Matthew McElroy > Recent Status Updates

Fascinating.

"Books are immortal sons defying their sires."-Plato, pg 99

I have heard of the book Confederacy of Dunces for a long time. Numerous people have recommended it to me. Apparently the author wrote it, committed suicide and his mother sent it to a publisher.

Life imitates art.

I could have sworn I wrote the same thing recently, but Ignatius is perhaps the most unlikable protagonist I've read about in a long time. He is opinionated without facts, sexist, homophobic, and somehow hates the government and people who are too independent.

He is singularly concerned with his own comfort.

All that being said, it's pretty good. Imagine a book about the most sanctimonious person you know.

"A Letter to the Earth" is excellent. I am enjoying delving into Twain's catalog. Not everything is a classic, but most of it is good. A Letter to the Earth is Twain's version of an angel accounting for a wealthy man's prayers and stinginess. It is dry, and the angel is earnest, while Twain may have a very specific target. Twain's advocacy on behalf of the poor predates Bernie Sanders by more than a century.

It's a nice book to read your child before bedtime.

Talk about prescience- in two pages, Twain crushes the insurance company and gun manufacturers. So random killings aren't a scourge of the last two years, and they didn't start in the 80s in the inner-cities.

And if Twain is writing about it, it's something that upper-class white men (people with the ability to solve problems) knew about, more than 150 years ago.

Meh- for all the great points Runstedtler has made in this book, I'm not sure a ban on fighting qualifies as racist. She has made a ton of great points about selfish owners catering to a largely white fan base who see the players as property.
Not Fighting on the court is a low bar to clear.

Ummm, I just ran up on the Epilogue, and I hope there is a lot more than this. For all the victories Black players achieved and the courage they showed, the last chapter is a downer. Titled "Undisciplined" Runstedtler draws clear parallels between the perception of drugs and the reasons for their use and abuse and the NBA. But the players never get their victory, and we are left wondering what the solution could be.

You see how Twain captures the American voice. He is different than his contemporaries, who wrote in a formal manner. Twain works to capture western and southern dialect, rather than the refined speech of the northeast, and the few people with formal schooling. He popularizes writing for others who are experts in the dialogue of a specific time and place, including Zora Neale Hurston and Laura Ingalls Wilder.

Sports fan watching 🏒: "I love fighting! It's part of the action! Goons keep the ice safe for the stars! And it's tradition. You can't get rid of tradition."
Sports fan watching 🏀: "That guy uses his hands too much. He's dirty. The league needs to clean up the game. Too many thugs are out there, preventing good fundamentals."
Runstedtler has done the impossible: given context to the Washington punch.

My first notable disagreement with the author- I don't think the movie 'The Warriors' "sensationalized the threat of gangs populated by vicious Black male teens" (212). It certainly doesn't make New York out to be a nice place to live, and Cyrus, the leader of the largest gang, is Black. But the primary villain is white, as is his whole gang. The Warriors, the protagonists, are heavily integrated.

I loved this chapter. You can tell people are bigots when they tolerate worse results in pursuit of not angering their bigoted fans. As early as the 70s, Black coaches made the finals, and if those results aren't matched or exceeded the very next year, they get fired. Some Americans pretend to love the idea of a meritocracy. But they've never actually had to compete on equal ground with Blacks, women, gays, etc.

The next several sections are better. Tony is at his sarcastic, angry best when punching at or above his weight. There is a good, but not great song about Nancy Kerrigan and Tonya Harding. He gives an honest and cold eulogy for Billy Martin. Nothing mean, but just what Marting deserved. The highlight so far is an ode to the passing of Dr. Seuss, showing that Tony can be warm and cognizant of talent when deserving.

Maybe the best book I have slowly read in a long time. So far, my best description is "sprawling". Runstedtler has so much research and so much ground to cover, that at the end of every chapter, I'm left wondering, "What exactly was that about?" To her credit, it is all excellent. There is little in here that doesn't make sense. New York City is sprawling, but The Bronx gives you a different experience from Queens.

I've been watching Tony Kornheiser on Pardon the Interruption for about 20 years and listening to his radio show/podcast for nearly 10. I have always found him witty and insightful.
These columns, so far, not so much. I mean, they are kind of funny, but they aren't way above a normal rant that your smart friend comes up with off the cuff.

