Puck Lit Project Review #6: Cold-Cocked: On Hockey by Lorna Jackson

Plot Summary: This is another non-fiction book so there’s no plot per se, but basically it is the author’s chronicle of rediscovering hockey later in life and following the Vancouver Canucks through the 2002-2003 and 2003-2004 seasons. There’s also a little bit of her personal biography thrown in: stories about her attempts to learn more about her father’s service in World War II, her efforts at recovering from a long-term knee injury, and her sheep farm.

Genre: Non-Fiction, Reflections on Hockey

Hockey Content: Obviously, there is a lot in this one about the Canucks and the players who were with the team at the time the book was being written, with Markus Naslund, Ed Jovanovski, Trevor Linden, and Todd Bertuzzi (this was the season of the Steve Moore incident) as the main players. Mostly, we get Jackson’s observations on the Canucks’ games as well as their fans and players. For Sens fans, new Sens/former Canucks Jarkko Ruutu and Alex Auld figure in briefly. There are thoughts on Dany Heatley, and there’s a chapter in which Alfie gives birth to quadruplets!

Okay, it’s a sheep named Alfie. Had you wondering for a second though, didn’t I?

Choice Quotation: “Right before puck drop, Hockey Night in Canada’s Ron MacLean … goes wistful and chokes out Canadian hockey’s season-ending uber-cliché: We all dream about playing in the NHL, we all dream about playing in the Stanley Cup finals. We do not. Ron is over-acting about a certain brand of boy raised in cold places where ice happens every year, everywhere. Do we all dream Ron’s dream? Most little girls don’t (Shaunavon redheads notwithstanding) and really not girls raised more rain forest than ice-covered pond. The NHL engine — media pistons pumping and spewing — is fuelled ineptly by such mythomania. It distorts our national identification with the game and lies about those who love it. And it excludes a population of fans willing to commit, to stay loyal, to spend money.”

My Thoughts: I was very happy to read this book because out of all the Canadian books that reflect on the game and what it means — a pretty huge genre, really — this is, as far as I can tell, the only one written by a woman. As much as I do enjoy reading the meditations on the game written by the men who’ve played it, I must admit that I started to feel rather annoyed and excluded the last time I read one of those “we love the game because we grew up playing on frozen ponds” things. I never played on a frozen pond, but I still love hockey, and I certainly don’t think it’s right to state that only those kids (boys) whose parents (fathers) built them backyard rinks truly understand and love the game. Women not only get left out of the myth of hockey, but Jackson is also quite right: the NHL often does a pretty terrible job of marketing to female fans (see this post at My Three Favorite Things for more on that), and it’s not like there aren’t any of us out there.

So, I think it’s about time a woman sat down and wrote a book about why she loves hockey. Cold-Cocked fills a niche I’d been wanting to see filled, and it fills it well. It’s a very good read. Jackson’s thoughts on the game and how women view it are interesting. She writes that a hockey season is like a story, which is something that’s occurred to me often as I’ve been thinking back on 2007-2008 and wondering what went wrong. We can’t possibly know what an individual game or goal is going to mean until we’ve seen all the games and all the goals. Jackson argues that women in particular read the game that way, and that we like the stories involved. We like to know the background, the context for what is happening. While I’m not totally convinced that male sports fans don’t take an interest in that sort of thing, I’m certain she’s right that women do. She interviews Trevor Linden at one point, and asks him why he thinks female fans are so loyal to him. Linden says he thinks it’s because many of them have grown up watching him play, which I think gets at what Jackson is trying to say: women sometimes become personally involved in a way that men maybe just don’t.

