Seeking the perfect game : baseball in American literature
Author(s)
Bibliographic Information
Seeking the perfect game : baseball in American literature
(Contributions to the study of popular culture, no. 24)
Greenwood Press, 1989
Available at 39 libraries
  Aomori
  Iwate
  Miyagi
  Akita
  Yamagata
  Fukushima
  Ibaraki
  Tochigi
  Gunma
  Saitama
  Chiba
  Tokyo
  Kanagawa
  Niigata
  Toyama
  Ishikawa
  Fukui
  Yamanashi
  Nagano
  Gifu
  Shizuoka
  Aichi
  Mie
  Shiga
  Kyoto
  Osaka
  Hyogo
  Nara
  Wakayama
  Tottori
  Shimane
  Okayama
  Hiroshima
  Yamaguchi
  Tokushima
  Kagawa
  Ehime
  Kochi
  Fukuoka
  Saga
  Nagasaki
  Kumamoto
  Oita
  Miyazaki
  Kagoshima
  Okinawa
  Korea
  China
  Thailand
  United Kingdom
  Germany
  Switzerland
  France
  Belgium
  Netherlands
  Sweden
  Norway
  United States of America
Note
Bibliography: p. [149]-159
Includes index
Description and Table of Contents
Description
In this comprehensive study of baseball in American literature, Candelaria looks primarily at novels to explore how writers have used this quintessential American symbol and to examine what the metaphors and images of the fictional universe of baseball have to tell us about ourselves. Her analysis includes both juvenile and adult sports fiction and other types of literary works that draw significantly on baseball imagery. Candelaria offers a probing analysis of the progression from allegory and romanticism in the earliest baseball fiction to the realism, irony, and solipsism of contemporary narrative.
Candelaria examines the origins and folklore of baseball, the development of its mythic status as the national game or pastime, as well as early literary treatments. Baseball soon emerged as a romantic and heroic metaphor in juvenile and pulp fiction and as a vehicle for ironic comedy in the work of Ring Lardner and other writers of the early decades of the twentieth century. Allusions to baseball in works by such literary masters as Mark Twain, Sinclair Lewis, and Ernest Hemingway emphasize the symbolic dimensions of the game, and its mythic possibilities have been fully exploited by more recent writers, notably Bernard Malamud in The Natural and Philip Roth in The Great American Novel. Increasingly complex levels of abstraction are characteristic of the baseball fiction of Philip Roth, Mark Harris, Jay Neugeboren, John Graham Alexander, and Robert Coover. Candelaria offers a probing analysis of the progression from allegory and romanticism in the earliest baseball fiction to the realism, irony, and solipsism of contemporary narratives. A stimulating work of literary and cultural criticism, this book will appeal to students and scholars of American literature, popular culture, American studies, and physical education, as well as to baseball enthusiasts.
Table of Contents
Introduction Baseball from Ritual to Fiction Emergence of a Metaphor Literary Fungoes Educing the Myth Establishing the Metonym Baseball Fiction, the Perfect Game Bibliography Index
by "Nielsen BookData"