Although heartwarming, the abrupt ending leaves the reader a little shortchanged, since the authors do not reveal if the...
Yankee pitcher Orlando “El Duque” Hernández is the focal point of this informative, behind-the-scenes look at the role of baseball in US-Cuban relations.
Ever since the 1991 defection of pitcher René Arocha, many fellow Cuban athletes have followed suit, the most well known being El Duque and his younger half brother Lívan Hernandez. El Duque is portrayed in mostly glowing fashion, both as a talent and as a noble man who never lost faith that he would pitch again (even after Cuban baseball officials, for political reasons, forbade the national star to play). His ultimate escape on a raft in treacherous waters is detailed in a matter-of-fact and undramatic way. The authors—both reporters—do a better job providing a comprehensive picture of Cuban life under Castro, showing the country's fascination with baseball (both playing and watching), and revealing the conflict between stalwart party men and players willing to risk everything to have a chance at freedom and riches. The most riveting character in the book is actually not El Duque, but the revolutionary sports agent José “Joe” Cubas, who becomes an unofficial representative for US Major League teams willing to participate in the corrupt process of tapping Cuban talent. Born in the US to parents who, as honeymooners, ended up staying in Miami because of Castro’s revolution, Cubas (called “the Great Liberator” by 60 Minutes) is the intelligent, ruthless, and mercenary master at engineering the escapes and eventual signings of the defecting players. The story basically ends with the reunion between El Duque and his family during the 1998 World Series.
Although heartwarming, the abrupt ending leaves the reader a little shortchanged, since the authors do not reveal if the most successful defector has any lingering homesickness or loyalty to Cuba—an intriguing premise only hinted at in the epilogue.Pub Date: March 23, 2001
ISBN: 0-375-50345-5
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Villard
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2001
BOOK REVIEW
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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