies have taken on the subject of sports in literature, and this volume is a good start, particularly because it examines both noted writers (Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Kerouac, and Roth in addition to those already mentioned) and writers less well known (John Tunis, Mark Winegardner, Paul Beatty, Arna Bontemps, and Eric Greenberg)....Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through researchers and faculty."-Choice

Author Bio

MICHAEL COCCHIARALE is Assistant Professor of English at Widener University, where he teaches American Literature, creative writing, and composition courses. SCOTT D. EMMERT is Assistant Professor of English at the University of WisconsinFox Valley. He has published numerous articles in various scholarly journals.