Sweet Tea, Barbecue, and Bodychecks
Let me preface this by saying that I am not a William Faulkner “fan”. I appreciate the body of his work, I admire the beauty of his work and I do like his work. But I don’t geek out over the guy like I geek out over, say, Les Dorscheid‘s Battletech and Shadowrun artwork (which is some of the most amazing artwork I have ever seen–it breaks my heart that no Loren Coleman novel ever got a Dorscheid cover, even though my pet project got some).
HOWEVER.
This gem from the Sports Illustrated archives is possibly the best “my first game” story that I have ever read, and it’s something that I plan to show to anyone who ever asks me why I like hockey:
An Innocent At Rinkside – Sports Illustrated, 24 January 1955
Hurricanes take on the Capitals tonight at the RBC. Puck drops at 7:00 PM. Go Canes.
(Man, I wish I could write like that)
Previous 
Next 
Categories
Tag Cloud
Blog RSS
Comments RSS
Last 50 Posts
Back
Void 
Life 
Earth 
Wind 
Water 
Fire
Excellent find!
As often as hockey fans are referred to as idiots, this is a great rebuttal.
^ Gets it.
Personally, I’ve always found Faulkner to be unreadable. His passion for using overly descriptive sentences containing 100 or more words drives me crazy. I get distracted by the length of the sentences and end up playing a game with word count. At that point, his storytelling takes a back seat.
Once, when I was in my twenties, a girl dangled sex in front of me to get me to read “As I Lay Dying”. For the unbearable agony I had to endure, the sex wasn’t worth it.
Things like this remind me of that famous story about Kurt Vonnegut at a horse race. He masterfully wrote what would have taken Faulkner 5000 words with the simple seven word account: “The horse jumped over the fucking fence”