Eli Manning is like the unpromising younger brother in fairy tales who surprises his elders and takes home the gold.
Tag Archives: Sports
Eli, the Unpromising Youth of Fairy Tales
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged Eli Manning, Football, John Ruskin, King of the Golden River, Super Bowl Comments closed
Fired by Happy Valley, JoPa Is No Aeneas
Just as Rasselas questions Samuel Johnson’s Happy Valley, so do Penn State students find themselves questioning their own Happy Valley after the child abuse scandal. Coach Joe Paterno admired Aeneas, and many feel abandoned like Queen Dido.
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged Aeneid, Child Abuse, Jim Boeheim, Joe Paterno, Virgil Comments closed
Cardinals’ Victory Invokes Mythos of Spring
St. Louis’s improbable World Series victory corresponds to the mythos of comedy as described by Northrup Frye. Comedy’s improbably reversals symbolize the escape of life from the clutches of winter.
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged Anatomy of Criticism, Baseball, Northrup Frye, St. Louis Cardinals Comments closed
No Man Is an Island (Not Even Revis)
New York Jet Darrelle Revis may be single man island who can shut down any receiver who comes near, but ultimately he must acknowledge, like John Donne, that no man is an island.
Novels and Baseball Fans, Fixated on Time
As I watched the amazing day of baseball last Wednesday, I found myself thinking (being the literature nerd that I am) that the English novel was invented to do justice to reality when it got this dramatic and complex.
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged Baseball, Charles Dickens, Daniel Defoe, Henry Fielding, Lawrence Sterne, Robinson Crusoe, Tom Jones, Tristram Shandy Comments closed
Fed, Rafa, Djoker–A Sibling Drama
Federer, Nadal, and Djokovic are like the brothers in a Dostoevsky novel or a Grimm Brothers fairy tale: the two older brothers focus on each other and then the unassuming younger brother comes in and takes over.
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged Brothers Karamazov, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Grimm Brothers, Invisible Man, Novak Djokovic, Rafael Nadal, Ralph Ellison, Roger Federer, tennis Comments closed
Après Peyton, le Déluge
News that Peyton Manning may be out for part or all of the upcoming football season puts me in mind of the future of the Geats after Beowulf’s death.
High Strung, Ready to Explode
Abraham Verghese uses the tightly strung rackets of Swedish tennis great Bjorn Borg as a metaphor for the state of his marriage, pushed to the breaking point by his workaholism.
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged Abraham Verghese, Bjorn Borg, tennis, Tennis Partner Comments closed
