sla book review: sport and the literary imagination

sport and the literary imagination

Reviewed by Fred Mason, University of New Brunswick

DECEMBER 17, 2007 archive

Sport and the Literary Imagination

After finishing the first chapter of Jeffrey Hill's Sport and the Literary Imagination, I thought, "what a neat idea for a book," not one I frequently have with academic tomes. After finishing the rest of the book I thought, "what an absolutely necessary idea for a book." The premise of the work and the strenuous suggestion that the author advances is that sport literature be taken seriously as a historical source, not simply in terms of being a "reflection of the times," but as something that creates the times, as a cultural artifact that assists in producing ideology and the reality it in which it circulates. Many who study sport, particularly those struggling to work from social, historical or literary perspectives in scientifically-oriented kinesiology departments, will have great sympathy for this sort of perspective.

Sports studies scholars often argue that sport is not just a mirror of society, but something that actively creates and reproduces social structures, inequalities and society itself. If that is the case for sport, then why not the same for literature? And for sport literature? The argument that historians take literature seriously as historical evidence is one that Hill has made for a number of years at various sport history conferences. As such, this book represents the end result of a process underway for some while, and one to which the author has clearly devoted much thought and effort.

Sport and the Literary Imagination offers a fairly unique perspective on sport literature, in that its main concern is not narrative quality, aesthetic value, or themes of the human condition (although all the literary works analyzed in it offer much in these regards), but for how the individual works are affected by, and have an effect on, understandings of sport circulating around them. Drawing on the work of Michael Oriard, British historian Arthur Marwick, and the general tendencies of New Historicism, Hill argues that literary texts should be situated in their contexts, in the circumstances of their production and reception, but that we should take a further step, looking for how particular texts are events themselves, how they can constitute historical change through their representation and criticism of the world of sport.

Hill achieves this goal admirably throughout most of his book. His chapter on David Storey's This Sporting Life, for example, situates Storey in terms of Social Realism and his northern UK background, discusses the novel's portrayal of Rugby League's traditional place in class relations, and argues that This Sporting Life contributes greatly to the discourse of the decline of modernization in Britain while foregrounding gender relationships through the supporting characters. Other chapters on Scottish author Robert Jenkins' Thistle and Grail and the short story and film versions of Ring Lardner's Champion also engage in a high level discussion on the context and the impact of the works.

Some of the analysis, however, tends more towards the reflectionist stance that the author argues we need to move beyond. In a few instances, the analysis does not seem to push much more beyond "reflection of the times" into whether or not the work constituted a critical intervention or mechanism of change. Even with these few cases, Hill manages to make important connections from them to social issues in his last chapter. At the very least, each chapter offers an in-depth review and assessment of the works under discussion and the wider social background.

For me, which admittedly reflects some of my own interests and biases, the best chapter in the book is on Nick Hornby's Fever Pitch. North American readers may not be familiar with this work, except as a weak film adaptation starring Jimmy Fallon and Drew Barrymore, which missed much in translating the main character's obsession with Arsenal football club onto the Boston Red Sox. Hornby's Fever Pitch has been widely recognized as a significant piece of work on football (soccer) in the United Kingdom, and is one of the few works that has already been subjected to the sort of analysis Hill advocates - it has been implicated not just as part of the rising middle class interest in and commercialization of football since the early 1990s, but often pointed to as the cause of some of that happening. Much ink has been spilt over this book, both by academics and popular football writers. As someone who has read the book several times and taught it twice, I found that Hill's deep analysis of the text itself and his subtle discussion of its place in the sweeping changes in football, as reflection, icon and instigator, is one of the best criticisms available.

Sport and the Literary Imagination provides a much needed international perspective on sport literature. While offering interesting analysis of work by American leading lights like Phillip Roth, Richard Ford and Ring Lardner, Hill's viewpoint is firmly rooted in British sporting traditions and historical issues. The work is not limited by operating from this perspective. Rather, in a field dominated by an American point of view that weighs baseball and American football most heavily, a view from elsewhere on different sports is most welcome. The literature covered in the book touches on soccer, boxing, rugby league and even table tennis. Major themes of these works, analyzed and contextualized in depth by Hill, include the decline of Scottish community, changes in class relations and gender relations in inter-war Britain, the American dream, immigration in Australia in the 1980s, and war-time genocide in Belarus and the inescapability of family history (readers wishing to know how that those last few fit with sport literature will have to read the book themselves).

I am tempted to say that the international perspective is the main contribution of Sport and the Literary Imagination to the study of sport literature, but that would be selling the work far short. Sport historians and scholars interested in sport literature will find this a useful read from methodological and theoretical perspectives as well, and the book should (hopefully) have a long shelf life in libraries with collections related to sports studies.

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