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"'No work of Barthes should remain inaccessible to the American public, the short text is in itself appealing for what it tells us about Barthes' idea of the role of sports in the life of man, and for its connection to the rest of his work, and especially Mythologies.' Alyson Waters, Yale University 'Full of paradoxes, surprising rapprochements, and the melancholy wisdom of which Barthes was always a master'. Peter Starr, University of Southern California"
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A little-known gem, the text of Barthes' "What is Sport?" was never reprinted in the Seuil editions of his "Complete Works" - neither the three-volume version nor the later five-volume edition. It is published here in a graceful and faithful English translation by Pulitzer Prize-winner Richard Howard. Originally commissioned by the CBC as the text for a documentary film directed by Hubert Aquin, "What Is Sport?" was written three years after the publication of Barthes' "Mythologies" (1957) and bears considerable resemblance to that earlier work. Some of Barthes' best writing seems to have been inspired by popular culture. Blurring the distinction between high and low, the great French literary theorist asks "What is sport?" In investigating the phenomenon, Barthes considers five different national sports: bullfighting (Spain), car racing (America), cycling (France), hockey (Canada), and soccer (England). For Barthes, sport is spectacle and serves the primary social function that theatre once did in antiquity, collecting a city or nation within a shared experience. The real pleasure of this book, however, lies less in its generalities than in its fleeting, strangely haunting moments of insight.
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3 reviews
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful
Just a poorly-designed gift book
29 Nov 2007
Format:Paperback
As a student of literature and fan of sport, I had high hopes when I ordered this book. I was expecting a lengthy essay on sport from Barthes, and instead found that the book is dominated by poorly-designed images. The text of the book is derived from an old documentary on sport produced in Canada, and the essay itself is quite short, occupying only about one-fourth of the page. The rest of the page is devoted to images of sport overlaid with pull-quotes from Barthes' text.
I was disappointed enough to find that the book was a gift book, but I was more disappointed still by the book's design. The title page features a pixellated inset of the cover photograph that looks quite amateur. The images of sport that accompany the text are drawn from modern sport, and not from the original documentary. While Barthes discusses auto racing, contemporary images of NASCAR are on the facing page. His discussion of the Tour de France is accompanied by a photo of a rider in a Phonak jersey. The photos are uncomfortably anachronistic, and the pull-quotes are poorly laid out and often do not match the facing text, making them distracting. I will admit that the book's cover is well-designed and enticing, but the contents are disappointing. I would recommend this book only to academics who might wish to compare the text to Mythologies, and I would suggest that the publisher make the text available in another form, as the current treatment is disappointing.
I was disappointed enough to find that the book was a gift book, but I was more disappointed still by the book's design. The title page features a pixellated inset of the cover photograph that looks quite amateur. The images of sport that accompany the text are drawn from modern sport, and not from the original documentary. While Barthes discusses auto racing, contemporary images of NASCAR are on the facing page. His discussion of the Tour de France is accompanied by a photo of a rider in a Phonak jersey. The photos are uncomfortably anachronistic, and the pull-quotes are poorly laid out and often do not match the facing text, making them distracting. I will admit that the book's cover is well-designed and enticing, but the contents are disappointing. I would recommend this book only to academics who might wish to compare the text to Mythologies, and I would suggest that the publisher make the text available in another form, as the current treatment is disappointing.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
Barthes on Ice
30 Jun 2008
Format:Paperback
I think Alyson Waters must have woken up on the wrong side of the bed when she wrote her blurb for WHAT IS SPORT? Yes, it is a little reactionary on Barthes' part to use the word "homme" so often when he could have used a more inclusive word, but if you listened to Waters you would think there was no feminine principle anywhere in the book and that's just wrong. In the Canada section (on ice hockey) Barthes goes out of his way to contrast the icy ranges of the prairies ("of all sports-loving countries, Canada is one of the most often frozen") with the warmth of the mother's gaze. Hockey players resemble children fighting on ice, for they are "merely learning to inhabit their country, while the eyes of their mothers watch their first adult gestures not as a mother would watch a war, but rather with the grim acceptance of losing a child to another order of life: in Barthesian terms, an initiation.
Richard Howard's translation is supple up to a certain degree, but you get the feeling he knows as much about organized sport as did Barthes himself, so it's helpful to a degree, and afterwards it just goes to hell. Barthes' text stemmed from an invitation from a Montreal TV producer to write some voice over for a "Wide World of Sports" -type show in bellwether year of 1960. It was a given that Canada was going to be one of the nations celebrated in the documentary, while Barthes' involvement perhaps mandated a segment analyzing the Tour de France, its "water, flowers, kisses."
Even when he isn't really concentrating, Barthes is a fantastic writer, and when his formulas go stale, they still fill you up. "Speed," he writes, in the second episode, "is never anything but the recompense of extreme deliberation." Is this just in relation to the "2,500 gears" of the fast car, or is it applicable to all of life? It's the extreme ambiguity of his formations that make him so addictive. It's great that scholars unearthed this brief mythology from the archives of the University of Quebec.
Richard Howard's translation is supple up to a certain degree, but you get the feeling he knows as much about organized sport as did Barthes himself, so it's helpful to a degree, and afterwards it just goes to hell. Barthes' text stemmed from an invitation from a Montreal TV producer to write some voice over for a "Wide World of Sports" -type show in bellwether year of 1960. It was a given that Canada was going to be one of the nations celebrated in the documentary, while Barthes' involvement perhaps mandated a segment analyzing the Tour de France, its "water, flowers, kisses."
Even when he isn't really concentrating, Barthes is a fantastic writer, and when his formulas go stale, they still fill you up. "Speed," he writes, in the second episode, "is never anything but the recompense of extreme deliberation." Is this just in relation to the "2,500 gears" of the fast car, or is it applicable to all of life? It's the extreme ambiguity of his formations that make him so addictive. It's great that scholars unearthed this brief mythology from the archives of the University of Quebec.
no real Barthes quality
12 Mar 2011
Format:Paperback
Between the lines you vaguely recognize Roland Barthes. But a text meant as voice over for a tv documentary (love to see it though) is no written essay one expects to read from Barthes.
It is superficial and thin as air. So no surprise it was left out of Barthes Collected Works.
It is superficial and thin as air. So no surprise it was left out of Barthes Collected Works.
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