How Soccer Explains the World

Review: Franklin Foer, How Soccer Explains the World: An Unlikely Theory of Globalization (Harper Perennial, 2004).

I enjoyed this book, probably because, like Foer, I like soccer. I learned something new about world soccerdom in each chapter. The title of the book, however, is a bit overstated. Since each chapter is related to the others only in the largest thematic ways, Foer fails to really present any kind of "theory" of globalization - in other words, the book lacks a central thesis. What he offers instead is a series of pastiches illuminating the impact of globalization upon soccer, and even to some extent the impact of soccer on globalization. The book probably succeeds more in provoking thought about globalization than in making any real explanations. I definitely think soccer proved a good choice for exploring the impact of globalization at the local level in a variety of locales. Since he focuses on club soccer more than international soccer, he can zoom in on the most local of rivalries and see how they have been changed by progress of globalization. Not all the chapters do this as well as some, however.

I was particaulrly intrigued by the inter-play between local (or national) rivalries/group identification within a global culture. One assumes that the world's sport operates simlarly wherever one might go. This might be true on the pitch, although we are all familiar with the different styles of soccer found in the various locales of world soccer. What we find, though, is that the cultural, economic, and political background of each locale affects the nature of the soccer in each locale. What drives a local rivalry in Glasgow, and how the clubs themselves treat it, is not even the same as close as London. Yet, there are some more global aspects to be found in a wider context, such as anti-semitism (although there is little of this outside Europe, so again we see the regional variation with a global culture). Likewise, when powerful economic or political forces get involved in football, the very nature of the game in that region can be affected, whether we are talking about the Brazilian diaspora or Italian catenaccio. And of course, soccer itself can play a political role, as was seen in the chapters on Serbia and Iran.

For me, this book followed nicely on Nick Hornby's Fever Pitch, whose insights into English hooliganism meshed well with several of Foer's chapters. As an insightful glimpse into the world of football, the book succeeded masterfully. As a sustained argument about globalization, however, it falls a little flat. This book essentially leaves it to the reader to draw some significant conclusions from these 10 case studies. It really demands deeper discussion than I can muster up here by myself. The publisher even provides a series of questions to provoke further discussion, many of which I would love to discuss with someone in the know.

RPC

Fever Pitch

Review: Nick Hornby, Fever Pitch (New York: Riverhead Books, 1992).

This book held the double attraction of being a football fan's memoir, and being specifically the memoir of an ARSENAL fan. Ever since I discovered club football, I have been an Arsenal fan, and while I cannot claim to be as fanatical as Hornby, I too find that I cannot relinquish my support of the Gunners.

I have to agree with the many blurbs I have read about this book that it is "a small classic", at least in the genre of sports memoirs, even though it is written by a fan, not a player. In many ways, the perspective of the fan makes it worth reading more, because Hornby uses the exploration of his Arsenal obsession as a window into more serious issues of football and life. His insights into the hooliganism of the 70s and 80s, culminating in the Hillsborough disaster, were interesting and enlightening. His explorations of his development as a person, through the experience, at the same time communal and individual, of football spectating were especially intriguing. One of my own personal theories of explanation for many of the problems of our modern world come down to our collective and personal immaturities, and I think Hornby's book sheds some light on this — it is an explanation of his own maturation process as seen through his obsession. Even though he does some serious maturing in both his personal life and his sporting life, in the end he still remains somewhat immature in his inability to relinquish his obsession, forcing even his closest friends to adapt their lives to his obsession. I would be hypocritical to cast this as too great failing, however, seeing how I suffer from the same, albeit in a much smaller degree since I may never see Arsenal play live in my lifetime, immaturity.

The book also gave me the opportunity to reflect on my own football obsession. For Hornby, it was his visit to Arsenal’s match against Stoke City that ignited his fire for football and Arsenal. For me, it was the 1990 World Cup, which I watched on the Spanish channel, which. I had played little league soccer, but like so many American youths, that hardly had an effect on me after I stopped playing. My personal interests in the world beyond America, the same interest which had also made me a bicycle racing fan starting with the 1987 Tour de France, hit head on with the spectacle of Italia ’90. This was all in the pre-Internet days of globalization, so my only chance to delve further into the world of international soccer was to find a trendy bookstore which carried European soccer magazines – not so easy in Phoenix, Arizona. I would try to guess when the next issue would be put on the shelf, usually guessing wrong once or twice in my enthusiasm. I read every word of those issues, most more than once, but what I liked most were the league tables in the back of the issue – which of course were hopelessly outdated by the time they got to me. It just so happened that Arsenal won the 1990-91 English First Division title, and that is probably how I became an Arsenal fan. I was also attracted to Barcelona, Milan, Ajax, and others (I figured I should have a favorite club in each country), particularly those clubs which had players from the countries I had seen on Spanish television. Somehow, the Arsenal fixation stuck. Not being English, and thus having no local club (I loved Hornby’s account of his experience watching Arsenal play at his “home” club, Reading), I was free to choose any club to support. I think the idea of a club whose name wasn’t particularly associated with a city (like Liverpool, or Manchester United, or Newcastle – boring!), also appealed to me for some reason. I was fortunate in my choice, I guess, since Arsenal have been one of the premier teams of the Premiership in the almost two decades I have been following them. I haven’t had to experience such things as relegation (OK, no Arsenal fan has had to experience that since 1913), fighting to avoid relegation, or floundering in mid-table mediocrity for years on end. I couldn’t have known that when I glommed on to them in 1991, though. I appreciated the opportunity that Hornby offered me to reflect on my own fanhood and maturity.

