Wednesday, June 21, 2000
The University Daily Kansan
Section B·Page 3
Book Reviews
Wrestler bares all in book
By BriAnne Hess
editor@kansan.com
Kansan co-editor
like it or not is more a matter of personal taste.
He's the most electrifying man in sports-entertainment. Just ask the Rock, he'll tell you himself. And he did — for 281 pages.
But to give the Rock a little bit of credit, he does have a somewhat intriguing story to tell. Although I felt compelled to start reading the book — it was a gift from my roommate, an avid wrestling fan — something else carried me through to the end.
I wanted an answer to the question: How does a moral, talented athlete get caught up in the sensationalized shenanigans of professional wrestling?
We all know that professional wrestling is fake, from the "People's Elbow" to, the "Stone Cold Stunner." The Rock openly admits that professional wrestling is thoroughly scripted and choreographed.
So in reading the book, my quest was to find out why people buy into that lifestyle.
It was a tale that few outside of the wrestling world would care to hear about. The Rock isn't interested in ending world hunger or helping the homeless. But he does paint a gritty biopic about his shortcomings, his love of his family and what it took to get where he is today.
The Rock lured me into his life at the beginning, with tales about his father and grandfather — both successful professional wrestlers. I also found out how he lost his virginity, what prevented him from playing professional football and how he met his wife.
If you ever wonder why millions of fans tune-in to the World Wrestling Federation, this is a
good overview of the mentality behind the show. When you read the book you can smell what the Rock is cookin' — whether you'll
When the Rock speaks, millions of World Wrestling fans listen. The Rock Says... could lure other readers as well.
Author unmasks the NCAA
By Scott M. Lowe Jr.
Incidents involving Bobby Knight, The University of Minnesota, Florida State University ... almost weekly we seem to be bombarded by the media with the latest episode of corruption in college athletics.
Kansan staff writer
In Unpaid Professionals (Princeton University Press, 206 pages), Zimbaliist effectively exposes the hypocrisy in college athletics today.
Zimbalist is a professor of economics at Smith College in Northampton, Mass. He has published 12 books and has written extensively on comparative economics.
This book has a near-endless supply of information, statistics, history, and horror stories of a system run amok. Unlike most other summer reading which will whisk the reader away to some dreamy landscape, Unpaid Professionals is an expose that provokes contemplation and reform.
This book disputes many myths purported by the NCAA and the media, such as:
The real reason the NCAA rescinded freshman ineligibility.
Why the NCAA is part of the problem instead of part of the solution.
Zimbali's 10-step plan seeks to restore the true principles behind college athletics. The book stimulates thought and action without being overly political. But be warned: if you're a college sports fanatic, don't read this book. You'll never look at college sports the same way again.
Author Andrew Zimbaliist explores the ins and out of college athletics and offers solutions in his book, *Unpaid Professionals*.
Ahoy MateyI Experience two friends' journeys on the high seas during the Napoleonic wars. The 20 novel chronicle by Patrick O'Brian gives the reader a dash of old-world drama.
Novelist creates life from fiction
By Jim O'Malley
eauthor@kansan.com
Kansan co-editor
Naval battles, typhoons, pirate attacks, shipwrecks and duels — there's enough violence in Patrick O'Brian's 20 novels chronicling the voyages of Jack Aubrey and Stephen Maturin in the Napoleonic-era British Navy to satisfy hardened consumers of adventure stories.
But that's not the point of O'Brian's novels. They chronicle a 15-year friendship between two characters as fully realized and as different as any two friends in literature. Stephen describes Jack as a "big, cheerful, florid sea officer whom most people liked on sight but who would never have been described as subtle or capable of subtlety by any one of them (except perhaps his surviving opponents in battle)."
Stephen is a slight, melancholy, illegitimate, secretive Irish-Catalan physician, a noted naturalist, and a spy for the British Admiralty.
All they seem to have in common is a love of music—they meet in 1800 at a concert in Port Mahon, Minorca, off the coast of Spain.
That meeting — like that of another set of fictional friends in The Three Musketeers — nearly ends in a duel, but they become friends. When Aubrey is given command of a ship he enlists Stephen as the ship's surgeon. Jack and Stephen sail together for the remaining 15 years of the Napoleonic wars, meanwhile courting and marrying young women in Jane Austen's England.
Critics have compared the novels to those written by Austen. Jack's courtship of Sophie Williams in *Post Captain* and H.M.S. Surprise is the flip side of *Pride and Prejudice*.
O'Brian's dialogue is unique — perfectly understandable but nothing like a contemporary conversation. No one now knows how early 19th century gentlemen talked, but Jack and Stephen's conversation can bring readers back to another time.
— at least this one — back to another time.
The novels also recreate the world of the Royal Navy in the age of sail. It's not necessary to understand or even be interested in sailing or naval warfare to appreciate O'Brian's depiction of the human communities in the wooden ships of the Royal Navy. Readers who can't master the technical details of sailing are no worse off than Stephen, who never in 15 years learns anything about sailing and remains a danger to himself on the deck of a ship.
Jack's many misadventures ashore — an unwise affair with an admiral's wife, foolish investments, debtor's prison, and trial for stock market fraud — provide a view of an England that would be familiar to readers of Dickens and Hardy.
Fans of naval fiction will inevitably compare O'Brian's Aubrey to C.S. Forester's fictional British Navy captain, Horatio Hornblower, but the one-dimensional Hornblower pales in comparison to Jack and Stephen.
And unlike Hornblower, O'Brian and his characters have a sense of humor. For example, in *The Truelove*, a sailor gives this description of the Easter Islanders. "They are not an ill-natured crew, though much given to thieving. And I must admit they ate one another more than was quite right. I am not over-particular, but it makes you uneasy to be passed a man's hand. A slice of what might be anything, I don't say no to, when sharp-set, but a hand fair turns your stomach."
I've been putting off reading the newest O'Brian novel, Blue at the Mizen, because when it's done, I'll have no more to look forward to. Patrick O'Brian died in January, ending a beautiful friendship.
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