Connected to this is another part of the reason I think women love Trevor Linden, which is that he comes across as upstanding, smart, and gentlemanly. He’s that guy who you just know would never do you wrong. He’s like hockey’s version of Lloyd Dobler (somewhere, my friend the Doc who loves both Linden and John Cusack is nodding). And with this, we get at the other thing women enjoy about hockey that men — at least straight men — probably do not. Jackson is totally frank about her schoolgirl crush on golden-haired Markus Naslund and recounts her fantasies about some of the players (totally G-rated, okay). Not that I personally indulge in that type of thought about hockey players … not that I would ever daydream about a fun-filled afternoon playing Rock Band with Rick Nash at his house, which I might imagine being something like Sugar Mountain, with a fridge full of ice cream and cake and a cotton candy machine, and also probably a trampoline — if I imagined Rick Nash’s house at all, that is. Which I do not, and I certainly would not have such a weird fantasy about him anyway. But that is beside the point: it seems inevitable that if you put a bunch of really fit men on ice and have them perform heroic feats of hockey greatness for us, women are going to find some of them hot. It’s just a fact of life, like how guys are always going to check out the ice girls. It doesn’t make us any less knowledgeable about hockey, and it definitely doesn’t make us puck bunnies. We just see things differently, and I don’t quite get why that’s a problem for so many men. I like the fact that Jackson deals with this aspect of female fandom in her book, instead of trying to cover it up to appeal to the more “serious” (those are sarcastic quotation marks, by the way) male audience.

Rating: 4 pucks out of 5. Jackson gives a great account of seeing the game through feminine eyes. I would recommend this book certainly to my fellow female hockey bloggers, who I’m sure would enjoy it, and to any male hockey fan who wants a different perspective.

I woke up just before 3:30 this morning and watched sexy kayak dude Adam van Koeverden race to silver in the K-1 500. Van Koeverden has become a great example for me of what Jackson writes about women liking a good story, not to mention a handsome face. Before he bombed the K-1 1000, van Koeverden was pretty much just a hot kayaking machine to me. I figured he was invincible. But seeing him absolutely lose the plot in his first final, and then seeing his complete and utter disbelief at how things had turned out made me much more invested in the outcome of his second race. I don’t know if I’ve ever seen someone look so genuinely lost on television before. Adam van Koeverden: awesome and unstoppable kayak juggernaut? Good story, sure. Adam van Koeverden: struggling after an unbelievably bad performance and unsure about his ability to bounce back? Now that’s compelling. In my barely-awake state, I cheered my head off for him. This is one of Olympic moments I’ll remember for a long time.

Puck Lit Project Review #6: Scoring: The Art of Hockey by Seymour Segal (images) and Hugh Hood (text)

Plot Summary: There is no plot. It’s a collection of hockey drawings by Seymour Segal with commentary by Hugh Hood. There is also an introductory essay by Hood which tells the story of how the images in the book came to be and explores some connections between sports and sex. And oh yeah, this is billed as a collection of “erotic art” with a hockey theme.

Genre: Hockey Art, Hockeyrotica?

Hockey Content: The drawings all feature people either watching or playing hockey or wearing hockey equipment.

My Thoughts: First of all, I wouldn’t describe the art in this book as erotic at all. Scary is more like it. I can’t explain why anyone would see this art as sexual except that there is some nudity, and perhaps that’s all it takes for people to see sex? Most of the drawings have a dreamlike or nightmarish feel to them. This isn’t like the art you’ll see on the wall at the Hockey Hall of Fame (not that you would ever expect to see erotic art on the wall there — unless maybe Wayne Gretzky painted it — but you know what I mean). It’s a collection of abstract and sometimes disturbing images in which shapes shift into other shapes and nothing is quite normal. The drawings have names like “Reflection” and “A Quiet Moment” rather than “Two on One,” which would be a perfect name for a sexy hockey drawing. (After a 67’s game, I once heard an OHL player say to two girls “How about a little two on one?” On another occasion, I heard a guy try to pick up a girl using the classic “I play Junior B” as his line. Seriously, guys.)

Interestingly, Segal completed this series of drawings a few years after suffering a catastrophic head injury while playing goal. This probably explains the weird violence of the drawings as well as the presence of goalie pads in many of them.

Rating: 1 puck out of 5. I don’t care for the drawings for the most part and I don’t quite see the point. I’m no art connoisseur though.

Puck Lit Project Review #7: Midnight Hockey: All About Beer, the Boys, and the Real Canadian Game by Bill Gaston

Plot Summary: Though my plan was to read hockey fiction this summer, I enjoyed book #5, The Good Body, also by Bill Gaston, so much that I have deviated from the plan here by reading Gaston’s non-fiction account of his hockey-playing exploits. The book is an ode to hockey, specifically oldtimers hockey, which apparently involves lots of beer.