RPC

Blogging

OK. I have learned how difficult it can be to be a consistent blogger. I have been reading lots of stuff, although I have not made much progress on my Odyssey - Gilgamesh stares at me from my bookshelf every day - but I haven't had the inclination (the excuse of 'no time' is always a little lame, since we always have time for what is really important to us) to write about what I have been reading. That takes more mental energy than I am often willing to muster up. Sometimes, if we've read the same book, I have a good conversation with my wife about some of the things I've read, but I read a lot of stuff she doesn't, and while I could have a good conversation with another intellectual about the book, I don't know anyone else reading the same stuff or who has the time to try. As I near mid-life, I am finding a reading of Dante particularly relevant, and I've been able to discuss it a little with a colleague at work, but neither of has enough time to do it justice. Anyway, I suppose one of my New Years' Resolutions will be blogging more consistently.

RPC

Speculative Fiction

I have been reading a fair bit of fantasy and science fiction lately, something that I have generally avoided for many years. It's not that "speculative fiction" is not interesting to me, but rather that I question its quality and such a use of my time. The books that I have been reading have been helping me to think about the nature of "literature." I'm not trained in literary criticism at all, so I really struggle to differentiate real literature - what I consider to be things worth reading because they hold some value for the reader besides just passing the time in an entertaining way - from what I call "fluff fiction" - the literary equivalent of most popular television (only it takes longer to get through a book than a TV episode).

I think most people would agree that Tolkien's Lord of the Rings series can be classified as literature, and I would even go so far as to classify it as a modern classic. It is a rich text, full of potential meaning and interpretation. If there is any book that could be held up as a standard by which to judge other speculative fiction, Tolkien may just be it, and indeed much fantasy literature has been little more than pale attempts at recreating Tolkien in their own (lesser) minds. This is the kind of fantasy fiction that I am not interested in. So, I have tried to focus my latest reading on some of the giants of modern speculative fiction - authors that seem to get a good amount of praise as authors by people who at least claim to be in a position to know such things.

The thing about Tolkien, despite the fact that he took it so seriously himself, is that the fantasy world in which his stories are set are not the real point, at least not for his readers. I read the books not to gaze into Tolkien's imagination as he describes a different world peopled by different sorts of beings, but rather as a tale of heroic goodness in the face of great evil - i.e. the story is about Frodo, not Middle Earth or even the Ring. His sources of inspiration (Beowulf, Arthurian legend, Norse mythology, etc.) are similar: the point of Beowulf is not to enter a world wherein such a monster as Grendel lives, but rather to recall the deeds of the heroic human Beowulf. By pondering Beowulf's deeds and fate, we should be reflecting on our own. The same is true for Frodo, or Samwise, or even Aragorn.

So, how do my recent forays into speculative fiction measure up?

• Philip K. Dick, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
• Neal Stephenson, Snow Crash
• Ursula K. Le Guin, A Fisherman of the Inland Sea
• Ursula K. Le Guin, A Wizard of Earthsea
• Gene Wolfe, The Knight

I should say, first of all, that I enjoyed each of these books. I would say, however, that the least "literary" of the books, even though it was perhaps the most entertaining read of the bunch, was the Stephenson book. Not only was I a bit put off by the excessive language in the book, but I have also never been a real big fan of near-future cyberpunk kind of settings. Nevertheless, Snow Crash presented a futuristic, fallen-apart, America which was interesting, and accessible, enough for me to actually enjoy reading about. The main character, Hiro Protagonist, was the kind of heroic protagonist, a sword-fighting, motorcycle-riding, computer programmer, that I could connect with. This was a book that relied heavily upon its presentation of the author's vision of the world of the near future, introduced the reader to some intriguing ideas which had been percolating in the author's mind, but that contained only moderate explorations of the characters' development within the storyline. Basically, it was a fun adventure in a weird setting - the makings of good fluff fiction. However, the ideas that Stephenson plays around with are enough to remove this from the same shelf as the fluffiest fiction out there: What is the nature of language and communication? How is our increasingly computerized world affecting our use and understanding of language at the most basic levels? What is the true power of language, both in reception and production? Even, how has language use and meaning evolved over the centuries, going back to ancient Sumeria? So, it was not a total waste - not just "empty calories" as it were.

