Posts by author
Brian Schwartz
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The Known World
Reviewing Sunset Park, I am behaving like a Paul Auster character, imagining a dialogue with a famous author, wondering about the ways fiction and reality overlap…”
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A FAN’S NOTES, The Rumpus Sports Column #33: Collapse of the Metrodome
I should have known, when the New York Knicks began winning in November, that some sort of rift was opening up in the firewall that keeps our dreams separate from our collective reality.
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A FAN’S NOTES, The Rumpus Sports Column #32: The Quarterback Birthright
When you hear the word rivalry, do you think of old-fashioned sibling throat-grabbing? Are you reminded, for instance, of the moment in the Book of Genesis when Joseph’s brothers rip off his famous ornamented coat and sell their annoyingly prophetic…
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A FAN’S NOTES, The Rumpus Sports Column #31: Ben Roethlisberger and Flannery O’Connor
Ben Roethlisberger, the Pittsburgh quarterback disgraced last spring when a 20-year-old college student accused him of sexually assaulting her in a bar, is back on the field after serving a four-game suspension, and his Steelers are an impressive 5-1.
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A FAN’S NOTES, The Rumpus Sports Column #30: The Football Hold
Hey Football Fans, Have you been watching a lot of NFL preseason games lately? Or have you, like me, mostly been watching breastfeeding?
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A FAN’S NOTES, The Rumpus Sports Column #29: My Elevator Ride With Captain America
In July, two nights after my daughter was born, I took the subway home from the hospital in the very early morning and spilled water all over the floor of the N train. The water poured out of a vase…
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A FAN’S NOTES, The Rumpus Sports Column #28: The Toss-Up Talcum Chronicle
Much ado about LeBron James, Haruki Murakami, free agency, and home.
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A FAN’S NOTES, The Rumpus Sports Column #27: Stars, Stripes, Studded Bras
I love what Landon Donovan told CBS News about the goal he scored at the end of the U.S. – Algeria match last Wednesday in the World Cup. “When that ball came to me, the net looked like the ocean,”…
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A FAN’S NOTES, The Rumpus Sports Column #26: Women and Children First
What follows is an extrapolation, based on my wife’s July due date and the actual match schedule of the 2010 World Cup.
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A FAN’S NOTES, The Rumpus Sports Column #25: The Angelic Name
In 1994, David Foster Wallace published an essay about the difficult-to-pin-down pleasure of watching great athletes during their most intense moments of competition. The essay, “How Tracy Austin Broke My Heart,” looks simple on the surface: it is “unaccompanied,” by…
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A FAN’S NOTES, The Rumpus Sports Column #24: Jenna Jameson’s Father Dials 911
The porn star Jenna Jameson, now a 36-year-old mother of 13-month-old twins, was never trained to hit anybody or to defend herself from being hit. Her boyfriend Tito Ortiz, a 6-foot-3, 205-pound damage artist, is a former light heavyweight Ultimate…
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A FAN’S NOTES, The Rumpus Sports Column #23: Underdog Tattoo
One time I was in the checkout line at the grocery store, standing behind a dark-haired woman whose left arm was covered in tattoos. Another shopper—a young man wearing a summery straw hat—approached the woman and asked, “Do you mind…