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This book delivers a powerful argument for the centrality of sport in culture, exploring how fine sports writing bestows meaning upon the human world. Literary Sports Journalism: Beyond the Boundaries explores the multiple and fertile interconnections between sports writing and mainstream creative writing, including the works of Ernest Hemingway, Hunter S. Thompson, Joyce Carol Oates and Martin Amis. In so doing, it delivers a reappraisal of a number of key writers. As such, the book aims to unite journalism studies with both literary analysis and philosophy. At root it is an inquiry into aesthetics: an exploration of the beauty of words, the beauty (and ugliness) of sport, and the distinctive beauty that arises when words are used to capture sport. Tom Bradshaw argues that it is the writing around sport rather than about sport that is often the most profound, perceptive, and beautiful, and which tells us much about what it is to be human.
List of contents
Chapter 1. Introduction.- Chapter 2. Drafting New Worlds - Aesthetics and Meaning.- Chapter 3. Still Searching for Heroes.- Chapter 4. The American Century.- Chapter 5. Doubles Partners: Sports Writing and Mainstream Fiction.- Chapter 6. Martin Amis: A Writer of All the Talents.- Chapter 7. Ernest Hemingway and Deaths in the Afternoon.- Chapter 8. Downstage Voices: The New Journalism and Sport.- Chapter 9. Hey Gonzo! Hunter S. Thompson, the Outlaw Sportswriter.- Chapter 10. A Writer's Self-Indulgence? Participatory Sports Journalism.- Chapter 11. Boxing - Fight or Write.- Chapter 12. Simon Barnes, Triviality and the Suspension of Disbelief.
About the author
Tom Bradshaw is an academic and journalist, based in Cheltenham, UK, but working internationally. As an award-winning sports journalist, he has reported across the globe, including spells in Japan and France. His journalism has appeared in a wide range of publications, including The Times (London), Guardian/Observer and Times Literary Supplement. He appears regularly on BBC radio. Tom is a passionate advocate of press freedom and is joint editor of Ethical Space: The International Journal of Communication Ethics. He has worked as a consultant to the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office on media ethics issues abroad.
Summary
This book delivers a powerful argument for the centrality of sport in culture, exploring how fine sports writing bestows meaning upon the human world. Literary Sports Journalism: Beyond the Boundaries explores the multiple and fertile interconnections between sports writing and mainstream creative writing, including the works of Ernest Hemingway, Hunter S. Thompson, Joyce Carol Oates and Martin Amis. In so doing, it delivers a reappraisal of a number of key writers. As such, the book aims to unite journalism studies with both literary analysis and philosophy. At root it is an inquiry into aesthetics: an exploration of the beauty of words, the beauty (and ugliness) of sport, and the distinctive beauty that arises when words are used to capture sport. Tom Bradshaw argues that it is the writing around sport rather than about sport that is often the most profound, perceptive, and beautiful, and which tells us much about what it is to be human.
