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Whole New Ball Game and dramatizes his final years. The most radical feature of “Red or Dead” — and one that will try the patience of some readers — is the style. Peace uses short, often incomplete sentences, eschews pronouns and quotation marks, and deliberately repeats phrases and descriptions to excessive length, recalling early modernist works by Gertrude Stein, Ernest Hemingway and T.S. Eliot. Peace’s style often transcends modernist aesthetics to evoke ancient epics and medieval ballads, their repetitive formulas and lilting refrains, their stylized actions and heroic gravitas. He confesses in the final third that “football is my religion,” and the style appropriately resembles liturgical chanting, mystical incantation. For readers who simply want
David Peace turns a Liverpool manager’s life into an epic tale Book Review What Robert Coover and David Foster Wallace did for baseball and tennis, respectively, in the world of sport writing is matched, if not trounced, by what British writer David Peace has done for soccer, first with “The Damned Utd” (2006) and now with his mesmerizing “Red or Dead” ($24, Melville). This is an epic treatment of the career of Bill Shankly, who from 1959 to 1974 led the previously mediocre Liverpool Football Club to a series of triumphs. The first two-thirds of the book is a clipped account of every game the team played during those 15 seasons, complete with stats and attendance figures. The final third begins with his unexpected decision to retire
the straight story, there are a couple dozen books about Shankly to choose from. But “with artistry and craft, with bravery and with strength,” Peace set out to ennoble Shankly’s career into a postmodern epic. Goal! After Shankly retires, it becomes clear that the qualities that drove Shankly and his team to the top make it difficult to live a fulfilling life. Shankly’s wife and team members are little more than names, his daughters are always offstage, and he has nothing to fall back on after he leaves the game. Shankly thinks of football in terms of salvation and redemption, and compares the elusive Football Association Cup to the Holy Grail. T hese mora l qua nda r ies, like those in “The Odyssey” and “The Aeneid,” only enrich Peace’s ambitious novel. As both postmodern epic and ultimate sports novel, “Red or Dead” is a winner.
Israel Violence Moves Production of ‘Tyrant’
Author Berger Dies at 89
The Library of Congress announced on Tuesday it will honor Billy Joel with its Gershwin Prize for Popular Song in November. The Gershwin Prize honors a living artist’s life-
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Production of FX’s series “Tyrant” recently relocated from Tel Aviv, Israel, to Istanbul, showrunner Howard Gordon said Monday, saying that the violence in the city “was not conducive to shooting.” FX says the remaining two episodes of the show, about the son of a dictator in a fictional Mideast country, will be shot in Turkey. (AP)
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Thomas Berger, the novelist who reimagined the American West in “Little Big Man,” has died at age 89. One of the last major authors to have served in World War II, Berger wrote more than 20 books, including the “Rinehart” series and “The Feud,” about a 1930s Midwest community. (AP)
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Citing Racism, Tribe Cancels Nugent Show
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The Coeur d’Alene Tribe on Monday said that it is canceling an Aug. 4 Ted Nugent concert at its casino in Worley, Idaho, because of the rocker’s “racist and hate-filled remarks.” The tribe did not detail which of Nugent’s specific views it opposes. (AP)
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