Master Index of Archived Threads
BELIEVENIKS!
| sharpie Jan 23 2006 01:24 PM |
|
This one will make for some lively discussion come April when it is published:
|
| cooby Jan 23 2006 02:32 PM |
|
Is it you?
|
| sharpie Jan 23 2006 02:37 PM |
|
No. He lives in Brooklyn, however.
|
| Edgy DC Jan 23 2006 02:40 PM |
|
Lethem?
|
| sharpie Jan 23 2006 02:43 PM |
|
That's the word.
|
| ScarletKnight41 Jan 23 2006 03:13 PM |
|
What's a Lethem?
|
| Edgy DC Jan 23 2006 03:14 PM Edited 1 time(s), most recently on Jan 23 2006 04:08 PM |
|
Jonathan Lethem, a strong and readable novelist/Met-lovin' big shot.
|
| ScarletKnight41 Jan 23 2006 03:58 PM |
|
Cool. Thanks.
|
| Willets Point Jan 23 2006 04:07 PM |
|
I think we should get in on this whole "follow a baseball team for a season, write a book about it" deal. Maybe we can take our IGT's for this coming season and compile them in book form.
|
| cooby Jan 23 2006 04:08 PM |
|
Yeah and with Delgado, there's gonna be lots of em!
|
| HahnSolo Jan 24 2006 09:38 AM |
|
Jonathan Lethem writing a book about the Mets? This jumps immediately to the top of my Amazon wish list.
|
| sharpie Jan 24 2006 11:12 AM |
|
I thought "Fortress of Solitude" was better.
|
| Johnny Dickshot Jan 25 2006 04:42 PM |
|
Holy shit. Take that, Greg W!
|
| sharpie Mar 20 2006 06:01 PM |
|
Got a copy. Will report back.
|
| sharpie Mar 23 2006 08:56 AM |
|
At times this book is kind of like reading the annals of the CPF - sometimes it is corrosively funny, other times it meanders. The structure are letters between two "fans" (writers Jonathan Lethem and Christopher Sorrentino posing as Ivan Felt and Harris Conklin, aging lifelong Met fans)and their take on the 2005 season, their own (fictional) lives, the L train, that the Brewers have become a steadily less legitimate franchise as years go on, etc.
|
| ScarletKnight41 Mar 26 2006 08:01 PM |
|
I'm only a short way into the book (thanks sharpie!) and I'm having an issue with it. As opposed to Faithful, where you really felt that the King and O'Nan (who weren't using pseudonyms) were living and dying with each pitch, Believeniks! feels artificial. The dialog is stilted, and it seems like they're writing about what fictional fans would be like rather than recounting actual emotions.
|
| sharpie Mar 27 2006 04:42 PM |
|
I spoke with one of the authors (not Lethem). They were mostly doing this via email and responding to each other's writings. It isn't supposed to be real - just the prism of the '05 Mets season through the eyes of these fictional characters in epistilatory form. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. More of a "plot" develops later on (around August).
|
| ScarletKnight41 Mar 27 2006 04:49 PM |
|
OK.
|
| ScarletKnight41 Mar 29 2006 09:49 PM |
|
Sharpie - did the authors start lurking here last season? I'm in June now, and I'm noticing terms such as "Eye Chart" and "The Big Eunuch" making appearances.
|
| sharpie Mar 30 2006 10:18 AM |
|
I don't know. I suspect they might have. I do know that the author I spoke with (very briefly), who I think is Conklin though I'm not sure, actually went to only about 5 games last year.
|
| Frayed Knot Mar 30 2006 10:30 AM |
|
Well, it's not like either of those nick-names are all that unique and couldn't have been picked up in places besides the CPF
|
| ScarletKnight41 Mar 30 2006 05:26 PM |
|
OK - I've gotten to the part with the surprise twist. But I find it too little, too late to save this read for me. Which saddens me, because I generally enjoy most baseball books (especially if they are at all Mets-related). And I generally like the format of a story being told in letters between the characters. However, this just doesn't have any passion - the characters are absorbed with their cleverness and their literary references, but they don't come across as truly caring about the games.
|
| sharpie Mar 31 2006 10:07 AM |
|
Yeah, I agree with you. They're both great writers but this is a tossed-off work. I liked certain passages: the lack of nobility of the Brewers and Padres was good, but being around this place does inure you to much of what is there.
|
| ScarletKnight41 Mar 31 2006 12:17 PM |
|
Which is a shame, because I was all prepared to love the book.
|
| ScarletKnight41 Apr 06 2006 10:07 PM |
|
And another thing - these guys didn't figure out until June that "Vote for Pedro" was from Napoleon Dynamite?
|
| Yancy Street Gang Apr 06 2006 11:26 PM |
|
Um, I didn't find that out until way after June. More like November for me.
|
| sharpie Apr 07 2006 02:13 PM |
|
I'm sure the authors knew that. The characters were hopelessly out of it vis-a-vis pop culture.
|
| ScarletKnight41 Apr 07 2006 02:22 PM |
|
OK - I'll give them that benefit of the doubt.
|
| cooby Apr 12 2006 10:40 AM |
|
Reading this now. Enjoying it but having trouble trying to figure out some of the convoluted sentences
|
| cooby Apr 12 2006 08:40 PM |
|
Guys? Please don't write another book.
|
| Johnny Dickshot Apr 12 2006 08:57 PM |
|
Now they'll never come back.
|
| mlbaseballtalk Apr 12 2006 09:15 PM |
|
|
By the way, Matt Loughlin didn't know it either, and this was late, late June. Loughlin once thought a kid with a Vote For Pedro sign was imploring fans to vote for Pedro Martinez for the All Star Game! Come again? No doubt Loughlin was unware of the fact that players now vote for reserves and pitchers (its never mentioned, ever, many in the mass media think the entire non-starting roster is still selected by the manager) so really when has ANY pitcher EVER been voted for the All Star Game! So cut them a little slack there
|
| sharpie Jul 10 2006 11:45 AM |
|
BELIEVENIKS! not making many believers (this from NY Magazine):
|