Research Catalog

Making the team : the cultural work of baseball fiction

Title
Making the team : the cultural work of baseball fiction / Timothy Morris.
Author
Morris, Timothy, 1959-
Publication
Urbana : University of Illinois Press, [1997], ©1997.

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StatusFormatAccessCall NumberItem Location
TextRequest in advance PS374.B37 M35 1997Off-site

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Details

Description
xii, 190 pages; 24 cm.
Summary
  • Timothy Morris examines the cultural implications of baseball novels, focusing on four themes - assimilation, heterosexuality, language, and meritocracy - from among many possibilities "because they are particularly problematic issues for America and Americanists in the mid-1990s.".
  • While Making the Team deals with canonical works such as The Natural and Bang the Drum Slowly, it devotes equal attention to juvenile novels by John Tunis (The Kid from Tomkinsville, Young Razzle) and others. Throughout, Morris considers how the ideals of manliness, courage, competitiveness, athleticism, whiteness, and standard English - of "Americanness" in its many facets - have been embodied in fictional characters for readers of different ages and in different eras.
  • He concludes with a chapter that asks, "What does it mean to be 'literary'?" What distinguishes "high art" from a baseball novel, or a mystery, or a romance novel, or pornography? Making the Team suggests that drawing the line may be a more vital concern - not just for scholars, but for Americans at large - than anything critics have argued about for a very long time.
Series Statement
Sport and society
Uniform Title
Sport and society.
Subjects
Bibliography (note)
  • Includes bibliographical references (p. [181]-186) and index.
Contents
Everybody wants to play for the Yankees -- "I do not mean fairy love" -- "I was in America and my job was to speak English" -- Hitting the bell curve -- But is it literature?
ISBN
  • 0252022947 (alk. paper)
  • 0252065972 (pbk. : alk. paper)
LCCN
96010131
OCLC
  • 34676288
  • ocm34676288
Owning Institutions
Columbia University Libraries