Customer Reviews

The Sporting Club

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The Sporting Club plays out the alpha male/other guy dynamic in a really fresh funny way. Its the story of two grown young men of privilege, reunited at the sporting club in Michigan that they played and hunted at as kids. Stanton, the tough guy with the cojones collides with Quinn, the sensitive brooder. They start with pranks on each other and their peers and eventually get to sabotage and guerrilla warfare. Absolutely hilarious. Think Caddyshack meets Fight Club. The writing is superb. Crisp prose, fully fleshed characters and imagery. Mcguane has quite the vocabulary. He's obviously smarter than you, smarter than me but thankfully without self-indulgence. He doesn't write for his own sake or merely for the sake of writing, and the prose clearly has the reader in its sights, or is it sites? At any rate, great book, page turner, tons o' fun.

This book was given to me by a friend who insisted that I read it. It took me a while to get into it but then I think it was right after the first duel in the book that I decided I wasn't going to be putting this book down for a while.

There seems to have been a lot of the sentiment that "The U.S history we were taught is a lie," back in the turbulent 1960's. But unlike Howard Zinn, McGuane seems to share with the John Barth of "The Sot Weed Factor" a more earthy, humorous perspective on the concept.

To quote Stanton, "Don't let a little thing like this spoil the party! On with the gizmos!"

You have to get into a certain mindset in order to enjoy THE SPORTING CLUB, I think. This book seems very much to be a product of the time in which it was written. Many attitudes about masculinity, ranging from identity to violence to sex, get exposed and torn apart in subtly funny ways over the course of the bizarre plot. These are not the most lovable characters you're apt to find in fiction, but they are complex and believable and real. There a moments of deep and surprising humor that pop up and surprise you along the way, even if the ending feels a bit predictable. THE SPORTING CLUB is a midlevel work from a great author and overall is worth the time invested to read it.

I have most of McGuane's work and have read some several times. This nonsensical story didn't reach me on any level. In fact I didn't see how it could be his until I rechecked the original copyright date. Now I get it. It reminds me of Jim Dodge's writing after his great short book FUP. Dribble. It was from the period of serious self medication. I'm so glad he's moved past that.