Paper Lion
Confessions of a last-string quarterback
Will be published approx. on 4. August 2016
Book
Paperback/Softback
384 pages
978-0-224-10022-9 (ISBN)
Description
In the mid-1960s, George Plimpton talked his way into the Detroit Lions' pre-season training camp and in doing so set the bar for participatory sports journalism. With his characteristic wit, Plimpton recounts his experience of a month practising and living with the team - getting to know the pressures and tensions rookies confront, the hijinks, taking behind the scenes snaps and capturing a host of American football rites and rituals.
Plimpton might not have made it as a quarterback, but fifty years after its first publication, Paper Lion remains one of the most insightful and entertaining classics of sports literature.
Plimpton might not have made it as a quarterback, but fifty years after its first publication, Paper Lion remains one of the most insightful and entertaining classics of sports literature.
Reviews / Votes
A continuous feast... The best book ever about football - or anything! * Wall Street Journal * A great book that makes football absolutely fascinating to fan and non-fan alike...a tale to gladden the envious heart of every weekend athlete... Plimpton has endless curiosity, unshakable enthusiasm and nerve, and a deep respect for the world he enters * New York Times * The agility and imaginativeness of his prose transforms his account of this daydream into a classic of sports reporting * New Yorker * Possibly the most arresting and delightful narrative in all of sports literature * Book Week * With his gentle, ironic tone, and unwillingness to take himself too seriously, along with Roger Angell, John Updike and Norman Mailer he made writing about sports something that mattered. * Guardian * The casual, curious, light-hearted precision of his prose is just as impressive as the way a great ball player can make the ball pop off his bat. * Spectator * To suggest they have achieved classic status would be to devalue their still very immediate pleasures... [Plimpton] was a lyrical, precise observational writer, with a keen eye for human absurdity'. * Observer * What drives these books, and has made them so popular, is Plimpton's continuous bond-making with the reader and the comedy inherent in his predicament. He is the Everyman, earnests and frail, wandering in a world of supermen, beset by fears of catastrophic violence and public humiliation, yet gamely facing it all in order to survive and tell the tale... A prodigious linguistic ability is on display throughout, with a defining image often appended at the end of a sentence like a surprise dessert. -- Timothy O'Grady * Times Literary Supplement *More details
Language
English
Place of publication
London
United Kingdom
Publishing group
Vintage Publishing
Product notice
Paperback (UK-B)
Dimensions
Height: 200 mm
Width: 128 mm
Thickness: 35 mm
Weight
275 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-224-10022-9 (9780224100229)
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
08/2016
Vintage Digital
€10.99
Available for download
Person
George Plimpton (1927-2003) was the bestselling author and editor of nearly thirty books, as well as the cofounder, publisher, and editor of the Paris Review. He wrote regularly for such magazines as Sports Illustrated and Esquire, and he appeared numerous times in films and on television.