Sport and Fiction 3: Not Art by Péter Esterházy

Not Art, like all good sports fiction, isn’t about sport and in many ways it isn’t even a novel. It’s a piece of autofiction by a man writing about his mother. A mother who is besotted by football and by one practitioner in particular, the great Ferenc Puskás of Hungary.

Esterházy is an interesting character, coming from an aristocratic family, and considered a major European novelist. His brother was a professional footballer and Péter himself played a bit. Continue reading “Sport and Fiction 3: Not Art by Péter Esterházy” →

Super Bowl LII – Aw or Awe?

There’s an old story about John Wayne. Probably apocryphal. John played a Roman centurion in the movie The Greatest Story Ever Told, an American film from 1965 produced and directed by George Stevens. John had a small role as did many other famous actors. All he had to do, at the end of the film, after Christ was crucified, was to say the affirmative line: ‘surely this man is the son of God’. Stevens wasn’t happy that John was putting enough into it so he asked him to put more awe into the line. So John (on the zillionth take) said: ‘Aw, surely this man is the son of God’.

And that’s the way I feel about the Super Bowl. Continue reading “Super Bowl LII – Aw or Awe?” →

Sporting Moments Number 2304, Johnny Sexton Drop Goal or Why We Watch Sport

We watch sport, and we participate in sport, because of emotions. Because we want to feel and to show emotions and sport facilitates that – it permits that. Which is no mean feat, especially when it comes to men showing their emotions.

Where else do you see people gasp and shout and scream and laugh and cry themselves hoarse and not a person around them bats an eyelid? Continue reading “Sporting Moments Number 2304, Johnny Sexton Drop Goal or Why We Watch Sport” →

My First Two Reads of 2018: Autumn and Midwinter Break

Lucky me, and didn’t I pick well. I’m determined to read more in 2018, and I’ve made a running start. Tús maith and all that…

Autumn by Ali Smith

This is a moving, compassionate and brilliant work. Oblique at time in its writing but very much worth sticking with. It’s set in current-day UK and while it refers to BREXIT and the issues of racism and nationalism appear, it’s not a BREXIT novel at all (don’t believe the press hype), it’s about the deep and life-long friendship between Elisabeth, (from child to adult) and Daniel (a neighbouring gay older man). Continue reading “My First Two Reads of 2018: Autumn and Midwinter Break” →

Sport in Fiction Part 1: A Natural by Ross Raisin

There was something of homework about this novel. I read it soon after A Scandal by Fredrik Backman, as I wanted to see how current novelists are approaching sport as the backdrop to fiction. Seeing as how my own novel, The First Sunday in September, to be published by Mercier Press in August, attempts just that. Continue reading “Sport in Fiction Part 1: A Natural by Ross Raisin” →

Notes on Conversations With Friends after Donald Barthelme’s Concerning The Bodyguard

Was the reader taken aback by his emotional response to Conversations With Friends? Why was the reader so taken aback? Was it because he wasn’t expecting to fully inhabit Frances, the book’s protagonist? Especially given the first person point-of-view throughout? And was that because she is a twenty-one year old woman and he is a fifty-six year old man? Continue reading “Notes on Conversations With Friends after Donald Barthelme’s Concerning The Bodyguard” →

The Sad Lot of The Writer

Inner Writer’s Voice (IWV): this isn’t going to be some kind of a whinge, is it?

Me: well, it is, sort of, but let me do it first before you have a go, right?

IWV (sighs, leans back, hand on big red knob (haha) like Graham Norton when someone’s in the big red chair): alright, begin.

There’s me, right? On Monday? I submits the manuscript to the editor, like, and it’s happy days–– Continue reading “The Sad Lot of The Writer” →

Tadhg Coakley

Short Writings

Category: Writing