A Lost Spring (with Professor Mitchell Nathanson)

The History of Literature

Jacke Wilson

History, Books, Arts

4.6 • 1.2K Ratings

🗓️ 13 April 2020

⏱️ 77 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Professor Mitchell Nathanson, author of Jim Bouton: The Life of a Baseball Original, joins Jacke for a discussion of athletes, heroes, and A.E. Housman. Why do we celebrate athletes? How do we view them when their athleticism fades? And what does it all mean? We'll look at the problems of male vulnerability, the groundbreaking work Ball Four by Jim Bouton, and the criticism of that book, most notably by esteemed sportswriter Roger Kahn. Close your eyes and imagine a world where the grass is green, the leaves are lush, and kids are outside playing without a care in the world. We're celebrating spring at the History of Literature, even as we continue to stay indoors to avoid the coronavirus. Help support the show at patreon.com/literature or historyofliterature.com/shop. (We appreciate it!) Find out more at historyofliterature.com, jackewilson.com, or by following Jacke and Mike on Twitter at @thejackewilson and @literatureSC. Or send an email to [email protected]. *** This show is a part of the Podglomerate network, a company that produces, distributes, and monetizes podcasts. We encourage you to visit the website and sign up for our newsletter for more information about our shows, launches, and events. For more information on how The Podglomerate treats data, please see our Privacy Policy. Since you're listening to The History of Literature, we'd like to suggest you also try other Podglomerate shows surrounding literature, history, and storytelling like Storybound, Micheaux Mission, and The History of Standup. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	The History of Literature Podcast is a member of the Podglamorate Network and LIT Hub Radio. There we go. It's baseball season except of course it isn't really because of coronavirus. It's coronavirus season and nothing else at least here in America.
0:26.5	We are still inside and hoping for the best. The food, the electricity, the internet have all held up, at least where I am, at least as of this recording.
0:37.0	More and more people I know have gotten this wretched disease.
0:41.0	It is a nightmare, pure and simple, but we go on because we must go on.
0:45.2	Miss Beckett said, you must go on. I can't go on. I'll go on. That was in the
0:51.6	unnameable. And here we are doing the same thing or trying to, except I'm not
0:56.6	unnameable. I have a name. It's Jack Wilson. And this is the history of literature.
1:03.0	The way I feel.
1:05.0	Oh, put me in cold.
1:09.0	I'm ready to play today.
1:12.0	Put me in cold.
1:15.0	I'm ready to play today.
1:19.0	Look at me.
1:21.0	I can be,
1:23.2	Santa Fe.
1:24.4	O'Dio. Okay, here we go. So we move from baseball to Beckett and all of this is trying to help us stay sane during this period of onslaught and failure and terror and death. A lost spring. But we are turning to literature even as we can't turn to
1:56.3	pleasures like gatherings in the park or concerts or watching kids play soccer. Simple pleasures.
2:03.0	We do still have books,
2:05.0	and we do still have podcasts,
2:06.0	and I still have you, and you still have me.
2:09.0	And we can still think.
2:11.0	Mitchell Nathanson is here today. He's a thinking sort of person, a professor of law, who's written a new biography of Jim Boughton, a true pioneer in the world of writing about sports. His book, Ball Four, caused a splash when it was written.
	...

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