I'm going to lump Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? and A Fisherman of the Inland Sea in essentially the same category. Both are science fiction - the first a novel, the latter a collection of stories, the last three of which are set in the same imaginative future. Both deal with the social implications of potential future technology. Dick wonders about the relationship between humans and androids which have become practically human themselves. In other words, what does it mean to be a human, or even 'alive' for that matter? I'm probably not really doing justice to this book, which I found quite thought-provoking, for the sake of time. Le Guin's three main stories in the collection deal with the ramifications of instantaneous travel, as opposed to what she calls Nearly As Fast As Light travel. The latter, of course, drawing upon relativity theory, has terrible social consequences, since the time it takes for the traveler to a distant planet is not the same as for those who remain stationary relative to the traveler. Le Guin posits some potential quirks associated with the development of what she calls "churten" technology - instantaneous space travel - although I think for her the opportunity to exercise her imagination in describing different cultures on different planets is at least as important as anything else, perhaps making this work less significant as science fiction and moving it more towards "literature" generally. She should be applauded, however, for considering the real implications of space travel, which are so conveniently over-rided or ignored in other imaginative universes (Star Wars or Star Trek, for example).

Le Guin's other book here held a greater potential trap for the fantasy writer, but she steered well clear of it. This is the first book in what is known as the Earthsea Cycle. She has imagined a new world which requires some description and explanation. It would be easy for her to be sucked into the kind of "world-building" approach I so fear from fantasy literature. The world she imagines is a world of archipelagos - no huge continents, just lots of small, medium and large landmasses (islands) scattered about. Each island has the potential for her to imagine a new and different people/culture, which she does, in fact. Yet, the background world in which she sets her story always remains in the background - it plays its proper role without ever dominating the story, which is always front and center. This is not a fantasy world for role-players that must be completely fleshed out to allow GMs to run their campaigns. The focus is on the story (and it is a good one), and on the development of the protagonist. Her main character is a young man who will become one of the greatest wizards of his world. Not only do we get the standard boy-to-man plot, but we also get the traditional fantasy quest plot, and yet there is nothing too traditional or stale about this plot-line. Indeed, the story is woven together so tightly it draws the reader in and won't let them back out until it is over. Now there is probably some classic literature out there which does both these plots better, or in richer fashion, (Who will ever improve on the quest plot which is the heart of Homer's Odyssey, for example?) but even they may not be written in such a fluid and attractive way.

Finally, Gene Wolfe's The Knight: This is a hard one to judge. I have noticed that this seems to be one of those love it or hate it kind of books. Some readers toss it aside in disgust after reading some or even all of it; others rave about it as one of the best books ever. One way that I could sympathize with the naysayers is in the confusion that Wolfe creates in his presentation. The story jumps forward sometimes without any warning, taking the reader a page or two to get their bearings back and figure out how we have moved ahead so far from the previous chapter. This is done sometimes through the main characters' forays into different worlds which run on different time scales. I wasn't bothered too much by the constant references to things the narrator (the first person main character) knows will happen in the future between the current point in the story and the author's own place and time; however, there are often rather oblique references made to people or places which are obviously meant to be obscure, but they only produce some confusion. Despite all this disorientation, the book moves along at a rather swift pace and because of that, the overall storyline is easy enough to follow. Some commentators have praised Wolfe for what he has done in taking stock characters and situations from traditional fantasy literature (going back at least to Arthurian legend) and putting a fresh spin on them. I can see some of that, and if I took the time I could probably identify more, especially if I was more familiar with those traditional figures of the genre. So, clearly, the book cannot be simply tossed aside as fluff fiction, and those who did not appreciate it were probably not real connoisseurs of literature. Having said that, though, I remain skeptical of how good this might be as literature. Granted, he doesn't overdo the world description, allowing it to take over the story, which is good and well done considering the multi-tiered world he is imagining, which is a bit foreign to us. Also granted, the story focuses on the character development of the protagonist. Like Le Guin's wizard above, Abel, the narrator and protagonist, is growing from boy to man and on a major quest (in more ways than one). Still, I don't know how much of the feeling of confusion comes from me just not reading carefully enough and how much just isn't even there to find no matter how hard I look or how many times I read it. How much would this book repay a re-reading? A good question. I think I could definitely benefit from some good discussion about this book with someone who was more of an expert in literary criticism or at least more experience in reading and thinking about speculative fiction.