Detailed item info | Synopsis | A comic novel about college football, written by a former offensive lineman at the University of Michigan. It describes the academic and athletic career of Elwood Reilly, who enters the University of Michigan on an athletic scholarship. A bright student from a tough working-class family, Reilly has to adjust himself to the values of the "fellas": pain-loving athletes too nihilistic to care what happens to themselves or others.
| | Size | | Length: | 259 pages | | Height: | 9.8 in. | | Width: | 6.5 in. | | Thickness: | 1.2 in. | | Weight: | 18.4 oz. |
| | Publisher's Note | Elwood Reid first appeared on the literary stage with a powerful and bruising story called "What Salmon Know," which appeared in the March 1997 issue of GQ. Here was a writer not afraid to examine the soulful underside of the American male, or the violence that accompanies disappointed dreams. Now, in his first, extraordinary novel, Reid tells the story of Elwood Riley, a six-foot-six, 275-pound blue-collar kid whose ticket out of Cleveland is a "full ride" football scholarship to the University of Michigan.But Riley is cursed with intelligence and an awareness of the vicious inhumanity of the college football system. If Riley doesnt want to "six"--lose his scholarship or get maimed--he has to become a "fella," a pain-loving freak too nihilistic to care what he does to himself or others. And after Riley encounters the alluring, mysteriously damaged Kate, his dilemma becomes ever more painful.Elwood Reid's portrait of this world is at once blackly humorous, starkly tragic, and perfectly detailed. With deft strokes, he portrays emotionally stunted coaches who have mastered the art of humiliating and manipulating young men, groupies attracted to the fame but undone by the shocking cruelty of the players, and the athletes themselves, who grow addicted to violence, alcohol, and steroids, too caught up in the glory of playing for Big Blue to notice they are mere meat to the coaches and the university.In tough, spare, beautiful prose that should invite comparisons to the works of Thom Jones and Denis Johnson, Reid describes a place where young men damage their souls and their bodies in pursuit of a worthless glamor. This is a profound, unsettling book about a familiar yet hidden world--a Greek tragedy in cleats.
In his first novel, Reid tells the story of Elwood Riley, a six-foot-six, 275-pound blue-collar kid whose ticket out of Cleveland is a "full ride" football scholarship to the University of Michigan. But Riley is cursed with intelligence and an awareness of the vicious inhumanity of the college football system. If Riley doesn't want to "six" - lose his scholarship or get maimed - he has to become a "fella", a pain-loving freak too nihilistic to care what he does to himself or others. And after Riley encounters the alluring, mysteriously damaged Kate, his dilemma becomes ever more painful. Elwood Reid portrays emotionally stunted coaches who have mastered the art of humiliating and manipulating young men, groupies attracted to the fame but undone by the shocking cruelty of the players, and the athletes themselves, who grow addicted to violence, alcohol, and steroids, too caught up in the glory of playing for Big Blue to notice they are mere meat to the coaches and the university.
| | Industry reviews | This is the sort of football novel generally referred to as "gritty." The hero is a bright kid who'd actually like to get an education, but without a football scholarship he hasn't a chance for anything but the soul-destroying, life-eating factory work his father does. But big-time college football is just as bad, with vicious, bullying coaches encouraging players to be mean and stupid parodies of masculine toughness. The parties are contests in players' out-grossing one another, and the women are groupies, willing to be used and abused. But who is the audience for this bleak and presumably realistic first novel (Reid played college football until a neck injury ended his career)? Football fans can take the unremitting vulgarity but will be put off by the contempt for the sport. Perhaps it's best read as a downbeat coming-of-age novel. Marylaine Block, St. Ambrose Univ. Lib., Davenport, IA
Auerbach
Elwood Riley, a high-school hulk with a fondness for philosophy, uses a football scholarship to get out of Cleveland but comes to hate the brutality of big-time college football in this lightly fictionalized expos?. Punishing his body on the field and off, Elwood commits increasingly self-destructive acts as he searches for a kindred soul in the locker room, someone who shares his disapproval of the bullying and woman-hating atmosphere of jock life at the University of Michigan. Unfortunately, the most interesting character an upperclassman who beats the system, shows Elwood how to balance team respect with personal humanity and in the process calls Elwood's bleakness into question only shows up in a couple of scenes. Elwood's ambivalence toward the game continues until the last page; in the meantime, Reid gives his readers a harrowing (if sometimes exhaustingly detailed) description of the politics and logistics of daylong football practices and parties at which fights and rapes are commonplace. The problem here is Elwood himself, whose pious horror at these events seems tacked on and meretricious. Reid lets his fictional alter ego drift passively along, mouthing repentance and outrage at his teammates' behavior and his own acts of thuggery, without quite owning up to the game's powerful attraction to the bullies who play it; the result is either a flawed character or inconsistent writing (or possibly both) at the center of an otherwise smart, gritty tale. Agent, Gordon Kato; editor, Bill Thomas; author tour; film rights to MCA for New Line Cinema. (Sept.) FYI: Reid played offensive line for the University of Michigan.
Lopate
|
|
Portions of this page Copyright 1995 - 2009 Muze Inc.  All rights reserved. |
Back to home page
) 
Print
Report item
and your 