Knockout books lead to further questioning
A man well-known as a radio broadcaster with RTÉ Cork, a long-suffering Brian Dillons clubman and then an English teacher in St Finbarr’s Seminary, Farranferris — the famous hurling nursery perched on the city’s northside — he didn’t have to tell us again.
My classmates and I devoured the novel — admittedly when we fit it in around talking about a Harty Cup game on the horizon or a lost Simcox Cup tie in Feenagh. Written beautifully by the hermitic JD Salinger, who died this year, the book unfurls the story of a mixed-up New York teenager Holden Caulfield.
He starts by losing his prestigious prep school’s expensive fencing equipment on a subway trip home from a match — and finishes by losing his marbles.
In between he wanders through a monochrome, 1950s Manhattan which lies beneath a carpet of dirty snow. Salinger uses now-archaic slang and happily peppers profanity throughout the text while dealing unflinchingly with very adult themes. We loved it.
I remember at one stage Caulfield says to someone — probably his English teacher actually; “What really knocks me out is a book that, when you’re all done reading it, you wished the author that wrote it was a terrific friend of yours and you could call him up on the phone whenever you felt like it.”
That wasn’t possible with Salinger, of course, who was locked away in a rural retreat in New Hampshire, still writing away in silence. He refused most correspondence and all publicity up until the day he died.
Our English teacher, however, penned Cork’s Hurling Story — which is on sale in all good book shops, I believe — so we could pick his brains on that. We also questioned him on Shakespeare, Patrick Kavanagh and the vicissitudes of Brighton and Hove Albion’s colourful existence (“Smith must score, sir!”). That’s a good education.
I read another book once and I’ve now quoted it in pubs and at dinner tables more times than the Godfather trilogy. And recently I got to ask the authors a few questions.
Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything is a publishing sensation. Written by economist Steven Levitt with New York Times journalist Stephen Dubner, it peers at a world viewed through the skewed eye of an economist who has taken a blow to the head.
Rather than quote dry data, this is a technicolor romp through bad neighbourhoods, prison yards and corrupt boardrooms.
Today as we watch bond prices creep up and the airwaves brim with the same old economists’ scaremongering (why is it that the only things you can monger are fear and fish?) Levitt and Dubner’s quirky theories are a welcome little antidote.
For example, they pose the question; ‘Why do drug dealers still live with their mothers?’ We’re subsequently treated to a hugely-impressive investigation into the economics and politics inside a drug dealing gang. Despite perceptions, it’s not a particularly good living — unless you’re at the top, of course.
I contacted the writers when I was researching a column on how Ireland’s current economic ‘readjustment’ would play out on the soccer pitch. Would a poorer country produce better players — as is often the perception?
The Freakonomics authors didn’t know — but they pointed me in the direction of someone who did (It won’t). Though they have looked at the economics of sport.
Take sumo wrestling. !
One example of the authors’ use of economic theory involves demonstrating the existence of cheating among these brilliant Japanese wrestlers. In a tournament, all participants compete in 15 matches and are relegated if they don’t win at least eight of them.
The sumo community is very close-knit and the wrestlers at the top levels tend to know each other well — which is important. The authors looked at the final matches and considered the case of a wrestler with seven wins, seven losses and one fight to go, fighting against an 8-6 wrestler.
Statistically, the 7-7 wrestler should have a slightly below even chance, since the 8-6 wrestler is slightly better, you’d surmise. But the 7-7 wrestler actually wins around 80% of the time. It’s clear then, I suppose, that those who have already secured the magic eight wins collude with those who are 7-7. They let them win. That really knocks me out.
adrianjrussell@gmail.com. Twitter: @adrianrussell
