FRINK Linked Data Fragments server

Matches in SemOpenAlex for { <https://semopenalex.org/work/W2079207047> ?p ?o ?g. }

• W2079207047 endingPage "496" @default.
• W2079207047 startingPage "494" @default.
• W2079207047 abstract "Reviewed by: Sporting Lives: Metaphor and Myth in American Sports Autobiographies Peter Carino (bio) James W. Pipkin . Sporting Lives: Metaphor and Myth in American Sports Autobiographies. Columbia: U of Missouri P, 2008. 161 pp. ISBN 0-826-21779-6, $29.95. James W. Pipkin's Sporting Lives gives scholarly attention to a genre near the bottom of the literary food chain, sports autobiographies. Except in cases of a highly literate athlete, such as former senator and NBA star Bill Bradley or swimmer Diana Nyad (a one-time PhD candidate in comparative literature at NYU), these texts are produced through the efforts of an athlete and co-author, often a sports journalist who crafts them from tapes and interviews, before reshaping the text based on emerging patterns or suggestions from the athlete. Pipkin, early in the book, provides an informative explanation of how these autobiographies are actually written, and then goes on to trace several recurring motifs to provide a sense of athletes beneath the public image and an interpretation of sports from the inside out (2). Pipkin establishes five recurring tropes in these texts. The first, which he calls the Echoing Green, emerges in nearly all sports autobiographies as an extended world of childhood enjoyed by the elite athlete. Covering multiple sporting lives and eras, from Ty Cobb to Tracy Austin, Pipkin unpacks both the pleasures and pitfalls of the athlete's status as grown child. He further relates this stage to a mythic nostalgia for a place where to desire is to have (23), but finds American sports figures particularly appropriate inhabitants of this world because American culture lacks the mists of a distant past that was the haunt of those ancient giants who lived before the Flood (19). Subsequent chapters are dedicated to the athletes' acute sense of their bodies, their experience of achieving transcendent (near mystical) moments of peak performance, the pain of aging and retirement, and the post-modern self-fashioning of one extraordinary athlete, Dennis Rodman. Among the most informative and intriguing chapters is Body Songs. Here Pipkin notes how player autobiographies convey the complexities of existence when the athletic body becomes for both the athlete and the culture a [End Page 494] text to be read. The culture's readings range from the male athletic form objectified by the gaze of the fan, to admiration for the athletic female body as long as it does not transgress cultural notions of femininity, to awe, curiosity, and revulsion at extraordinary bodies such as those of George Mikan, Wilt Chamberlain, and Kareem Abdul Jabbar. These three men, Pipkin shows, struggle to forge a positive image against conflicting cultural constructions of them as simultaneously powerful giants to be adulated and freaks to be ridiculed, a dilemma compounded by race for Chamberlain, Jabbar, and other black basketball stars. Aside from negotiating public constructions of their bodies, privately the athletes often vacillate between strong feelings of pride in the instrument they've created and gripping fear of its breaking down. Equally interesting but less the voice of the athletes is the chapter entitled Magic: The Performing Body. Pipkin here does a fine job of trying to articulate the near mystical state that athletes call, in today's parlance, being in the zone; that is, performing at the top of their game in perfect bodily execution of the mind's intentions. Exploring this magic through a variety of sports figures, most notably Bill Russell and most interestingly Diana Nyad, Pipkin elucidates their words with a critical lens of Romantic thought, particularly Wordsworth's, elevating, for better or worse, the peak experience to a point of confluence between sports, art, and religion (88). Of course, all athletes, no matter their persistent wish to hold onto a Peter Pan existence on the Echoing Green, must face the end of their playing careers, and the title of Pipkin's chapter, The End of Autumn, shows he is aware of the old sports cliché that an athlete dies two deaths: one at career's end, the second, when life actually expires. Though this chapter focuses on those players who have difficulty facing life without games, Pipkin differentiates the degrees of severity and variety of reasons..." @default.
• W2079207047 created "2016-06-24" @default.
• W2079207047 creator A5089116773 @default.
• W2079207047 date "2008-01-01" @default.
• W2079207047 modified "2023-10-17" @default.
• W2079207047 title "<i>Sporting Lives: Metaphor and Myth in American Sports Autobiographies</i> (review)" @default.
• W2079207047 doi "https://doi.org/10.1353/bio.0.0042" @default.
• W2079207047 hasPublicationYear "2008" @default.
• W2079207047 type Work @default.
• W2079207047 sameAs 2079207047 @default.
• W2079207047 citedByCount "0" @default.
• W2079207047 crossrefType "journal-article" @default.
• W2079207047 hasAuthorship W2079207047A5089116773 @default.
• W2079207047 hasConcept C124952713 @default.
• W2079207047 hasConcept C138885662 @default.
• W2079207047 hasConcept C142362112 @default.
• W2079207047 hasConcept C17744445 @default.
• W2079207047 hasConcept C199539241 @default.
• W2079207047 hasConcept C27206212 @default.
• W2079207047 hasConcept C2775987171 @default.
• W2079207047 hasConcept C2778311575 @default.
• W2079207047 hasConcept C41895202 @default.
• W2079207047 hasConcept C519517224 @default.
• W2079207047 hasConcept C52119013 @default.
• W2079207047 hasConcept C527412718 @default.
• W2079207047 hasConcept C94625758 @default.
• W2079207047 hasConcept C95457728 @default.
• W2079207047 hasConceptScore W2079207047C124952713 @default.
• W2079207047 hasConceptScore W2079207047C138885662 @default.
• W2079207047 hasConceptScore W2079207047C142362112 @default.
• W2079207047 hasConceptScore W2079207047C17744445 @default.
• W2079207047 hasConceptScore W2079207047C199539241 @default.
• W2079207047 hasConceptScore W2079207047C27206212 @default.
• W2079207047 hasConceptScore W2079207047C2775987171 @default.
• W2079207047 hasConceptScore W2079207047C2778311575 @default.
• W2079207047 hasConceptScore W2079207047C41895202 @default.
• W2079207047 hasConceptScore W2079207047C519517224 @default.
• W2079207047 hasConceptScore W2079207047C52119013 @default.
• W2079207047 hasConceptScore W2079207047C527412718 @default.
• W2079207047 hasConceptScore W2079207047C94625758 @default.
• W2079207047 hasConceptScore W2079207047C95457728 @default.
• W2079207047 hasIssue "3" @default.
• W2079207047 hasLocation W20792070471 @default.
• W2079207047 hasOpenAccess W2079207047 @default.
• W2079207047 hasPrimaryLocation W20792070471 @default.
• W2079207047 hasRelatedWork W1979559564 @default.
• W2079207047 hasRelatedWork W2291957745 @default.
• W2079207047 hasRelatedWork W2393436031 @default.
• W2079207047 hasRelatedWork W2748952813 @default.
• W2079207047 hasRelatedWork W2793495875 @default.
• W2079207047 hasRelatedWork W2899084033 @default.
• W2079207047 hasRelatedWork W3102099078 @default.
• W2079207047 hasRelatedWork W410157638 @default.
• W2079207047 hasRelatedWork W4252478724 @default.
• W2079207047 hasRelatedWork W890326518 @default.
• W2079207047 hasVolume "31" @default.
• W2079207047 isParatext "false" @default.
• W2079207047 isRetracted "false" @default.
• W2079207047 magId "2079207047" @default.
• W2079207047 workType "article" @default.