In Praise of Athletic Beauty [Hardcover]

Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 067402172X | ISBN-13: 978-0674021723 | Publication Date: April 10, 2006 | Edition: First Edition

By the hundreds of millions we show up, stand in line, turn on, and tune in to watch, mesmerized, as athletes perform. And yet this experience, so widely craved and intensely felt, we commonly dismiss as "only a game." A book that looks beyond the usual explanations of why sports fascinates, In Praise of Athletic Beauty also strives for a language that can frame--even enhance --the pleasure we take in watching athletic events.

The vicarious thrill, anxiety release, competitive spirit: in place of these traditional answers to the mystery of sports' allure, Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht proposes a more powerful and provocative alternative. The fascination with watching sports, he argues, is probably the most popular and potent contemporary form of aesthetic experience--in the classic, very literal sense of this concept. In exploring this idea, Gumbrecht develops a lucid reflection on the pleasures of sports spectatorship and the nature of athletic beauty. Where we might readily pronounce certain athletic moves and plays "beautiful," this book gives us the means to explore, understand, and enjoy even more acutely the aesthetic experience that our words-in-passing barely suggest.

With a new perspective on the appreciation of--and, indeed, a new tone of praising--sports, Gumbrecht also offers a new way of narrating the history of athletics and a fresh vocabulary for analyzing various sports. Exploring athletic beauty, this book makes us understand the widespread passion sport inspires as an untamed form of aesthetic fascination.

(20060315)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

With this study of athletic aesthetics, Stanford literature professor Gumbrecht scores as the sports world's answer to Marshall McLuhan. Noting high culture's condescension toward athletic events and stars, Gumbrecht sees America's sports essayists (Joyce Carol Oates, Norman Mailer, John Updike) as "an oasis in what is otherwise a wasteland." Abroad, it's a different ball game: "In global academia, sports as a social or a cultural phenomenon is at best a marginal topic." Gumbrecht goes beyond the usual conventions of sportswriting to probe the pleasures of sports spectatorship; his centerpiece is a philosophical, historical survey spanning centuries. He looks at the ancient Olympiads, whose champions were elevated to the status of demigods. Gladiatorial games were "metaphors for human existence," more brutal than the choreographed pageantry of knightly tournaments. After examining bare-knuckled boxing, Gumbrecht segues into the dawn of team sports and the 1896 revival of the Olympics. Little known is that the 1936 Berlin games were televised for "handpicked audiences," inaugurating the mutual dependency of sports and technology that characterizes our experience as spectators today. Gumbrecht's writing is as potent and graceful as the athletes he admires. (Apr. 1)
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From Booklist

*Starred Review* In sharp contrast to the intellectuals who dismiss sports as mindless popular amusements, Gumbrecht finds in athletics the occasion for aesthetic contemplation. In the spirit of Pindar's odes praising ancient Greek boxers and charioteers, Gumbrecht hails today's sprinters and swimmers, linebackers and forwards, as icons of muscular grace. Surprisingly, the spectacle of athletic competition answers well to the analytical terms Kant employed in his eighteenth-century theory of beauty. That wonderful spectacle lifts participant and spectator alike into a focused intensity luminously different from the gray routine of ordinary life. As he surveys the epic panorama of sports--from the Panhellenic games of antiquity to the Olympic Games of today--Gumbrecht ponders the adroitness of athletes who tempt us to believe in perfection and the violence of antagonists who entrance us with the pathos of suffering. In this acute analysis, the blindness of those who see in sports nothing but an empty show gives way to a radiant vision that fuses the feats of great athletes with the poetry of Goethe and the wisdom of Plato. To be sure, Gumbrecht acknowledges--and laments--the nearly ubiquitous commercialization of modern sports. But the distracting hype of advertisers cannot fully obscure the sublime composure of the athlete nor quench the sincere gratitude of the spectator. A remarkable commentary, light-years from the cliches typical of sportswriting. Bryce Christensen
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 272 pages
• Publisher: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press; First Edition edition (April 10, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 067402172X
• ISBN-13: 978-0674021723
• Product Dimensions: 7.2 x 4.7 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #188,103 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #92 in Books > Sports & Outdoors > Miscellaneous > Essays

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars To what end praise?, December 18, 2007

By 

J. S. Custer (Westbury NY) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: In Praise of Athletic Beauty (Hardcover)

Overall, I found this book worth reading, a rather broadly-ranging philosophical foray into popular culture. In the hands of a good teacher, it could serve as a non-threatening introduction to philosophy for undergraduates otherwise unlikely to be drawn to such pursuits.