Genre: Hockeyography, Reflections on Hockey, Amateur Hockey, Humour

Hockey Content: Gaston talks about his own hockey games and deals with many other aspects of the game such as team names, the hockey smell, the similarities between hockey and yoga (which I had never thought about before, but yes, I totally see it now), and what goes on in the locker room. There is also a brief section which recounts how no less an authority than David Suzuki has concluded that the hockey player is the most highly evolved life form on the planet.

Choice Quotation: “Have you ever noticed that the Stanley Cup is shaped like a huge, godlike beer bottle?”

My Thoughts: My favourite section of the book was probably the one about locker room humour. Some of the stories in there had me laughing out loud, or at least trying to laugh silently because I was reading at work and my workplace is morgue-like in its quietness. One story involving a tray of meat stands out as possibly the funniest. The book is mostly made up of anecdotes, most of them funny, about things Gaston has witnessed or participated in during his oldtimer career.

It also serves as the author’s hockey autobiography. He relates stories from the time he spent as a playing coach in a league in France as well as his days playing for the UBC Thunderbirds (UBC shout out). Basically, it’s a collection of hockey stories and a meditation on why people play the game.

Rating: 4 pucks out of 5. Some of the stories in the book are totally ridiculous and stupid and they will make you question the sanity of everyone involved. But if you love hockey, and I assume you do, this book will make you laugh.

For instance, right now I am going through the dockets of a publishing house, and one of the files I found yesterday was named “Scoring.” I thought to myself, “I wonder if that’s anything to do with hockey. No, more likely it’s something to do with sex.” Then I flipped over one of the pages in the file and found that the full title of the book in question was Scoring: The Art of Hockey. So, to Google I went, and I found a description of the book in a listing on a rare books dealer site:

SEGAL, SEYMOUR (ILLS.) & HOOD, HUGH (TEXT). Scoring: The Art of Hockey. (SIGNED)
Oberon, 1979. 1979, 1st Edition. Hardcover. First Edition. Np. (about 60 pp.), 19 color plates, 4to, burgundy cloth with gilt titles. SIGNED by the artist and dated, Oct. ‘79. Fine text in fresh, untorn dj. Very attractive book of erotic art with a hockey theme. Not common. Dust Jacket Included. Signed by Author(s).

Needless to say, I have requested the book from the library.

I do have a more relevant post to make at some point about the actual goings-on (or lack thereof) in the world of Ottawa hockey, but that’s all for now. I just wanted to share.

Plot Summary: Bob Bonaduce is an aging career minor leaguer who, upon finding out that he has multiple sclerosis, decides to enrol in the creative writing program at the University of New Brunswick in Fredericton, hoping to play on the same varsity hockey team as his son Jason. In New Brunswick, he avoids dealing with his illness, tries to scrape by in school, and re-unites with his wife and son as well as making a few new friends.

Genre: Fiction

Hockey Content: Well, the book jacket specifically says that “Bonaduce’s story is not a hockey novel,” and it’s true — there isn’t a ton of actual hockey played in the book. However, when Bonaduce attempts to do his creative writing assignments he tends to write what he knows, and that’s hockey. There are some interesting and fun meditations on the game, and on playing in the minors.

Choice Quotation: “Waiting for tests, feeling better, he half-enjoyed the image of him in the corniest of scenarios. He was lying in a hospital bed, adult-diapered, limbs mobile as breakfast sausage, a professionally flirtatious nurse spooning vanilla dessert into his yop, and he asked the doctor (who’d be checking things off on his clipboard, brow furrowed, when everyone knows there’s nothing on the clipboard): Well, Doc, does this mean that’s it for the NHL?

“The doctor is a wise-ass hockey fan. He says, Hell no, Bobby — there’s always the Leafs.”

My Thoughts: Now that I’m a few books in to this hockey reading project of mine, I am starting to notice a few trends in hockey literature, one of which is that many hockey novels are really frickin’ depressing. They often have happy-sad endings — you know the kind: where something really bad happens, but something good comes out of it — but for the most part the tone in these books is one of regret and uncertainty. What is it about hockey that inspires people to write these sad, sad stories? Can’t there be an uplifting hockey novel? Maybe there is one and I just haven’t read it yet. At any rate, this one, like King Leary, could probably be described as a tragicomedy. Parts of it are very funny, but overall it’s not a happy story.

