Blood Horses: Notes of a Sportswriter's Son [Paperback]

John Jeremiah Sullivan (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 24, 2005

"Sullivan has found the transcendent in the horse."--Sports Illustrated

Winner of a 2004 Whiting Writers' Award

One evening late in his life, veteran sportswriter Mike Sullivan was asked by his son what he remembered best from his three decades in the press box. The answer came as a surprise. "I was at Secretariat's Derby, in '73. That was ... just beauty, you know?"

John Jeremiah Sullivan didn't know, not really-but he spent two years finding out, journeying from prehistoric caves to the Kentucky Derby in pursuit of what Edwin Muir called "our long-lost archaic companionship" with the horse. The result-winner of a National Magazine Award and named a Book of the Year by The Economist magazine-is an unprecedented look at Equus caballus, incorporating elements of memoir, reportage, and the picture gallery.

In the words of the New York Review of Books, Blood Horses "reads like Moby-Dick as edited by F. Scott Fitzgerald . . . Sullivan is an original and greatly gifted writer."

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Horse racing does not lend itself easily to the drama and characters of most sports, because, as the author puts it, "when your Sammy Sosa has four legs, cannot speak, and has, to all appearances, no idea what people are so worked up about, you have to work harder to generate narrative." In his own quest to trace racing's history and capture its urgency, Sullivan, a former Harper's editor, has indeed worked hard but made it look effortless. He has found narrative not in a particular horse but in The Horse—the cultural, literary and biological phenomenon. It would be easy to expect, in this post-Seabiscuit age, a tale of the triumphant underdog, but Sullivan has more reflective pleasures on his mind. He alternates a history of the South, particularly of Lexington, Ky., where he spent time as a child and where much of the American horse-racing industry is concentrated, with a larger cultural and historical examination. His riffs are also unexpectedly hilarious, especially when he takes a gonzo-ish trip to the Kentucky Derby. Running throughout is the story of Sullivan's late father, a longtime sportswriter and dreamer whom the author lovingly, but largely unsentimentally, worships, and whose presence provides a kind of magnetic pull without overwhelming the book. Sullivan, who won a National Magazine Award for the piece on which this book was based, has a fairly liberal approach to structure and pace, but no matter: he has written a history as sweeping as it is personal and whose coherence is made more impressive by its lack of central drama—a book that is, in short, as remarkable as the finest horses it documents.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Booklist

Sullivan has written a strange amalgam of a book: part personal reminiscence; part bittersweet elegy for his father, sportswriter Mike Sullivan; and part wide-ranging investigation into the history and culture of the horse, particularly the Thoroughbred racehorse. Spurred by his father's recollection of Secretariat's Kentucky Derby victory in 1973, the author devoted two years of intensive reading and travel to understanding the various aspects and allure of Thoroughbred racing. Although he remains in some respects an amateur, communicating what he has learned with an amateur's zeal and certainty, he has learned a great deal. In describing the roles horses have played throughout human history in war and peace and the way Thoroughbreds are bred, sold, trained, and raced today, Sullivan provides vivid detail and, occasionally, penetrating insight. His account of War Emblem's 2002 bid for racing's Triple Crown makes for especially compelling reading. Dennis Dodge
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 272 pages
• Publisher: Picador (March 24, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0312423764
• ISBN-13: 978-0312423766
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.6 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (19 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #318,744 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #92 in Books > Sports & Outdoors > Individual Sports > Horses > Racing

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Tracing bloodline personally and through equines, October 14, 2004

By 

marti mcginnis (DogTrot Hill, KY) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Blood Horses: Notes of a Sportswriter's Son (Hardcover)

I first came across the article gleaned from the pages of this book (or in preperation of...) in a 2003 Harper's Magazine, October, I think. Mr.Sullivan's walk through the bizarre intricacies of the horse racing world from all sides, including his most personal, were raw genius. He nonchalantly drew connections between more humble pedigrees (his own, for example - nothing remarkable except that it, too, is now published) and those of these rarified creatures (thoroughbreds) in a way I didn't even notice until half way through. What a respctful tribute to his father. It seemed to me a sort of a come from behind type of writing style that crystalized into a fine read somewhere in the middle, and then just got better. All the way to the very last sentance.

12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An American Master is Born, April 1, 2004

By A Customer

This review is from: Blood Horses: Notes of a Sportswriter's Son (Hardcover)

Here's the long and short of it: John Jeremiah Sullivan, straight out of the gate with BLOOD HORSES, his first book, has written a masterpiece. Mixing conventional memoir, unconventional reportage, and a collage of historical source material about the history of the horse and the horse in history and literature, Sullivan braids apparantly disparate strands into a single narrative of power, delicacy, strangeness, and beauty. And as smart as this book is, as much reading and thinking as Sullivan slips into every page, there is never a moment when the enterprise has even a hint of pretention. This is a function of Sullivan's deep storytelling reserves, his elegant prose, his biting sense of humor (particularly about his own shortcomings), and his huge heart that, like Seabiscuit's own, is preturnaturally large. Sullivan's book is ultimately a moving tribute to his father-a failed poet, a respected sportswriter, and a man Sullivan lost too soon. Sullivan searches high and low for traces of him, a search that yields this book, one of the most moving and accomplished in recent memory, a book built to last.

15 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Fine Ride, April 14, 2004

By A Customer

This review is from: Blood Horses: Notes of a Sportswriter's Son (Hardcover)

Somewhat in the discursive style of W.G. Sebald, the author of this wonderful book wanders easily from a discussion of the role of horses during the ice age to the lyrics of My Olde Kentucky Home, to the way that jockeys grasp their whips, taking in along the way a search for a lost pony and a visit to the Kentucky yearling sales. But this book is more than a ramble through horse country. Running like another theme thoughout are the author's memories, sometimes wildly funny, sometimes poignant, of his sportswriter father and the love that kept them apart. It is this apposition of the discursive and the intensely personal that gives the book its magic and makes John Jeremiah Sullivan a new author to applaud.