In his "Monday Morning Quarterback" column this week Peter King yields the stage for several pages in order to allow Redskins' lineman Ross Tucker to give a
first-person account of what it is like to get cut and in this case almost certainly to have your career end. They say athletes die twice. I know this to be true. Tucker's honest reportage is fantastic, both gripping and in a way sad. There are worse things than to be a Princeton graduate who played in the NFL for six years and started two dozen games, but the end is the end in a world where there are few illusions and with no room for sentimentality.
Ever read Zakes Mda? I'm almost done with Ways of Dying. In a literary coup, Madison Area Technical College will sponsor his reading at the Wisconsin Book Fest in October.
ReplyDeleteReason #316 why Madison is so cool.
Matt --
ReplyDeleteI love Zakes Mda. He is one of my favorite contemporary writers, and I have used Ways of Dying in my Modern Africa class in the past. he has for a long time, and still may be, affiliated with Ohio University's English Department as a writer in residence or something akin to it.
I have only been to Madison once, but I was there for more than a week, and I loved it. I'd gladly come up to give a lecture on your campus . . .
dcat