Read This: Sweet Tooth

As I’m writing this post, I’ve recently finished editing a Life Stories podcast featuring Rayya Elias, which we recorded shortly after her memoir Harley Loco came out in paperback. And that reminded me that I’d had this recurring thought about how I could tell you about some earlier episodes of the podcast, and how those books were out in paperback, too, and if you hadn’t read them when they first came out, here was a good opportunity.

Well, if you look at the iTunes episode list, you’ll see the podcast has been running for just about two and a half years now, so a lot of those books are in paperback now, and it didn’t seem fair to single out some at the expense of others. So I thought, okay, have any of my early guests come up with a new memoir?

One of my first conversations was with Tim Anderson, who’d written Tune In Tokyo about his time as a teacher of conversational English in Japan. His second memoir, Sweet Tooth, backtracks in time to his North Carolina adolescence, when he was simultaneously realizing that he was gay and developing the first symptoms of diabetes. As in his first book, Tim tells his story with an airy, self-deprecating humor that’s likely to draw you in pretty quickly—and you don’t need to have read Tune In Tokyo to follow along, so you can jump right in.

6 July 2014 | read this |

At Home, at Anfield: Red or Dead

I first started seriously watching soccer with the 2010 World Cup, and when Premier League football started up later that summer, I began watching those games on the weekends. I kept an eye out for players that I’d seen competing in the Cup, but I didn’t form any particular club loyalties until early 2011, when Kenny Dalglish was appointed manager at Liverpool. I’m a sucker for sports history, you see, so even though I had no direct experience of Dalglish’s earlier career playing for and managing Liverpool from the late 1970s to the early ‘90s, the story of his return to Anfield (the team’s home stadium) resonated with me.

(As a rough analogy in American sports terms, imagine Phil Jackson wound up back with the Chicago Bulls—or with the New York Knicks, even.)

So I’d made a mental note about Red or Dead, David Peace’s novel about an even earlier period in Liverpool’s history, when I first heard about it earlier this year. Then I saw a finished copy at the Melville House display booth at BookExpo America, and with another World Cup coming, I moved it a bit higher up my reading list. I’m glad I did, though it’s easily the most challenging book about sports, fiction or nonfiction, that I’ve ever read.

Red or Dead is the story of Bill Shankly’s tenure as manager of Liverpool Football Club from 1959 to 1974, the stuff of legends on a par with Vince Lombardi’s time with Green Bay or Red Auerbach’s career with the Boston Celtics. Possibly even more legendary; I admit that I’m coming to the novel as an outsider, with an understanding of British sports culture that is more intellectual than intuitive, so at some level I have to estimate the emotional resonances.

That said, it’s clear how intently Peace feels those resonances, clear in every sentence he writes. Instead of telling Bill Shankly’s story in conventionally straightforward, almost journalistically observational prose, Peace adopts cadences and rhythms that generate an almost mythic aura, as he traces what feels like every single step of Shankly’s time at Liverpool. For example:

“On Saturday 3 March, 1962, Liverpool Football Club travelled to Fellows Park, Walsall. But Bert Slater did not travel to Fellows Park, Walsall. Bill Shankly had dropped Bert Slater. Bert Slater had played ninety-six consecutive games for Liverpool Football Club. But Bert Slater would never play another game for Liverpool Football Club. On Saturday 3 March, 1962, Jim Furnell travelled to Fellows Park, Walsall. It was Jim Furnell’s first match for Liverpool Football Club. Jim Furnell conceded one goal on his debut. And Liverpool Football Club drew one-all with Walsall Football Club.”

And that’s actually one of the more sparsely detailed accounts. There’s fifteen years’ worth of these match highlights (including the number of fans attending each game), peppered with locker room speeches, post-game conversations with opposing managers, and other behind the scenes anecdotes—not to mention a stirring invocation of the unofficial theme of Liverpool supporters, “You’ll Never Walk Alone.” Fifteen years following Bill Shankly and Liverpool Football Club “away from home, away from Anfield” and “at home, at Anfield,” match after match. I recognize that for some readers, that’s going to be a tough sell.
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19 June 2014 | read this |