Commentary on professional basketball woven through a memoir and reflections on the state of late-20th-century, interracial America. At some point in every broadcast of a New York Knicks game in Madison Square Garden, the camera zeroes in on filmmaker Spike Lee in his courtside seat (for which he pays $1,000 a game), dressed in Knicks jersey and cap, often caught in a moment of great emotion. For all the praise and criticism generated by such films as Malcolm X and Do the Right Thing, Lee contends that he has gotten more visibility from his association with basketball: for the style- setting commercials he has shot for Nike, and for ``having the best seat in the house.'' Writing with Wiley (What Black People Should Do Now, 1993; Dark Witness, 1996; etc.), Lee chronicles his long journey with the Knicks from the nosebleed seats to courtside; from the night as a 13-year-old when he chose the Knicks 196970 championship game over his father's jazz concert, through ensuing decades of teams bad, mediocre, and near-great. Simultaneously, he tells the story of his life and career, intercut with interviews with many of his favorite players, including Clyde Drexler, Bill Bradley, George Gervin, John Starks, and Michael Jordan. Just as in Lee's films, the style flows from street vernacular to standard English, from irreverent and often hilarious observations to serious and intensely reflective commentary, from information to provocation. More than just a superfan's dream come true, to play sportswriter and be allowed to get inside his heroes' heads, Lee attempts to do with basketball what many writers have done with baseball: use it as a metaphor for life and the social condition. Just like the athletes Lee admires most, he and Wiley play their hearts out here, making this one of the best sports books of recent years. (8 pages of b&w photos, not seen) (Author tour)
Pub Date: May 1, 1997
ISBN: 0-609-60029-X
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 1997
In these insightfully droll essays, Gierach shows us how fishing offers plenty of time to think things over.
The latest collection of interrelated essays by the veteran fishing writer.
As in his previous books—from The View From Rat Lake through All Fishermen Are Liars—Gierach hones in on the ups and downs of fishing, and those looking for how-to tips will find plenty here on rods, flies, guides, streams, and pretty much everything else that informs the fishing life. It is the everything else that has earned Gierach the following of fellow writers and legions of readers who may not even fish but are drawn to his musings on community, culture, the natural world, and the seasons of life. In one representatively poetic passage, he writes, “it was a chilly fall afternoon with the leaves changing, the current whispering, and a pale moon in a daytime sky. The river seemed inscrutable, but alive with possibility.” Gierach writes about both patience and process, and he describes the long spells between catches as the fisherman’s equivalent of writer’s block. Even when catching fish is the point, it almost seems beside the point (anglers will understand that sentiment): At the end of one essay, he writes, “I was cold, bored, hungry, and fishless, but there was still nowhere else I’d have rather been—something anyone who fishes will understand.” Most readers will be profoundly moved by the meditation on mortality within the blandly titled “Up in Michigan,” a character study of a man dying of cancer. Though the author had known and been fishing with him for three decades, his reticence kept anyone from knowing him too well. Still, writes Gierach, “I came to think of [his] glancing pronouncements as Michigan haiku: brief, no more than obliquely revealing, and oddly beautiful.” Ultimately, the man was focused on settling accounts, getting in one last fishing trip, and then planning to “sit in the sun and think things over until it’s time for hospice.”
In these insightfully droll essays, Gierach shows us how fishing offers plenty of time to think things over.Pub Date: June 2, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-5011-6858-1
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Jan. 21, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A broad and deep look at Japan’s medieval referents, and a capable illustration of a martial art form steeped in rich...
A reflective and entertaining journey through Japan, as the author seeks to reconnect with his martial arts sensei.
Lowry is a student of koryu (not to be confused with kendo), a style of Japanese classical swordsmanship. Koryu is a medieval art, like Noh and the tea ceremony, a style of combat born on the battlefield–but more importantly, it’s a way to address the world (though an esoteric one: Lowry may well be the only American practicing the art in the United States). Indeed, present-day practitioners refrain from exercising its fatal possibilities. Lowry’s sensei left the U.S. to return to Japan, urging Lowry to follow. Though his life headed in a different direction, he never forgot his training–when the time was ripe, he journeyed to Japan to join his sensei. The narrative revolves around this pivotal decision, and it provides a warm center from which the author expounds on such topics as the glories of a Japanese bath; the evolution of the Samurai caste; the peculiarities of Japanese landscape architecture; the elements of proper sandal-tying; the custom of the premarital shenanigans called yobai; and the teachings of mikkyo Buddhism. He also includes the vital story of the sword–what it reveals about Japanese life and technology, social structure and aesthetic values, etiquette, apprenticeship and the process of education. Lowry’s seriousness lends an earnest cast to the proceedings, but he’s not without a sense of humor–commenting upon his accomplished slurping of noodles, a friend’s wife notes, “He really sucks!”
A broad and deep look at Japan’s medieval referents, and a capable illustration of a martial art form steeped in rich tradition.Pub Date: Sept. 7, 2005
ISBN: 1-890536-10-5
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 23, 2010
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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