It’s also not what I would call an action-packed story, but that’s not a bad thing. Most of Bonaduce’s life involves small things like going to class or hanging around with roommates or just thinking, and Gaston writes Bonaduce’s internal life in a very entertaining way. Many of the characters in the book are memorable, and I really enjoyed the parts about Bonaduce’s schoolwork: the intersection of hockey and academia is amusing. The book pokes fun at those very irritating, pretentious people who look down on people who like sports (not that I know anyone like that) while also making use of references to Michael Ondaatje’s The English Patient, which Bonaduce has to do a seminar on. I liked this: it’s a book for those who understand that you don’t have to be a drooling idiot to watch hockey, and that it is actually possible to appreciate both hockey and literature.

Rating: 4.5 pucks out of 5. I thought this book was excellent and would highly recommend it!

Plot Summary: This is a collection of five short stories about the off-ice activities of hockey players, with a focus on the bedroom, or the locker room, as the case may be. “One Hundred Bucks” is about the relationship between a … woman of loose morals and a hockey player. “Why I Love Wayne Bradley” deals with the love a goaltender feels for the star player on his team. “Joan” is again about the love between player and goalie, only this time the goalie is female. “I Am Bobby Wolf” sees a player seek out an unusual cure for a slump. “Cortina” tells the story of a career minor leaguer who plays in Italy. “The Five Hole” is all about the five hole.

Genre: Fiction, Short Stories, and I’m coining a new term here: Hockeyrotica. Look for it to be added to your dictionary within the next few years.

Hockey Content: All the stories are centered around hockey, so there’s plenty, though most of the action is off the ice, if you know what I mean, nudge nudge wink wink. There are references to real teams and players, and Wayne Bradley is quite obviously based on Wayne Gretzky.

Choice Quotation: “You know, Ronnie, once you’ve found a goalie’s five hole, they’re yours forever.”

My Thoughts: As I said in my last Puck Lit review, in which I mentioned my surprise that hockey has inspired its share of romance novels, hockey is not about love. It’s about the eternal conflict between man and his environment. It’s about life, and living on in harsh circumstances. It’s also about watching powerful, sweaty men hit each other, which, it must be said, can be pretty hot. If you had told me there was a huge market for hockey porn, it wouldn’t have surprised me as much as the romance novel thing did. And that is where The Five Hole Stories comes in.

Having said that, to call it “hockey porn” is a stretch. Each story does deal with hockey and sex, but if you’re looking for non-stop locker room action, then this is not the book for you. If you want to read a few entertaining and sometimes poignant stories about the secret love lives of hockey players (NOT the secret lives of hockey wives — that was something far less enjoyable), then you should pick it up. Some of the stories are better than others (my favourites would have to be ”Why I Love Wayne Bradley” and “One Hundred Bucks”), as is true of most short story collections, but overall it’s a good little (only 111 pages) book. Bidini, who is the guitarist for the Rheostatics, has also written a couple of non-fiction books about hockey (The Best Game You Can Name and Tropic of Hockey) and based on these stories I’d say they’re worth checking out.

Rating: 3.5 pucks out of 5. Quite good, but not outstanding.

Plot Summary: Isabel Norris (aka Iz, named after Isobel Stanley, daughter of Lord Stanley) is the daughter of a hockey player who died young, before she was born. Raised in Kenora by her grandparents, she plays hockey on boys’ teams throughout her youth until she is recruited by a university in Winnipeg to play for their women’s team, the Scarlets. In her new situation, Iz begins to question whether playing hockey is what she really wants to do.

Genre: Fiction, Women’s Hockey

Hockey Content: Lots of descriptions of the Scarlets’ practices, locker room, and games.

Choice Quotation: “‘I’m just so thrilled for you!’ she sang. ‘Finally, a team full of girls for you!’ I’d gotten this a lot. As though I’d been held hostage by that long line of boys’ teams, as though I finally got to choose. But choice had never been a part of it. I don’t remember when I first started to play. I don’t remember not knowing how to play. … This isn’t one of those destiny manifestos – the sport chose me! We were meant to be together! No. But choice was never part of it.”

