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casbah's review against another edition
4.0
Goddamn, the emotional arc of this book nearly wrecked me.
What I enjoyed about this book is how infinitely relatable I found it. I don't have a daughter. I'm not nearing menopause. I don't live on a farm. My sister is still alive. My father did not fight in a war and while he suffered mild memory problems at the end of his life, this was due to brain cancer. But the way Lorna Jackson talks about hockey, the way she explains why she -- and, ostensibly, other women -- find it attractive, and the players, is so exact to my own limited, demented worldview as a hockey fan. I don't give a flying fuck about statistics. I don't know what's happening 98% of the time when I watch a game. I guess if the puck is moving, that's good thing? I couldn't even tell you for certain what position Ovechkin plays and he's supposedly one of my favorite players. But my god could I talk all day about how his mom negotiated his contract, how he's a leader in the locker room, how he earned every single drunken moment with the Cup. I could talk all day about how I want him to lie on top of me like a weighted anxiety blanket, just fucking crushing me to death. I could argue all day with friends about whether finding him attractive means I've hit rock bottom or ascended to a higher plane of existence. My attraction to hockey is not to the game; it's to the players. Jackson talks about this and validates it. She is fluent in the mechanics of the game but more than that, she presents a hockey game that is filled with stories, with narrative: why this hit is undeserved; why this goal is earned; why this player is struggling; why this player is in the sin bin and the ways in which he, both in and out of the game, deserved it. In this book, desire for the players is wrapped up in the game, but Jackson seems to tell us that it's okay if our desire is simply desire.
And I think, too, in women's unending quest to prove herself, this book is a kind of comfort reading, despite its flaws. Did I chafe against her comments that women don't care about the violence of the sport, the war metaphors? At first, yes. Who is she to say I don't care about the violence of the sport? I can run with the boys who watch hockey for the fights! And then I remembered that when Becky first tried to get me into hockey, she showed me pictures of hockey players hugging mid-air, because that was what delighted me. I remembered the solid two months Jasmine and I spent coming up with increasingly absurd ways Sidney Crosby might procure a child, because we so badly want for him to be in possession of a little baby girl. I remembered the entire AHL game Jasmine and I spent, bored and drunk, cruelly deprived of the player we'd bought tickets to see who had gotten called up that week, coming up with things we'd do with hockey players for a day: teach Evgeni Malkin to knit; take Tyson Barrie to the farmer's market; take Jamie Benn to a natural history museum. The violence and violent language puts me off of the game; I care about the human elements, the guys thanking their wives after games or putting their children in the Cup when they win it all. I can't pretend to know anything about the game, because I don't. I can't prove myself in a world of men asking me to know enough to join the boy's club because I don't know enough and I never will and I don't want to. I want to watch Pride and Prejudice on a couch, covered in blankets, cuddling with Dylan Strome. Jackson says that's okay.
This book was not without flaws, but as a thesis on the erotic female gaze in and fandom of hockey (of which there are like....no other books?) it's beautifully done. Professor Kelly on the You Can't Do That podcast recommended this book and it took me awhile to read but I enjoyed it immensely.
What I enjoyed about this book is how infinitely relatable I found it. I don't have a daughter. I'm not nearing menopause. I don't live on a farm. My sister is still alive. My father did not fight in a war and while he suffered mild memory problems at the end of his life, this was due to brain cancer. But the way Lorna Jackson talks about hockey, the way she explains why she -- and, ostensibly, other women -- find it attractive, and the players, is so exact to my own limited, demented worldview as a hockey fan. I don't give a flying fuck about statistics. I don't know what's happening 98% of the time when I watch a game. I guess if the puck is moving, that's good thing? I couldn't even tell you for certain what position Ovechkin plays and he's supposedly one of my favorite players. But my god could I talk all day about how his mom negotiated his contract, how he's a leader in the locker room, how he earned every single drunken moment with the Cup. I could talk all day about how I want him to lie on top of me like a weighted anxiety blanket, just fucking crushing me to death. I could argue all day with friends about whether finding him attractive means I've hit rock bottom or ascended to a higher plane of existence. My attraction to hockey is not to the game; it's to the players. Jackson talks about this and validates it. She is fluent in the mechanics of the game but more than that, she presents a hockey game that is filled with stories, with narrative: why this hit is undeserved; why this goal is earned; why this player is struggling; why this player is in the sin bin and the ways in which he, both in and out of the game, deserved it. In this book, desire for the players is wrapped up in the game, but Jackson seems to tell us that it's okay if our desire is simply desire.
And I think, too, in women's unending quest to prove herself, this book is a kind of comfort reading, despite its flaws. Did I chafe against her comments that women don't care about the violence of the sport, the war metaphors? At first, yes. Who is she to say I don't care about the violence of the sport? I can run with the boys who watch hockey for the fights! And then I remembered that when Becky first tried to get me into hockey, she showed me pictures of hockey players hugging mid-air, because that was what delighted me. I remembered the solid two months Jasmine and I spent coming up with increasingly absurd ways Sidney Crosby might procure a child, because we so badly want for him to be in possession of a little baby girl. I remembered the entire AHL game Jasmine and I spent, bored and drunk, cruelly deprived of the player we'd bought tickets to see who had gotten called up that week, coming up with things we'd do with hockey players for a day: teach Evgeni Malkin to knit; take Tyson Barrie to the farmer's market; take Jamie Benn to a natural history museum. The violence and violent language puts me off of the game; I care about the human elements, the guys thanking their wives after games or putting their children in the Cup when they win it all. I can't pretend to know anything about the game, because I don't. I can't prove myself in a world of men asking me to know enough to join the boy's club because I don't know enough and I never will and I don't want to. I want to watch Pride and Prejudice on a couch, covered in blankets, cuddling with Dylan Strome. Jackson says that's okay.
This book was not without flaws, but as a thesis on the erotic female gaze in and fandom of hockey (of which there are like....no other books?) it's beautifully done. Professor Kelly on the You Can't Do That podcast recommended this book and it took me awhile to read but I enjoyed it immensely.
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