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"A barbed and brutal knockout."
- Mark Anthony Jarman
About the author
Chris Robinson is an author, freelance writer and the Artistic Director of the Ottawa International Animation Festival. He writes the "gonzo" column "The Animation Pimp" for Animation World Magazine. His writing has also appeared in
Salon.com,
Take One,
Cinemascope,
Montage,
Stop Smiling, the
Ottawa Xpress and many international publications. His other books include
Between Genius and Utter Illiteracy: A Story of Estonian Animation,
Ottawa Senators: Great Stories from the NHL's First Dynasty, and
Unsung Heroes of Animation. Robinson lives in Ottawa with his wife, Kelly, and son, Jarvis.
Summary
Stole This from a Hockey Card is a thinking-fan's hockey book that strikes just the right note for those disillusioned by today's NHL.
Chris Robinson pushes the bounds of both hockey writing and creative non-fiction in this hard-boiled contemplation of where hockey fits into a man's life--whether he be a casual beer-league player who first embraced the game to avoid a difficult home-life, or one of the most celebrated defencemen in the history of the game.
Partly influenced by the life of legendary Montreal Canadiens defenceman Doug Harvey, Stole This from a Hockey Card probes for answers to how one of the game's greatest defencemen could also lead one of the most tragic and mysterious personal lives. The book juxtaposes these investigations with the author's own humble beginnings as a troubled youth who found escape in the cardboard identities put forth by hockey cards and by his own identity as a street-hockey hotshot. Another means of escape for both men became alcohol, a facet of hockey culture thoroughly explored by Robinson's skeptical eye. Informing everything is Robinson's scrappy-yet-meditative, harsh-yet-humorous thoughts on a game that so many Canadians love to hate, or hate to love.
Additional text
"Chris Robinson's story storms and struts, zigzags to and fro like a sharp give-and-go. Stole This From a Hockey Card is a barbed and brutal knockout."
-- Mark Anthony Jarman, author of Salvage King, Ya! and 19 Knives
