Monday's Body of Work

Move That Flag, Betsy Ross, I'm Trying To Watch The Game

Happy mafuckin Flag Day! Yeah, we’re pumped (Go Celtics!), not only because summer is pretty much here, but also because so many mafuckin cool things are presently grabbing our attention. If you’re a fan of sports, these days are lined with roses, to which we offer the following reports: The New Yorker has published a book of sportswriting, with the likes of McPhee, Updike, Amis, and other superstars, you know it’s gonna be mafuckin good. The Economist weighs in on why and how soccer helps restore nations — mafuck! Elsewhere, the LA Times reflects on John Wooden the storied basketball coach and John Wooden the basketball ball coach who wrote stories. And what about bullfighting? Go get your BF fix, just make sure you’re of age. Okay, okay, sports are great and all, but what about the lit world? What’s happening there? Very mafuckin funny you should mafuckin ask. David Mitchell is dipping his hands in pixie dust and the Guardian thinks he’s a genius for doing so, Oxford University is once again embroiled in controversy over its next professor of poetry — sigh — and the Dallas Morning News suggests the 80′s were Bret Easton Ellis’s heyday. Sport, that’s no mafuckin joke. — Kevin Murphy

– Of the many famous athletes I’ve rooted against, none ever seemed more odious than Jimmy Connors. To this day, his mug repels me in a way that not even O. J. Simpson’s does, perhaps because I didn’t start rooting against O. J. until after he retired. Why this hatred of Jimbo? Martin Amis has explained it quite nicely, writing in 1994 about the supposed dearth of “personalities” in tennis: “Jimmy Connors: another total ‘personality.’ Imagine the sepsis of helpless loathing he must have inspired in his opponents during his ‘great runs’ at the U.S. Open. — Sportswriting in the NY Times

– On a long July afternoon in 1966, in north-west London, England’s footballers won the World Cup. By the time they beat West Germany, after extra time, with the help of a dubious goal, it was too late for the early editions of the Sunday papers. Only on the Monday was Fleet Street able to register the moment in its full glory. The Mirror, then the most popular daily ever published in Britain, with sales of 5m, knew a piece of history when it saw one. Its front-page splash proudly announced: A BOUNCING BABY GIRL FOR PRINCESS ALEX. Winning the World Cup was not as big as the birth of Marina Ogilvy, the Queen’s first cousin once removed. — Soccer in the Economist

I've Got This Protagonist Named Kareem

– When the former coach finally emerged from his funk, he found an audience waiting to hear him preach about such traditional values as industriousness, enthusiasm, poise and self-control. His “Pyramid of Success” — cynics had once smirked at its folksy insight — became all the rage. Wooden began working with various co-writers, churning out one book after another, including volumes on basketball strategy and coaching, leadership and mentoring. There were children’s stories and a collection of favorite quotes too. — John Wooden in the LA Times

– How young is too young for a child to face the extreme dangers of fighting in a bull ring? Jim Avila traveled to Zacatecas, Mexico to meet Rifita Mirabel, now a 14-year-old matador who has been fighting bulls for many years already. The teen says he knows about the risks and the possibilities of being gored to death, but that does not stop him from entering the ring and facing a 500 pound bull. — Bullfighting on ABC News’ Press Room

– Last year Nobel laureate Derek Walcott pulled out of the election for Oxford professor of poetry; now the only woman standing in this year’s contest, poet Paula Claire, has withdrawn in protest over what she is describing as “serious flaws” in the election process that she believes have pushed best-known candidate Geoffrey Hill ahead of all other contenders. Claire, an Oxford-based poet who hoped to “provide a comprehensive update on the hidden mass of innovative 20th-century poetic forms; show how the tradition of group speaking of poetry has been revitalized; and encourage the use of modern technology in the service of poetry” if she were elected, informed Oxford University yesterday that she would no longer be running in the election. — Oxford Poetry Drama in the Guardian

– A precocious novelist, David Mitchell has the misfortune to be muddling toward his best work after being canonized as a genius by an ardent fan base. “Cloud Atlas,” the book that established his cult, was an ingenious puzzle box of a novel, composed of pastiches of other writers’ styles arranged in a nesting-doll configuration and containing at its center a vaporous puff of Zen. Its structure makes the book seem “difficult” without its actually being so, and as a result it lets its readers feel smart without unduly taxing their faculties. Perhaps the cleverest thing about “Cloud Atlas” is that it is not too clever. — David Mitchell in Salon

– It’s hard, living in today’s media funhouse of tabloid armies, Twittering celebs, detox entertainment and YouTube video-voyeurism, to understand what a cultural sensation Less Than Zero ‘s publication sparked. Set in Los Angeles, depicting the empty, drugged-out lives of the privileged sons and daughters of Hollywood high society, Less Than Zero was the West Coast counterpoint to Bright Lights, Big City, Jay McInerney’s barely fictionalized account of the high, hip life in New York City. Ellis and McInerney were the Coke and Pepsi of a new literature that defined a new standard of young, edgy energy. Before ’90s grunge and heroin chic, there was ’80s fizz and cocaine cool. — Bret Easton Ellis in the Dallas Morning News

Video: From The Mind of BEE