AN OUTSIDE CHANCE: Essays on Sport

by Thomas McGuane ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 1, 1980

By sport, McGuane means one-on-one Hemingway stuff: fishing and shooting, mostly. And the self-aware dovetailing of writer/predator Papa as model is never far from our minds, either; after field-dressing an antelope he's shot, McGuane reports: ""I was blood from the elbows down and the antelope's eyes had skinned over. I thought, This is goddamned serious business and you had better always remember that."" No fear that he won't; the descriptions of chase are fine, but the quarry, of course, is really prose: ""Water streamed up the leader with a silky shearing noise, and the snapper peeled off in a bulge of water tinted by his own brickred hue. The flat was a broad one and the snapper failed to clear it to deep water on his first run. At the end of that run he turned perpendicular to the line and held there for a while, implacable as a fire hydrant."" The studied elegance of this sort of writing if often quite dandy and entertaining. Also, oddly, when McGuane is at his most adolescent, he's the most charming: ""Me and My Bike and Why""--the confessions of an ex-motorcyclist--is funny; and in reading a piece about a difficult horseback trail-ride in winter, you realize that McGuane pleases more when he's recounting failure than success. But a McGuane characteristic from his fiction--snobbery--shows up here, too; and it threatens to sour you on the voice altogether. Anyone here who isn't a male friend or a professional guide falls automatically into categories of pure polyester vulgarian or plunderer, an uncharity that is truly callow. Sport, to McGuane, is an activity of the elect, a heraldry of the ego--and you may feel pretty well blackballed yourself.

Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1980

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Farrar, Straus & Giroux

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 1980

Categories: NONFICTION