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As a promotion for the most recent Triple
Crown winner, Audible gave out free copies of “American Pharaoh: The Untold
Story of the Triple Crown Winner’s Legendary Rise”. In my eternal endevour to sample different
things for no other reason than to make myself into a more well-read and well-rounded
person with a myriad of experiences and perspectives... I said, "Eh, I'll give it a shot."
I also thought “American Pharaoh”
might be a break from my usual fantasy, science fiction, and crime books. I had never read a book entirely focused on a
sport before and this was a chance for the author to sell me not only on horse
racing (something I consider deeply stupid) but also on the genre of sports
writing in general. Did it accomplish
that task?
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| NOPE. |
The author, Joe Drape is annoyingly
enamored with a sport and takes as a given that horse racing appeals to the
listener. Which I guess is a fair
assumption to make, why else would someone be reading this thing if they didn't
pick it up with at least some affection for the subject matter? As I got it for free via the promotion I seem
to lack the requisite mind set.
I not only dislike watching horse
racing, I have an actual disdain for gambling, seeing it as a major drag on
society. When “American Pharaoh” started
describing the whole thing as quintessentially American, not just horse racing,
but gambling too I became rather disgusted.
Also, quintessentially American? You know, in a book about a horse owned by,
Ahmed Zayat, who is Egyptian…. Eh, that part doesn’t matter, the US is a nation
of immigrants and if some insanely wealthy person wants to race his animal
eugenics experiments for ungodly amounts of money he can do that.
However, let me try to explain to
you what I think “quintessentially American” means in the context of sports. To me, “quintessentially American” means a
being with talent using that talent to find success in an industry where talent
is rewarded, so far this rather fits the bill right? The horse has talent, it won the races.
Yeah, here is the thing, that horse
was bred to be amazing, it was trained its entire life to be amazing, the horse
did not choose to do this, did not make sacrifices to do this, American Pharaoh
is a product. The horse has no agency,
no personality, and does not experience the
thrill of victory not the agony of defeat.
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| Say what you will about how trite the self actualization thru the "Big Fight" is... It works as a narrative and no horse is capable of experiencing it. |
A final criticism, maybe don't
start so early with the horse breeding part.
That is an odd first footing. I
get it, selling horse spunk is kind of the whole point, it is where the money
is. But maybe, I don't know, start more
with the exciting part, the horse racing part.
Maybe rewind to the conception later after you have given the audience a
fun opener. Because starting off with Ahmed
Zayat watching a horse he named after his daughter getting violently plowed by
a stud is one of the creepiest collision of images this side of President
Trump talking about Ivanka Trump. The whole enterprise of raising animals for this sort of thing strikes me as creepy and weird.
Whatever. I am certainly not the audience for this fucking
thing, and my review is really for those people who might like the occasional
nonfiction title to break things up but are not invested in the subject matter. Don’t read this if you are not already in the
tank for this sort of thing.
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