I am a huge fan of Tony Kornheiser, the sports columnist and ESPN personality.

These columns, so far, meh.

The people who generally have benefited the least from liberal democratic capitalism have fought the hardest to engage in it. When they have the opportunity to engage in it, they benefit massively. Oscar Robertson is one of the most talented 🏀 players ever. Given his fight for the of self-determination in the realm of basketball, he may be on an even shorter list of 'greatest athletes' of the 20th century.

There's a story about Babe Ruth making more than the president. He says, "I had a better year than him." Everyone laughs, because Babe is so charming.

Every time Black athletes have asked for money, or their equivalent value, or the right to work where they want, people lose their God dang minds.

The Spencer Haywood story really crystallizes this. I never understood how crucial his stance was to fair compensation.

Mistreatment of athletes, especially Black athletes is a story we are fairly conditioned to expect. There's a reason the Negro Leagues existed, and Jackie Robinson is a Civil Rights icon.
Spencer Haywood has a Reggie Jackson/Curt Flood feel- immensely talented, uninformed about finances, due to growing up in rural Mississippi, but also not willing to take a bunch of garbage, just because everyone else was.

Baldwin has a lot going on here. I know him more as an idea than a writer, so i don't know how indicative this story is of his writing in general. But here goes: Tish is largely a passive character, insofar as a pregnant mother can be passive.
But things happen to her, and around her, and sometimes because of her, but rarely does she drive the action forward. She is a strange protagonist.

I think this is what they refer to as "building action"?
Fonny has been locked up the entire story on a rape charge. And now one thing has gone massively wrong, and check this... the cop's story may not be reliable.

But this is fiction, such nonsense wouldn't happen in reality.

Some people have been disappointed with Baldwin's description of partner abuse. He certainly doesn't glorify it or make heroes of abusers.

Kinda digging this Krakoa storyline a bit more. The self- segregation of mutants that allows them to be their best selves is an intriguing storyline. I'm not sure about The Crucible test. Definitely a strange Messiah thing going on, but it seems to be a yearly thing, that is necessary for everyone.

Apocalypse as a hero, or at least allied with heroes is a strange twist. His name is Apocalypse for crying out loud.

This is the first James Baldwin novel I've read. I am a bit embarrassed that I'm starting so late. It's listed at 200 pages, but it is much more like a novella- the book is dimensionally small.
This could be a play. The settings seem small and intimate- about 20 pages in a jail meeting room, a description of two people falling in love as children, and a living room that hosts a contentious family meeting.

Happy to be back to this book. Looking forward to seeing the evolution of the sport.

Maybe the first revelation of the entire book? Turns out that about half of competitive Scrabble players are women, though they tend to be more prevalent in the lower ranks. Even the highest ranked men acknowledge that it has a lot to do with cultural norms. 1) women have lives outside of Scrabble 2) it isn't acceptable for women to live the kind of failed lives that the highest playing men live.
Yes, I said failed.

The vast majority of people that play Scrabble at this level are off-putting and odd. A remarkable number of them are homeless and unemployed.
I believe that people who reach the highest level of almost any field are different from normal people. The dedication to be the best doctor, athlete, engineer or lawyer requires someone with a different mindset. But why are so many of these people resolute weirdos?

There is some good stuff in here, and some pretty eye-rolling stuff. Fatsis' work on the inner workings of competitive Scrabble is fairly interesting. The way he delves into the history of the game, and even the different strategies is all fairly compelling. However Fatsis assumes that we are curious about his successes and failures as well. Most competitive players make spelling bee players look well-adjusted.

Shocking how fast the dynasty fell. If 12 consecutive playoff appearances don't constitute a dynasty. The Yankees built a powerhouse using B+-C+ players. Their backups were better than your starters. But after losing the World Series to the Diamondbacks in seven games, they went with an entirely different model, which is astounding. You can't help retirement, but they could have done better in free agency.

This has turned into a fairly well-written history of a very specific group of people and time. I have noticed some silliness from the Yankees and Verducci though.
Torre, Cashman and Steinbrenner all want to be the hero of the story. That can't possibly be true, because all three of them have such wildly different management styles and are pulling in such different directions.