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Interviews | June 19, 2009

Dave: IMG Jim Lynch Makes Landscape Art... Out of Text



jimlynchIf Carl Hiaasen set one of his novels on a residential stretch of boundary line between British Columbia and Washington, or if Richard Russo's characters had relatives in the Pacific Northwest, the result might be something like Jim Lynch's Border Songs. Continue »
  1. $18.16 Sale Hardcover add to wish list

    Border Songs

    Jim Lynch

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1 Burnside Sports and Fitness- Basketball General


Black Planet: Facing Race During an NBA Season

by David Shields

Synopses & Reviews

Review:

"Black Planet [is] a risky and brilliant book. . . . It compares favorably to Frederick Exley's classic A Fan's Notes. It is an emotional journey into Jock Culture's heart of darkness. . . . Shields [is] willing to write himself naked about the hungers and envies that move across the grandstand like the wave."        
-Robert Lipsyte, The New York Times

Review:

"In Black Planet, David Shields honestly (and ironically) uses himself as a test subject to peel away the layers of personal need, sexual longing, cultural sedimentation, alienation, and blatant prejudice that make even a season of the Seattle SuperSonics a disturbing microcosm of America's 300-year-old Race War. You don't need to be a sports fan to experience this book as a rare, troubling map of the seldom charted, subterranean regions of the souls of white folks."        
-Charles Johnson

Review:

"Black Planet is a funny, wickedly observant, highly intelligent book about Us and Them--I and Thou, black and white, male and female, parent and child,
spectator and star."        
-Jonathan Raban

Review:

"Black Planet offers us a sometimes moving, often funny, and always absorbing account of a season in pro basketball--in which we learn much about one team but even more about those volatile forces, including racism, greed, vanity, and ignorance, that make the NBA such a compelling metaphor for American culture today."        
-Arnold Rampersad

Review:

"Black Planet is an extraordinary, unique, and utterly fascinating memoir/book. With unblinking honesty and unabashed affection for his subject, Shields makes a real contribution to the national non-discourse on race."
-Bob Shacochis

Review:

"A compulsively readable book. David Shields, as no writer before him, takes you into the obsessive mind of a sports addict: its shames and glories, over-identifications, repetitions, rationalizations, wonderments, and stoical detachment. I recognize myself only too well."         
-Phillip Lopate

Review:

"Black Planet says it's about basketball when it's actually that rare thing, an honest love song, White Man Loves Black Athlete--you know, the tune with the refrain, 'Dear NBA Genie, make me hip, angry, and always, always in control.' A song that's frank, embarrassing, and killingly funny."        
-Jay Cantor

Synopsis:

A timely and provocative look at racial attitudes and perceptions as chronicled by a critically acclaimed author and avid basketball fan during his season-long close observation of a single NBA team.

About the Author

David Shields' previous books are Remote, Dead Languages, A Handbook for Drowning and Heroes.

Product Details

ISBN:
9780609604526
Subtitle:
Facing Race During an NBA Season
Author:
Shields, David
Publisher:
Random House
Location:
New York :
Subject:
American
Subject:
United states
Subject:
Basketball
Subject:
Discrimination & Racism
Subject:
Race relations
Subject:
Basketball - Professional
Subject:
Discrimination in sports
Subject:
United States Race relations.
Subject:
Basketball fans -- United States -- Social conditions.
Subject:
Basketball fans
Subject:
African American basketball players
Edition Number:
1st ed.
Publication Date:
November 1999
Binding:
Trade Cloth
Language:
English
Illustrations:
Y
Pages:
223
Dimensions:
8.43x5.75x.76 in. .80 lbs.

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