In the end, however, I remain unconvinced. I would like to test Gumbrecht's celebration of spectatorship via an analogy:
Is the series "literature----reader---criticism" analogous to the series "sports---spectator---praise"?

There exists an entire literature of apologetics for literary criticism. The critic engages the author by contextualizing, making connections in the canon, expanding upon ambiguities, unpacking metaphor, etc. The critic contributes substantially to the task of making meaning.
The spectator who praises athletic prowess simply reacts positively. What does he contribute?

The critic has a different set of skills than the author but they are demonstrable skills. He is more than a critic of other people's creations. The spectator praises (and blames) the performance of others; only rarely would the spectator be qualified to be a competitor. Perhaps the pleasure produced by spectating leads to praise. In the rarest of occasions this praise may have aesthetic merit of its own. It remains to demonstrate what value spectating has. How is it not just indolence? How is it more than merely setting myself up as judge of what I could not do. Given the choice, why would I spectate rather than perform?

Put another way: there is no objective value (apart from personal entertainment) in choosing to write bad literature myself. It is objectively of value to read the work of others who have mastered the art of writing and the same holds true for any of the arts. It cannot be argued that there is no objective value in engaging myself to the degree that I am able in athletic activity. There is a clear physiological, psychosomatic advantage to participation over spectating regardless of how well I perform.
A second observation: in the arts, criticism and the development of taste make it possible over time to know how to choose only the best examples for contemplation. This is not possible in sports. On the one hand, this adds a chance dimension--any competition may ultimately include a "magic" moment. On the other, it means one consumes vast amounts of mediocre sport.
Gumbrecht's study leaves a potentially interesting area unexplored: the grey area between sport and dance. The Slavs seem to have had no traditional athletic competitions until they came into regular contact with other European cultures but competitions of dancing prowess were common and highly significant social events. In the 19th/20th centuries, dance led naturally to Slavic adoption of gymnastic clubs (Turnverein) from Germany. But, with dance we cross over Gumbrecht's boundary into the forbidden realm of "meaning."

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Academic but enjoyable, April 29, 2008

By 

Karin Norgard "www.joy-in-motion.com" (Anchorage, Alaska, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: In Praise of Athletic Beauty (Hardcover)

This book is definitely more academic and perhaps not the best reading for the recreational sports enthusiast. But for a deeper look - philosophically and intellectually - this is a great book to delve into the concept of flow. What this book offers in contrast to other books on flow in sports is that it focuses primarily on the spectator, which is not very often explored in books of this type. Not many academics focus on the spectators' role and experience in sports. So this book is unique in that sense. However, while there are parts of this book that are fascinating and compelling, there are also parts of the book that are dryer and less interesting. But this book is an excellent resource for those studying the concept of flow in sport.

1 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars In Praise of a good Reading..., November 14, 2007

By 

Marco Antonio Costa "Trop reader" (Sao Paulo, SP Brazil) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: In Praise of Athletic Beauty (Hardcover)

Hans Ulrich wrote a delicious work that mix in a one breath reading stories about: the origins of some sports; the "profissionalism" since the ancient Greece; lives of sports legends, some of them forgotten or even unknowed by the nowdays public; fictious fans tellings - in a way that you won't even agree, if you really are a average irritangly detailer sports fan too. Myself in particular feel lack of more comments about, for example, Pele as a football/calcio/soccer Fan and the nonofficial competitors like one of the greatest athlets of all time Bruce Lee. But I recognize that is First a guilty of enjoyable Hans's style that make me anger for more stories and Second I must repeat is probaly also just a naggingness of a neveragree irritangly detailer as unavoidable sports fan usually to be.