Book Review: The Sporting Club, by Thomas McGuane (1969)

I have a long history with Thomas McGuane. I first read The Sporting Club when I was about 19 or 20, along with some of McGuane's writing which was current at the time such as The Longest Silence (1999) and The Cadence of Grass (2002). At that time I was making my first forays into what can even barely be called the "adult world" -- but which I now realize is not the adult world at all -- and looking around for writers who liked the outdoors, as I do, specifically fishermen. I think I also read Ninety-Two in the Shade (1975) around that time. Since then, I have read his short stories in The New Yorker, mostly to great delight.

Suffice it to say, I am probably in the 99.9th percentile of the American reading public in my familiarity with Thomas McGuane. And I actually really, really like his writing; however, The Sporting Club kinda sucks. I can't even put a shiny gloss on it in case I one day meet Thomas McGuane and he has read and holds a grudge against me for posting this blog post...one unlikely event coupled with another extremely unlikely event. Besides, if the guy -- at 80 years old or whatever -- is the kind of guy to get miffed at some middle-aged hack for criticizing his first novel, written 50 years ago, then I'm not sure we'd get along anyway. 

If The Sporting Club is read at all anymore it's by people like me who are "going back" to books they read in their youth or going back through the works of authors they admire, like Thomas McGuane. And I'd suspect many of them have the same, begrudgingly bad opinion of The Sporting Club. Books like this would, in today's times, remain unpublished, gathering virtual dust on someone's laptop while they live life, suffer through literary rejection, and learn to write mature fiction that deals with the higher emotions of human existence. Not whatever it is The Sporting Club was supposed to be dealing with.

On a contextual basis... I do know that Hunter S. Thompson and Thomas McGuane were good friends in the 1970s. Therefore I can imagine -- from having read a lot of both their writing -- they both fancied themselves the heirs to the Ernest Hemingway school of the brash, adventuring,(often drunken) sportsman-writer, a persona that -- while it may have earned Hemingway and a few others some reknown -- barely translated into the 1970s and surely does not translate into any contemporary literary milieu. 

Except that, via Gonzo Journalism and his drug-fueled outlandish exploits, Hunter S. Thompson managed to make a career out of this. Whether or not that's really what he wanted to do (it wasn't), and whether or not he was as famous as Hemingway or had the impact of Hemingway (debatable, but doubtful), he made it work in his time. McGuane, on the other hand, seems kind of like an impostor trying to write about the same kinds of shenanigans a HST might have written about in the 70s. I think McGuane found his metier when he moved a bit more toward the more lyrical and introspective side of things, as in his later work. 

But...what the hell. It was the late 60s / early 70s. Even from this vantage point that seems like a bizarre time to be alive, let alone to be a fledgling writer, trying by hook or by crook to get noticed and carve out a nice for oneself. Ultimately, Thomas McGuane did it. And that's what counts. But his reputation certainly does not rest upon the likes of The Sporting Club, nor should it. 

I'm glad I went back and re-read this novel over the past week, just to get it out of my system. Or rather, get it back in my system. There are funny images, sure. And it's abundantly clear -- even in this book -- that McGuane has a solid, craftsman's hand with the printed word. But he hadn't really found his material yet in this book. Unless you're a McGuane fanatic and absolutely have to read this, just to see... I wouldn't mess with it.