My Thoughts: During my search for hockey literature, I haven’t encountered many books written by women. I have stumbled upon (but not yet read) a surprising number of romance novels, such as the Blades series by Deirdre Martin, See Jane Score by Rachel Gibson, and more. Check out this list of the best in hockey romance from Amazon if you’re interested. Who could have guessed that the best game you can name would be such a fertile source of material for the romance genre? Hockey isn’t about love and flowery stuff. It’s about the eternal struggle of man to conquer a beautiful yet inhospitable environment. Just as there’s no crying in baseball, there’s no room for cuddling in hockey (unless you count goal celebration hugs, which obviously are very different).

Anyway, the point is that hockey is extremely manly, and most hockey books are by men and about men. In terms of non-fiction, Lorna Jackson’s Cold-Cocked (published in 2007) has been called “the first book-length appreciation of NHL hockey written by a woman,” and as far as I can tell, Twenty Miles (also published in 2007) is the first novel written by a woman about women’s hockey. (If you know of another, please let me know.)

As a woman who enjoys watching and writing about hockey, I was hoping this apparently pioneering book would be good, and I wasn’t disappointed. It’s very well-written, and it’s a really interesting take on the traditional image of the hockey playing boy whose father is his biggest influence: this time we’ve got a hockey playing girl, and the father is nothing but a memory for her to contend with. Iz and her grandmother Sig, the two main characters in the novel, are both easy to identify with and care about, while Iz’s Scarlets teammates are funny and likeable. Author Cara Hedley played university hockey and I think it shows in her descriptions of the games and the team’s interactions with each other. Despite all my focus on the fact that this is a woman’s book about women’s hockey, I don’t feel like the gender issue is the overwhelming theme of the book: the story is more of a coming of age type thing, with Iz’s need to figure out what she wants for herself and how that fits in with what her family might want for her being the central problem.

Rating: 4 pucks out of 5. Great read!

Plot Summary: A young Canadian named Mark, disillusioned with the state of hockey in Canada after the departure of the Jets from his hometown of Winnipeg, goes with his brother Jack to the UK to try out for a goaltending position on a Welsh hockey team. The novel tells the story of their canoe trip from Hadrian’s Wall to Cardiff, as well as stories from Mark’s past about his relationship with his girlfriend Caroline and Mark and Jack’s youth playing hockey, attending Jets games, and canoeing in Manitoba.

Genre: Fiction, Fantasy, Eulogy, Polemic, Adult, Youth Hockey, Mythology, uh … Travel? Very hard to describe.

Hockey Content: The characters attend several Jets games, and the book has quite a few references to the WHA, the Jets’ history, and players who played in Winnipeg over the years along with other real NHL players, and the team Mark is trying out for (the Cardiff Devils) is a real team in the UK’s Elite Ice Hockey League. This is a book that positions hockey as Canada’s greatest national myth, and several episodes from Canadian history are retold in a hockey context. Additionally, there are a few hockey folktales, such as the one about a zombie hockey team. And of course, the main characters play hockey, and there are descriptions of their games as well.

Choice Quotation: “To what god have we sacrificed our most precious myth? And who the hell said we had to and why the hell why in fucking hell did we listen to them?”

My Thoughts: I’m really undecided about this book. I wasn’t crazy about the writing style — the author is one of these people who seems to think writing really long sentences and not using punctuation is automatically “poetic,” which it is not — and some of the plot is just plain nonsensical. On the other hand, I did find the equation of hockey to mythology really interesting, and some of the guy’s rants about the commercialization of the game were well-written. What this book reminded me most of was, oddly, the Angels in America mini-series. I’m not saying When She’s Gone is as good as Angels in America, but I think they share certain themes. They are also both written from a place of real rage and sadness, and they both benefit and suffer from that: on the positive side, the strong emotions make them powerful; on the negative side, the quality of what’s being written is sometimes sacrificed to the strong emotions, if that makes sense.

Rating: 2.5 pucks out of 5. I’ve gone with 2.5 instead of 3 because there’s a fair bit of sex in the book (not to mention the incredible amount of penis talk), so I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone who doesn’t want to read that sort of thing. I’m also guessing that the writing style won’t appeal to a lot of people, since it didn’t appeal to me, and the plot may be just too out there for some. But if you’re in the mood to read something that’s very ranty about the state of hockey, or you’re still feeling depressed about the Jets, then you will probably enjoy it. At least parts of it.

