"The Man Who Couldn't Play"

Right now I’m reading fiction by David Adams Richards called Incidents in the Life of Markus Paul (2011).  

Richards won a Governor General’s award for fiction (Nights Below Station Street) and non-fiction (Lines on the Water:  A Fisherman’s Life on the Miramachi). Only two other writers have accomplished this.

A couple of years ago I really enjoyed reading Richards non-fiction hockey book - Memories of a Man Who Couldn’t Play (Doubleday, 1996.)  Richards is passionate about the game.

Hockey and Ice Hockey

And that game is “hockey” not “ice hockey.”  Hockey, according to Richards is greater than ice hockey - the later being a European invention. 

To Richards’ hockey is “more than a game.”  It can be played with a puck and skates on ice; with a ball and galoshes on the road; or with any combination of the aforementioned equipment.

A story illustrates the difference in these two games:

Richards, as an adult, recalls hearing a song by an old black man from Mississippi. The song had been a hit when covered by a white rockabilly singer in the winter of the year much of the action in this book takes place - 1961.  This was the year Richards (and your blogger) turned eleven.

But the record company wanted a cleaned up “not so troubling” version of the song.

"But yes, they could profit from it.  They wanted the song.  They did not feel they had to tell you where this song came from.  They did not feel a need to tell you that it came out of a person’s love of a country and gift of life and tragedy when both have been taken away.”

Think of the original version of the song as hockey; the rockabilly version is ice hockey.  Ice hockey was created by those who invent the world for us as they often do.  “They legitimize by deligitimizing.”  

Childhood Memories

As a child Richards was certain the NHL would expand to Newcastle, New Brunswick.  But corporate (i.e., American) interests and the shady international ice hockey community were taking over the game while on his river a friend would be occupied in trying to find a “busted stick in what seemed to be the remotest corner of the country while others were thinking of multi-million dollar television syndication rights.” 

Richards’ writing takes me back to my childhood; my own memories of a man (boy) who couldn’t play.

My recollection is that most of us got a chance to play.  Some who aspired to stardom got it.  Others for reasons I didn’t then understand would never achieve stardom.

Richards’ friend, Michael, lived in difficult circumstances. He wasn’t allowed on the organized team as a result of perceived low social status.  It hurt. But on the rink that Michael made and maintained:

“(F)licking the puck at us and smiling as he skated backwards turning on a thin dime and breaking into strides that seemed to swallow the ice – at those times, the hurt wherever it came from, was all gone away, and he was free.”

Much More than a Game

Richards reflects on the famous 1972 Canada/Soviet series.

“It was more than just a game to us.  We existed with it, and if it was forgotten then we could not exist without it.  Without hockey the country would not exist.  Not in the way it should.”

Richards is doing some events in Hamilton (at Mac and Westdale United Church) in November.