BOOK of the DAY
THE AGONY AND THE ECSTASY
Edited by Nicolas Royle
Sceptre Paperback, #6.99
IT'S best to start with a public health warning. If the date 1966 is liable to bring you out in a rash, then The Agony and the Ecstasy is possibly not the book for you.
An anthology of ''new writing for the World Cup'', the majority of its 24 slices of fiction and non-fiction come wrapped in the flag of St George. The only Scottish voice on show is novelist Ron Butlin, with a disquisition on Scotland's penchant for 90-minute patriotism - Every Four Years We Become a Nation.
Knee-jerk antagonism aside, the real problem with Nicolas Royle's collection is not its Anglophilia - and to be fair, Germany, Chile, and Jamaica all get a look in - but more its overwhelmingly fan's eye view of the beautiful game. In this, it's the latest offspring of the Fever Pitch phenomenon.
Nick Hornby's book distilled the essence of what it was to be a football fan so effectively, you could argue it should have been a full stop for the genre rather than the opening paragraph it became. Certainly none of Royle's contributors - a sturdy squad of professionals, more
literary Andy Roxburghs than Ronaldos - are able to offer any new insight into what it is like to be a fan.
There's a drearily familiar feel to much of the material here; can't we blow the whistle on childhood reminiscences and wish-fulfilment?
The book is better when it breaks away from the terraces. Geoff Nicholson's comic tale of the drug-friendly 2010 World Cup finals is a delight, even if England do win on a diet of
Tetley bitter, beating the LSD-inspired Brazilians in the final (the Scots wreck their chances by opting for industrial solvents as their drug of choice).
Best of all though are the stories which dare to flout that tired old cliche, politics and football don't mix.
Maradona's biographer, Jimmy Burns, revisits Argentina 78 in his first-ever short story. Set against a backdrop of Argentina's military junta, he pokes a stick into the murky waters where politics, nationalism, and football meet and the result is coffee-bitter.
Even better is Chaz Brenchley's cryptic Something's Coming Home. Set in Africa, or maybe closer to home in a bleak future, it suggests football can offer some small hope in the face of oppression.
For Burns and Brenchley, being a football fan means so much more than just Panini sticker books.
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