Puck Lit Review #1: King Leary by Paul Quarrington

Plot Summary: Percival “King” Leary is an aged player from hockey’s early days, now living out his golden years in a nursing home where he rooms with equally aged sports journalist Blue Hermann. King gets a call one day from a ginger ale company wanting him to come to Toronto and do an ad for their product. He accepts the offer and goes to the city accompanied by Blue and Iain, an employee of the home. The trip prompts him to reflect on his life and career.

Genre: Fiction, Comedy, Fictional Biography, Old-Time Hockey

Hockey Content: Lots. The book references real teams (New York Americans) and players (Newsy Lalonde, Sprague Cleghorn) from hockey’s past. It’s not entirely reality-based, however, as certain things are slightly altered — the Leafs are referred to as the Leaves, and Ottawa is given a second team, the Patriots, to go along with the old Senators. As you might have deduced from the character’s name, Quarrington draws on elements of King Clancy’s life in creating King Leary himself, and Leary’s friend Clay Clinton must be partly based on Harold Ballard. The book’s modern hockey star, Duane Killebrew, seems modelled on Wayne Gretzky (or maybe it’s just the Wayne/Duane thing). Descriptions of hockey games abound in the book, as do passages celebrating the beauty of the sport.

Choice Quotation: “I bit my tongue, but the truth of the matter is, I never knew that hockey originated. I figured it was just always there, like the moon.”

My Thoughts: I really enjoyed this book. It won the Stephen Leacock Award for Humour in 1988, and while it is certainly very funny in parts, with a lot of slapstick-type plot developments, I found the overall tone of the book to be wistful rather than comic. Without giving too much away, I will just say that King Leary has some serious ghosts to deal with in his past: the flashbacks aren’t just him reliving his glory days, though there is plenty of that happening too.

Before I continue, it should be noted that I would have to be considered a sentimental person when it comes to hockey. Not only do I cry every time Canada wins an international tournament of some sort, I have in fact been known to tear up at Hockey Night in Canada game intros and that TimBits ad with Sidney Crosby. (And oh man, don’t get me started on the one with the Chinese father who never told his son he watched his games. If that doesn’t make you at least a little bit weepy, you are dead inside.) You can therefore imagine that I am a huge sucker for poetic descriptions of the purity of the game. This book does well with those right from the second chapter, which contains a lovely description of skating on the Rideau Canal. Having grown up in Ottawa, I could relate to it. I often dream of skating there.

Rating: 4 pucks out of 5. This is probably the most well-known full-length hockey novel (unless there’s something obvious I’m not thinking of), and it was also the 2008 Canada Reads selection. I think it’s worth adding it to your reading list for those reasons alone. Happily, it’s also a very good book which I think most hockey fans, especially those who enjoy reading about hockey’s olden days, will really have fun with.

I started browsing around websites looking for more and found that there are quite a few works of fiction and poetry about the game. I stumbled upon Paul Martin’s blog (Not that Paul Martin. No, not that Paul Martin either.), which led me to the Canadian Lit website Northwest Passages’ Hockey Lit section. I was intrigued. Since I am, at the moment, working at an institution which holds at least two copies of every single book ever published by a Canadian writer or about a Canadian subject, and am also armed with a library card which allows me to borrow any book my heart desires from said massive collection, this seemed like an ideal moment to start investigating further.

So today at lunch I did a keyword search for “hockey” in the library catalogue and came up with almost 3000 results. When I copied my search results into Word, it made a document of 272 pages that crashed the program when I tried to edit it. (I thought about printing it, but we have a communal printer and I think other people might have documents they’d like to print off sometime this week.) They really do have everything here — from every single edition of Ken Dryden’s The Game ever published to guides to buying hockey equipment, manuals about getting your certification as a referee in the Canadian Amateur Hockey Association, and cookbooks published by NHL teams in the 1980s (Flaming Foods: A Cookbook of Enjoyable Recipes By Your Calgary Flames Families). It’s kind of awesome.

Before I raid the library’s holdings, I’m going to get this project started with King Leary by Paul Quarrington, which I bought a long time ago (I have a tendency to buy a book and then not read it for about three years) and had brought home with me to read over the summer. I will try to keep reading, and will post my thoughts on the books I read here. Eventually, I hope to build a list of hockey fiction, which can serve as a resource to hockey fanatics, and help to fan the flames of hockey obsession during the offseason.