Skip to content
Click on cover to enlarge
Image by Clint Griffin

Hockey: The Great Literary Shutout

«  page 1 of 3  »

Hockey literature takes a bodycheck

by Don Gillmor

Image by Clint Griffin

Published in the February 2005 issue.  » BUY ISSUE     

Bookmark and Share             Facebook         Stumble      Get The Walrus on your Blackberry or Windows Mobile        RSS


books discussed in this essay:

Roger’s World: The Life and Unusual Times of Roger Neilson
By Wayne Scanlan
McClelland & Stewart (2004) 240 pp., $35

Grace Under Fire: The State of Our Sweet and Savage Game
By Lawrence Scanlan
Penguin (2002) 320 pp., $35

The Game, 20th Anniversary Edition
By Ken Dryden
John Wiley & Sons (2003 /1983) 288 pp., $35

Hockey Town: Life Before the Pros
By Ed Arnold
McClelland & Stewart (2004) 368 pp., $35

In hockey’s winter of discontent, the season held hostage to intransigent owners and players, we are left with the literature. This fall, worshipful biographies (Yzerman: The Making of a Champion, Triple Crown: The Marcel Dionne Story, and Roger’s World: The Life and Unusual Times of Roger Neilson) were released, as well as reliable nostalgia (Hockey Town: Life Before the Pros, The Best of Hockey Night in Canada). Hockey is our mythic game, as almost every hockey book states somewhere. It sings in our blood. Yet, unlike boxing or baseball, it has not produced a mythic literature.

Comments

Comment on this article


Will not be displayed on the site

Submit a comment online

Submit a letter to the Editor


    Cancel

The Walrus E-Newsletter

Online exclusives, events, offers:
get news of everything Walrus.


Article Tools

»    RSS Feed      Bookmark and Share

»  Email this article

»  Comment on this article

»  More in this issue

»  More in Books

»  All articles by Don Gillmor

»  BUY THIS ISSUE

ADVERTISE WITH US