Downloaded by [New York University] at 04:46 12 April 2017 Football and Literature in South America

Downloaded by [New York University] at 04:46 12 April 2017 Football and Literature in South America South America is a region that enjoys an unusually high profile as the origin of some of the world’s greatest writers and most celebrated football- ers. This is the first book to undertake a systematic study of the relationship between football and literature across South America. Beginning with the first football poem, published in 1899, it surveys a range of texts that address key issues in the region’s social and political history. Drawing on a substantial corpus of short stories, novels and poems, each chapter considers the shifting relationship between football and literature in South America across more than a century of writing. The way in which authors combine football and literature to challenge – or conform to – the dominant narratives of their time suggests that this sport can be seen as a recurring theme through which matters of identity, nationhood, race, gender, violence, politics and aesthetics are played out. This book is fascinating reading for any student, scholar or serious fan of football, as well as for all those interested in the relationship between sports history, literature and society. David Wood is Professor of Latin American Studies at the University of Sheffield, UK, where his teaching and research centre on various aspects of literary and non- literary culture across Latin America. He has published widely in Europe and Latin America, and has previously written on the cultural history of football in Peru and on sport in Mexican and Cuban cinema. Downloaded by [New York University] at 04:46 12 April 2017 Routledge Research in Sports History The Routledge Research in Sports History series presents leading research in the development and historical significance of modern sport through a collection of historiographical, regional and thematic studies which span a variety of periods, sports and geographical areas. Showcasing ground- breaking, cross- disciplinary work from established and emerging sport his- torians, the series provides a crucial contribution to the wider study of sport and society. Available in this series: 1 Representing the Sporting 5 A Social History of Tennis in Past in Museums and Halls of Britain Fame Robert Lake Edited by Murray G. Phillips 6 Association Football 2 Physical Culture and Sport in A Study in Figurational Sociology Soviet Society Graham Curry and Eric Dunning Propaganda, Acculturation, and Transformation in the 1920s and 7 Taekwondo 1930s From a Martial Art to a Martial Susan Grant Sport Udo Moenig 3 A Contemporary History of Downloaded by [New York University] at 04:46 12 April 2017 Women’s Sport, Part One 8 The Black Press and Black Sporting Women, 1850–1960 Baseball, 1915–1955 Jean Williams A Devil’s Bargain Brian Carroll 4 Making Sport History Disciplines, Identities and the 9 Football and Literature in Historiography of Sport South America Edited by Pascal Delheye David Wood Football and Literature in South America David Wood Downloaded by [New York University] at 04:46 12 April 2017 First published 2017 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2017 David Wood The right of David Wood to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data A catalog record for this book has been requested ISBN: 978-1-138-88560-8 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-315-71535-3 (ebk) Typeset in Sabon by Wearset Ltd, Boldon, Tyne and Wear Downloaded by [New York University] at 04:46 12 April 2017 To Nashy, Marco, Lucía and Mariana – always my favourite team Downloaded by [New York University] at 04:46 12 April 2017 This page intentionally left blank Downloaded by [New York University] at 04:46 12 April 2017 Contents Acknowledgements viii 1 Football and Literature in South America: Issues and Origins 1 2 Taking the Field (First Half ): Early Writings in Spanish 16 3 Taking the Field (Second Half ): Early Writings in Brazil 45 4 Writing the National Game: Beauty in Brazil 64 5 Playing Dirty (First Half ): Football, Politics and Writing in Chile 95 6 Playing Dirty (Second Half ): Writing, Football and Dictatorship in the River Plate 122 7 Argentina Beyond El Proceso: Narratives of National Reconstruction 145 8 Narratives of Nation- building in Ecuador and Peru 165 Downloaded by [New York University] at 04:46 12 April 2017 9 Offside? Women Writers Creating Space 192 10 Conclusions: 100 Years of Golitude 215 Index 221 Acknowledgements The origins of this book go back to my doctoral thesis on the work of Alfredo Bryce Echenique, whose short stories and novels variously include football as a practice for characters, as a means of constructing identity and as a form of literary discourse. As an author of the post- Boom, whose first major novel, Un mundo para Julius, dates from 1970, Bryce Eche- nique was not alone in drawing on football as part of his exploration of contemporary society. However, while cinema, music and food all received critical attention within Latin American literature of the period, football (and sport more generally) did not. The reasons for this were unclear at the time, but I felt they needed addressing, especially given the growth in the study of football in South America from other disciplinary perspectives, notably history, sociology and anthropology. The study of sports literature in the United States also provided a useful spur, the pioneering work of Michael Oriard and Christian Messenger serving in particular to encourage me to believe that sports literature in Latin America was a field worth developing. The late Joe Arbena’s annotated bibliographies of Latin Amer- ican sport were also invaluable in helping to identify where to look as starting points. Initial plans for a book that would devote a chapter each to a series of sports and their literary representation changed as football emerged in an increasing number of texts and became the sole focus; indeed, it eventually became necessary to omit numerous football- related texts as the size of the largely uncharted corpus became apparent. Since work began on this Downloaded by [New York University] at 04:46 12 April 2017 project over a decade ago, the volume of football literature produced in South America has increased enormously, making it all but impossible to keep track of new works being published, let alone provide analysis of them. This study provides a first account of the development of football literature in the key centres of production across South America since the first texts appeared over a century ago, exploring how the use of football in the texts studied engages with a series of social and political issues. Given that many of the texts are not well known, I have included the ori- ginal Spanish or Portuguese as well as a translation when quoting from Acknowledgements ix primary sources; all translations are my own. In the process of selection that has led to this work, some important authors and several countries are absent, and await the attention of others who are now also studying football literature in the region. There remains much still to do, and countries such as Colombia and Bolivia – not to mention Mexico – will provide rich material to future research, while the crónica (chronicle) as a genre offers hundreds of texts not discussed in this study, for reasons discussed in Chapter 1. A project of this scope is inevitably the result of more than one person’s efforts, and I acknowledge the studies that have helped me in my endeav- ours, and especially the authors of the many poems, plays, short stories and novels that I have had the pleasure to read over recent years. I thank my colleagues for their support, and am especially grateful to Matthew Brown, César Ferreira, Louise Johnson, Phil Swanson, Christian Schwartz, Carmen Ramos Villar, Paul Jordan and Peter Beardsell for their encourage- ment and suggestions. An award from the University of Sheffield’s Library Fund enabled the acquisition of key primary and secondary materials, without which this project would not have been possible, or would at least have been very different. Finally, I thank Nashy for listening, supporting and helping me find ways to get through it all, as always. Versions of extracts from Chapters 2 and 5 previously appeared in ‘Playing by the Book: Football in Latin American Literature’ Soccer and Society 12:1 (January 2011), 27–41. Versions of extracts from Chapters 8 and 9 previously appeared in ‘Reading the Game: the Role of Football in Peruvian Literature’ Inter- national Journal of the History of Sport, 22:2 (March 2005), 266–84. Downloaded by [New York University] at 04:46 12 April 2017 This page intentionally left blank Downloaded by [New York University] at 04:46 12 April 2017 Chapter 1 Football and Literature in South America Issues and Origins Football and Literature: A Striking Partnership? Prior to the turn of the millennium, studies of football in the context of South American literature could be counted on one hand (Morales, 1969; Pedrosa, 1978; Arbena, 1987; Rocca, 1991; Torres Caballero, 1991), but, on reading the work of many of the continent’s most successful and popular authors since the early twentieth century, it soon becomes apparent that the theme is far more significant than might appear from its pres- ence in academic publications to date.

Load more