Body Language

For Body Language: Writers on Sport, cultural critic Gerald Early has gathered a collection of thirteen writers who offer personal reflections on this public obsession: from the pool hustler to the closet baseball fan; from late-night rodeo on cable TV to tennis games on the weathered fields of Illinois; from the aging basketball player to the anxious young girl determining whether to strike out the boy who is her friend. But beyond fan or competitor or social commentator, these writers are storytellers, and it is in the personal stories these essays tell—poignant, funny, extreme, illuminating—that we begin to identify the themes that galvanize both sport and literature: conflict and sacrifice, ritual and passion, coming-of-age and heroism.