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Why Sports Should Be Interesting to Artists

I just read a very nice article on The New Yorker website detailing why sports can / should be considered interesting by artists. The article is a mail correspondence between two writers, Paul Auster and J. M. Coetzee.

Baseball image by Saul Steinberg

Sports is a subject I’ve considered at length– many intellectual minds detest watching professional athletics while a smaller few are diehard fans.

This quotation makes the argument I’ve always had in a more insightful way than I could express it:

“In my own case, the sports I am interested in and watch regularly are the ones I played as a boy. One knows and understands the game intimately, and therefore one can appreciate the prowess, the often-dazzling skills, of professionals. …I tend to focus on and follow specific teams. One’s involvement becomes deeper when each player is a familiar figure, a known quantity, and this familiarity increases one’s capacity to endure boredom, all those dreary moments when nothing much of anything is happening.

There is no question that games have a strong narrative component. We follow the twists and turns of the combat in order to learn the final outcome.”

“It is moments of grace (grace: what a complex word!) that I respond to, moments or movements (another interesting word) that cannot be the issue of rational planning but seem to come down as a kind of blessing from on high upon the mortal players, moments when everything goes right, everything clicks into place, when the lookers-on don’t even want to applaud, just to give silent thanks that they were there as witnesses.

…If I look into my own heart and ask why, in the twilight of my days, I am still—sometimes—prepared to spend hours watching cricket on television, I must report that, however absurdly, however wistfully, I continue to look out for moments of heroism, moments of nobility. In other words, the basis of my interest is ethical rather than aesthetic.”

You can read the rest of the article here.

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