Thursday, October 14, 2004
Ain't that write?
Too windy today to play golf - I'm not that much of a masochist. Especially since I've already been blown away so often it recent games.
Maybe I should give up my passion for playing golf on windswept peninsulas.
So I turned to the pages of Golf's Greatest Moments
Apart from the pleasures of reading about golf - As a writer I'm always on the lookout for something that turns me on and hopefullywill in turn, turn my readers on.
Reaching a part in an article by George Plimpton "A Little Night Reading"there came one of these Aha! moments followed by a hearty chuckle and a feeling of "Well ain't that write!"
Plimpton is not the first person to comment on the fact - yes it is a fact. That no other sport has produced such a voluminous amount of fine writing.
To quote George.
"Golf literature, on the whole, is on a very high level-which is perhapsnot surprising considering the antiquity of the game and its popularityamong the educated classes."
By George I think you've got it.
However it was the following passage which really turned me on. But alas the euphoria didn't last. Something like belting a beautiful brassie shot to the back of the green and then four-putting.
George writes.
"I asked someone about this once, and he reflected and said that perhaps a game in which euphoria was so short-lived, the bad shot lurking so surely in the future, was conducive to the state of contained melancholy which produced first-rate literature. Dostoevski, for instance. Conrard. Hardy."
God forbid golf- and writing about it - should turn me into a Dostoevski-like character.
As a golfer for over 40 years I've experienced more than my fair share of contained melancholy.
Maybe I should give up my passion for playing golf on windswept peninsulas.
So I turned to the pages of Golf's Greatest Moments
Apart from the pleasures of reading about golf - As a writer I'm always on the lookout for something that turns me on and hopefullywill in turn, turn my readers on.
Reaching a part in an article by George Plimpton "A Little Night Reading"there came one of these Aha! moments followed by a hearty chuckle and a feeling of "Well ain't that write!"
Plimpton is not the first person to comment on the fact - yes it is a fact. That no other sport has produced such a voluminous amount of fine writing.
To quote George.
"Golf literature, on the whole, is on a very high level-which is perhapsnot surprising considering the antiquity of the game and its popularityamong the educated classes."
By George I think you've got it.
However it was the following passage which really turned me on. But alas the euphoria didn't last. Something like belting a beautiful brassie shot to the back of the green and then four-putting.
George writes.
"I asked someone about this once, and he reflected and said that perhaps a game in which euphoria was so short-lived, the bad shot lurking so surely in the future, was conducive to the state of contained melancholy which produced first-rate literature. Dostoevski, for instance. Conrard. Hardy."
God forbid golf- and writing about it - should turn me into a Dostoevski-like character.
As a golfer for over 40 years I've experienced more than my fair share of contained melancholy.
