Hoop
A Basketball Life in Ninety-Five Essays
Published on 1. March 2019
Book
Paperback/Softback
240 pages
978-0-8203-5544-3 (ISBN)
Description
Brian Doyle himself explains it best: "A few years ago I was moaning to my wry gentle dad that basketball, which seems to me inarguably the most graceful and generous and swift and fluid and ferociously-competitive-without-being-sociopathic of sports, has not produced rafts of good books, like baseball and golf and cricket and surfing have . . . Where are the great basketball novels to rival The Natural and the glorious Mark Harris baseball quartet and the great Bernard Darwin's golf stories? Where are the annual anthologies of terrific basketball essays? How can a game full of such wit and creativity and magic not spark more great books?"
"'Why don't you write one?' said my dad, who is great at cutting politely to the chase."
And so he has. In this collection of short essays, Brian Doyle presents a compelling account of a life lived playing, watching, loving, and coaching basketball. He recounts his passion for the gyms, the playgrounds, the sounds and scents, the camaraderie, the fierce competition, the anticipation and exhaustion, and even some of the injuries.
"'Why don't you write one?' said my dad, who is great at cutting politely to the chase."
And so he has. In this collection of short essays, Brian Doyle presents a compelling account of a life lived playing, watching, loving, and coaching basketball. He recounts his passion for the gyms, the playgrounds, the sounds and scents, the camaraderie, the fierce competition, the anticipation and exhaustion, and even some of the injuries.
Reviews / Votes
Anyone who has shot baskets at a playground court will relate to Hoop. As a former college basketball player, who is married to a former college basketball player, and whose two sons play college basketball, and as a writer and reader who has read countless books about basketball, I can tell you that this is one of the best books I've read about the game and its culture. -- Todd F. Davis * editor of Fast Break to Line Break: Poets on the Art of Basketball * I am not the ideal reader for this book but I became the ideal reader. I didn't think I could read essays about basketball because I do not play the game. I read it to hear Brian Doyle's voice, which is one of the most distinctive voices in nonfiction. I read it to learn, against my will, what a hook shot is, how to box someone out, and what a pick is. I read this book with the hope and the recognition that the big stories exist in the small stories and that paying attention to and remembering the details is what amounts to the big stuff. As a writing lesson and a life lesson, Hoop completes a generous pass. -- Nicole Walker * coeditor of Bending the Genre: Essays on Creative Nonfiction *More details
Series
Language
English
Place of publication
Georgia
United States
Target group
Professional and scholarly
Product notice
Paperback (trade)
Illustrations
9 b&w illustrations
Dimensions
Height: 229 mm
Width: 152 mm
Thickness: 14 mm
Weight
399 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-8203-5544-3 (9780820355443)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions
E-Book
10/2017
University of Georgia Press
€29.99
Available for download
Person
BRIAN DOYLE (1956-2017) was the editor of Portland Magazine at the University of Portland and the author of twenty books of essays, fiction, poems, and nonfiction, including Chicago, Martin Marten, The Plover, Children and Other Wild Animals, Mink River, and The Wet Engine. His other writings have appeared in Best American Essays, Best Spiritual Writing, the New York Times, Harper's, the American Scholar, and the Atlantic.