The invaluable Harry Ransom Center just released its slate of winter guest lecturers, which kicks off Jan. 25 with a talk by Booker Prize-winner Barry Unsworth, to whom we gave a big thumbs up last week for his latest novel, Land of Marvels.
One hundred eighty-six pounds. That was the perfect playing weight for Baltimore Colts wide receiver Raymond Berry. In the two weeks before the December 28, 1958 NFL championship game at Yankee Stadium in the Bronx, Berry weighed 175 pounds. He knew this because he traveled with a scale and weighed himself before each game. Berry had developed a reputation as one of the most dangerous players on the field due to his precision and methodical approach to a rough game. Journalists from Baltimore still tell stories of listening to Berry catch Johnny Unitas passes in the dark after long practices. The concept? Berry wanted to know his routes “blindfolded.”
Meticulous precision can also be said of Mark Bowden, author of The Best Game Ever: Giants vs. Colts, 1958, and the Birth of the Modern NFL ($23 Atlantic Monthly Press). Bowden, the celebrated writer of Black Hawk Down, picks up a project initiated by the Pulitzer-Prize winning David Halberstam, who sadly died in a car crash researching this game in 2007. Bowden writes the story of this 1958 National Football League championship game between the Colts and the New York Giants. The game featured the greatest collection of talent on one field, including 17 future Hall of Fame inductees such as the Colts Unitas, Berry, and Gino Marchetti, and the Giants Frank Gifford (yes, the husband of Kathie Lee), the exceptionally callous Sam Huff (the Ray Lewis of this era), and assistant coaches Vince Lombardi (offense) and Tom Landry (defense) whom notably built what we now understand to be the 4-3 defense around the talents of Huff.
"Ah! there is nothing like staying at home for real comfort." – Emma
The weatherman says the temperature won't top 40 degrees today, which makes it the perfect day to celebrate the birth of Jane Austen – that endless fount of wit and witticism, that sly tweaker of social mores, that shockingly sensible romantic – by staying in and curling up with one of her delicious reads. But, if like me, you're stuck at work, then I guess the next best thing is to troll YouTube for the many Austen offerings – I especially recommend 1995's Persuasion and the sparky, protofeminist Mansfield Park (with Harold Pinter!), the definitive BBC Pride and Prejudice miniseries (BBC, those cheeky bastards, have the celebrated pond dip up, but won't let me embed it) and Joe Wright's abbreviated, but still very worthy adaptation.
But certainly at the top of the charts of Austen moments in film is Emma Thompson's spontaneous sob at the end of Sense and Sensibility. Like I said – the end of Sense and Sensibility, so, you know, spoiler alert.
UT professor and indefatigable biographer H.W. Brands combines two great things – books and beer – on Sunday, Dec. 7, with a booksigning at Scholz Garten (1607 San Jacinto) from 2-5 pm. We caught Brands at this year’s Texas Book Festival, where he held a whole sanctuary rapt with his fascinating – and occasionally pretty saucy – stories about Eleanor and FDR, the subjects of Brands’ most recent book, Traitor to His Class: The Privileged Life and Radical Presidency of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Books will be available for purchase, as well as on-site gift wrap. Highly recommended.
We've only had a chance to read the first couple of chapters of Dream City, Michener Center alum Brendan Short's debut novel, but so far it's a hell of a read – finely written and researched (it's set in Depression-era Chicago), with an intriguing multiple narrative following the family Halligan – the brutish heavy Paddy, slowly suffocating mom Elizabeth, and 6-year-old Michael, who takes comfort and courage in comics heroes like Dick Tracy. But don't take our word for it – why not hear Short read in person tomorrow night at BookPeople (6th and Lamar)? That's Tuesday, Nov. 25, at 7pm.
The following week, Michener will play host to a reading from visiting professor ZZ Packer (Drinking Coffee Elsewhere) on Thursday, Dec. 4, 7:30pm, at Avaya Auditorium (ACES 2.302) on the UT campus (located at the southeast corner of 24th & Speedway). Both readings are free and open to the public.
For more info, visit www.utexas.edu/academic/mcw.
A belated congratulations go to poet and UT assistant professor A. Van Jordan, who was named on Monday as a 2008 United States Artists Fellows. USA, a national artists advocacy group, awarded fifty $50,000 grants to artists from eight disciplines, including literature, architecture and design, and theater arts. And it's good company Jordan's keeping – living legend Barry Hannah made the cut, too.
Jordan has previously won the Whiting Award, the Annisfield-Wolf Book Award, and a Pushcart Prize. His collection Quantum Lyrics was published by W.W. Norton.
I found Sal Paolantonio’s How Football Explains America (Triumph Books, $24.95) in the “Sports” section of a local Barnes and Noble, and now I plan to write a note of complaint. Although peppered with amazing facts and trivial treats (did you know Richard Nixon asked John Mitchell to investigate Vince Lombardi as a possible running mate in 1968?), Paolantonio’s book is less a meditation about football, and more a book on the cultural relevance of the game.
Paolantonio, a former history major at the State University of New York at Oneonta, introduces his meaty thesis that football is a dramatic tale that explains why Americans do as America does, with the story of the New York Giants achieving a perfect story by defeating the New England Patriots in the Super Bowl and ending a perfect season. From there, Paolantonio details how football explains Manifest Destiny, Daniel Boone, Davy Crockett, Alexis de Tocqueville, John Coltrane (a personal favorite of mine), West Point, the television show Father Knows Best, and finally, how football explains “us all."
This week, Alison Bechdel is in town. The Dykes to Watch Out For author will appear at UT on Thu., Nov. 6 and will be signing her new book at BookPeople, The Essential Dykes to Watch Out For, Fri., Nov. 7, 5pm.
Those who have been readers of the strip, now in circulation for over 25 years, know what a talent Bechdel is. Even if you haven't read DTWOF, Bechdel's Fun Home, a graphic novel which concerns her process of coming out, but also the death of her father (and subsequent discovery that her father may have been gay also). It is a carefully considered and beautifully rendered narrative, which mixes memoir and theory. And I ain't the only one who thinks so!
Also: Bechdel has a blog.
