Sports in Fiction | Episode 48

Today’s podcast is part of a series to accompany my current serialized novel, An Interpreter in Vienna, as we investigate the truth in fiction. You can also listen to the podcast via Apple or Spotify or in the Substack app. As always, feel free to share any of your work related to the conversation.

I’m in Istria for two weeks with very spotty wifi, so apologies for not getting back to your comments sooner. I’ll get there eventually!

Thank you!

Fenway Park, Boston, Photo by Taylor Rooney on Unsplash

A full AI-created transcript can be accessed on the desktop version.

Keywords:

• Sport as part of Everyday Life

  • Both as action, something we do or your character does

  • And as culture: supporting teams, iconic athletes, Olympics & nationalism, sport subcultures, songs, designs, pastimes & social activities

• Or the story itself may be about a professional or iconic athlete

• Theatrics of sport / spectacle

• America: baseball

• Austria: skiing

• Sports in literature

Considerations for your work:

• What are the dominant sports of the culture of the setting of your story? In what ways do they weave themselves into everyday life? What kinds of stories do they tell?

• Can you include sport as metaphor or symbol for something your character is going through? How might the discussion of or observation of a sport make this clearer for the reader and allow for individual interpretation?

• Why might an athlete-character benefit your story? Consider an everyday athlete or a more professional or iconic one.

Feel free to share your related work or recommendations in the comments.

The Culture of Everyday Life

Texts:

• Top 10 skiers

• Hector Bellerin IG profile

• On Mark Twain and Baseball (NYT)

• Sports writers (Boston Globe) / Dan Shaughnessy

• The Curse of the Bambino, Dan Shaughnessy

• Films on Baseball:

  • Field of Dreams, Moneyball, Damn Yankees, Fever Pitch, A League of Their Own 

• Graber, Ralph S. “Baseball in American Fiction.” The English Journal 56, no. 8 (1967): 1107–14. https://doi.org/10.2307/811614.

• Sunset Park, Paul Auster

• Smoke, Paul Auster and Wayne Wang

• Existentialism and Baseball: The French Philosophical Roots of Paul Auster, Thom Theobald

• Infinite Jest, David Foster Wallace – tennis

• “Roger Federer as Religious Experience” – DFW

• “David Foster Wallace’s Perfect Game” (New Yorker)

• American Pastoral, Philip Roth – high school multi-sport athlete (excerpt)

• Rabbit, Run series, John Updike – basketball  

• Death in the Afternoon, Hemingway – bullfighting

• What I talk about when I talk about Running, Haruki Murakami

• Barbarian Days: A Surfing Life, William Finnegan

• The Miracle of Castel di Sangro, Joe McGinniss – football/soccer

• Books about female inspirational athletes

• Books about female athletes who took the lead