An engaging memoir explores football and fandom.
A debut book offers a personal and literary inquiry into the role of football in one man’s life and in American society.
“Why has football been such a big deal in my life, and in the lives of so many?” Liparulo asks in this volume. “Will I have to confess to the sin of football idolatry?” If such a confession is necessary, he certainly won’t be making it alone: the NFL is a $9 billion industry in the U.S., and the college-level network of teams is a sprawling moneymaker for schools all across the country. Liparulo often reminds his readers that “fan” is short for “fanatic,” and in America, there’s no sport that highlights that connection quite like football. But the sport isn’t Liparulo’s first idolatry; in richly observed, intensely satisfying chapters of personal recollection, he reflects on his years growing up listening to Tom Petty, Led Zeppelin, the Doobie Brothers, and Blue Oyster Cult and confesses that “rock and roll became my first religion.” Throughout his book, his narrative veers between these autobiographical chapters and more philosophical sections reflecting on the sport of football as seen through the prism of a handful of iconic games. He tells the story of his life: the friends of his youth in upstate New York, their fledgling attempts at forming rock bands of their own, his classes at Binghamton University, his ROTC experiences and service as an infantry officer in 1980s South Korea, his later teaching career. These vivid recollections are suffused with his love of literature; quotes from the Bible and Milton’s Paradise Lost are littered throughout the text (this may be the only football memoir to include multiple allusions to Michel Foucault). But the story keeps returning to football, “the big lie at the heart of the American dream,” with all its growing problems, including the harsh realities for players with brain injuries sustained on the field, a scandal that has thousands of plaintiffs pursuing legal action against the NFL. Liparulo blends all this professional and personal material with an easy, literate skill that should appeal even to nonfans.
An engaging memoir explores football and fandom.Pub Date: June 8, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-5308-5581-0
Page Count: 362
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Aug. 1, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
