Life is Not a Game

I have an essay circulating right now, "Life is not a Game: Richard Ford's Pragmatism," in which I make the argument, through Ford's fiction, that life, indeed, is not a game, although that metaphor is powerful and popular, and, most importantly, that we are easily seduced by that metaphor.

I saw the other night at B&N that Johnny Damon's autobiography is titled something like "having fun in the game of life." And i see that there is a new book out called Poker as Life: 101 Lessons from the World's Greatest Game, a title that connects up my Ford paper with my Poker paper, also circulating at this time. I might do well to beef up the early part of the paper with an emphasis on the cultural uses of this metaphor. I suspect I can find many more without too much work. It seems to me that I heard something about this on the radio the other day--oh wait, it was tonight, perhaps. Garisson Keiler reading Bruce Springsteen's "Glory Days"--an odd sounding rendition to say the least, but right on target. http://www.xs4all.nl/~maroen/engels/lyrics/gloryday.htm

I also started to see james McKean's Home Stand: Growing Up in Sport getting a lot of attention. That memoir definitely looks like a must read. maybe I should put it on an Amazon list or something. Or maybe I should just buy the darn thing. I probably need to read it to help me finish my "mystory" project, which could be titled "Growing Up in Sport."