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\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d seen competing in the Cup, but I didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t form any particular club loyalties until early 2011, when Kenny Dalglish was appointed manager at Liverpool. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m a sucker for sports history, you see, so even though I had no direct experience of Dalglish\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s earlier career playing for and managing Liverpool from the late 1970s to the early \u00e2\u20ac\u02dc90s, the story of his return to Anfield (the team\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s home stadium) resonated with me.<\/p>\n
(As a rough analogy in American sports terms, imagine Phil Jackson wound up back with the Chicago Bulls\u00e2\u20ac\u201dor with the New York Knicks, even.)<\/p>\n
So I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d made a mental note about Red or Dead<\/em>, David Peace\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s novel about an even earlier period in Liverpool\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s 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\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m glad I did, though it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s easily the most challenging book about sports, fiction or nonfiction, that I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve ever read.<\/p>\n Red or Dead<\/em> is the story of Bill Shankly\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s tenure as manager of Liverpool Football Club from 1959 to 1974, the stuff of legends on a par with Vince Lombardi\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s time with Green Bay or Red Auerbach\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s career with the Boston Celtics. Possibly even more legendary; I admit that I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m 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.<\/p>\n That said, it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s clear how intently Peace feels those resonances, clear in every sentence he writes. Instead of telling Bill Shankly\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s 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\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s time at Liverpool. For example:<\/p>\n \u00e2\u20ac\u0153On 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\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s 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.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n And that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s actually one of the more sparsely detailed accounts. There\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s fifteen years\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 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, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153You\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll Never Walk Alone.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Fifteen years following Bill Shankly and Liverpool Football Club \u00e2\u20ac\u0153away from home, away from Anfield\u00e2\u20ac\u009d and \u00e2\u20ac\u0153at home, at Anfield,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d match after match. I recognize that for some readers, that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s going to be a tough sell. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153So get out, get out now! While there are still some folk about. Folk who supported you, the folk who paid your wages today. Get out there now, walk among them now. And let them tell you what they think of you, what they think of Liverpool Football Club losing four-nil at home, at Anfield, to Everton. Because I tell you, what I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve said will be nothing compared to what they say. Nothing. So get up, get out! Get up and get out there now. And walk among these people. And listen to these people. Listen to their words and remember their words. And remember those people.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n In the later section of the book, in the years following Shankly\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s retirement from managing, Peace\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s portrait tilts heavily toward hagiography. Bill\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s always ready to play a pickup game of soccer with the local boys, or chat with fans, even give a man in a cafe his umbrella so he won\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t have to get wet walking back to work. (\u00e2\u20ac\u0153Your need is greater than mine,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d he says when the man protests. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153I mean, I can stay here till it stops. Or I can dry off when I get home.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d) Frankly*, the effort to connect this goodness of heart to Shankly\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s socialism, honed by the years growing up in a Scottish mining town, might be a bit too blatant in one or two spots. In the long run, though, Peace\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s voice is as often poetic as it is relentlessly obsessive, and it can do much to help American readers understand why what Bill Shankly did fifty years ago weighs on British cultural memory in something like the way the home run derby between Mickey Mantle and Roger Maris weighs on ours.<\/p>\n *The phrase \u00e2\u20ac\u0153frankly, Mr. Shankly\u00e2\u20ac\u009d does crop up exactly once, but not in any way that could remotely be construed as a Smiths reference. Nor did I find anything to indicate that Morrissey was thinking of anything other than a rhyme for \u00e2\u20ac\u0153frankly\u00e2\u20ac\u009d when he chose the name \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Shankly.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d <\/p>\n (NOTE: This post originally appeared on Beacon<\/b>.)<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" 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\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d seen competing in the Cup, but I didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t form any particular club loyalties until early 2011, when […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[965],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4012"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4012"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4012\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4014,"href":"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4012\/revisions\/4014"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4012"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4012"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4012"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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\nIt\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s worth leaning into Peace\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s language, though, for the portrait of Shankly that is built up through these details, and through his dialogue. Shankly\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s love of Liverpool and the team\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s supporters is evident from the beginning, and he makes a point of emphasizing that everything he did to improve Liverpool Football Club\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s performance—from taking them from the second division of England\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s multi-tiered football league to the top, to winning division championships to league cups to international cups—was about giving the people of Liverpool a football team worthy of the love they had to give. After one poor performance, he berates his players:<\/p>\n