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Toward the Sun: The Collected Sports Stories of Kent Nelson |
List Price: $20.00
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Reviews |
Description:
There are no last-minute touchdowns or cheering crowds in these 13 exquisitely crafted tales about men, women, and sports; Kent Nelson is far too intelligent and thoughtful a writer for prefab heroics. Instead, his interest lies in sports as obsession, as the crucible that both shapes and deforms his characters' lives. "Projections" is a series of snapshots, capturing a hockey player's career in brief chronological tableaux of violence, anger, and helplessness. In "Alton's Keeper," a Charleston real-estate agent finds that squash breaks down all the barriers of his background and breeding: "I wished for a new world undiscovered, where property was not bought and sold or spoken for, where no houses stood, and power was a word with no meaning." The grief-stricken son of "A False Encounter" traces his father's suicide back to a single defining moment, when he got up from a knockout punch to face certain defeat. And then there is the extraordinary title story, in which a legendary athlete runs his way back into a pure animal state. "Some say to cage an animal destroys its essence.... What kind of animal has it become when it knows it will be fed at intervals, when it is cared for, when it cannot hunt and run free?" his girlfriend wonders, as she tries to urge him toward some form of domesticated life. As his protagonists run, climb, or ski their way into increasingly rarefied states, Nelson lays bare their deepest hopes and fears in spare, moving language that evokes Richard Ford or Jim Harrison. On the basis of these stories alone, Kent Nelson is a name more readers should know. --Mary Park
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