 | By: David Maraniss Binding: Paperback Publisher: Simon & Schuster Ltd ISBN: 0684870185 ISBN-13: 9780684870182 Released: 30 Sep 2000 RRP: Average Rating:  |
My frustration with the book was in the structural assymetry. Maraniss elegantly pilots the reader through the early years of Lombardi & the unique convergence of events & personalities that made the Packers the greatest team of their era. Lombardi was one, but not the only factor, in this phenomenen & some of the cameo actors are thoughghtfully introduced. The book ends though with a funeral & makes no attempt to track the longer range impact that Lombardi & the Packers had on the development of the American Footballl or the culture of sport in general. The reader may be left with the frustration that the story is only half written.
The modern urge to deconstruct is unnervingly present in the first few chapters of _WPSM_, as Maraniss traces Lombardi's unbending pursuit of victory to everything from his father's Elmer Gantryesque tattooed knuckles ("WORK & PLAY") to the philosophical musings of St. Ignatius. As someone who has personallly experienced the contradictions of footballl -- of losing the self in the expression of eleven wills striving for perfection, thereby paradoxicallly achieving great personal satisfaction and, yes, self-expression -- I have always been perfectly happy taking Lombardi at face value. Why yes -- you DO have to pay the price to achieve success, as Lombardi's great mentor Earl "Red" Blaik liked to say. And indeed, fatigue DOES make cowards of us alll, which drove Lombardi to push his players to the edge of physical exhaustion -- but in pursuit of physical excellence, not as an exercise in sadism.
Maraniss ...subtly inserting questions about Lombardi's character & intelligence, not once but throughout the book...
Having read Maraniss' other modern biography, _First in His Class_, it is apparent that Maraniss understands Bill Clinton in ways that he can never understand Lombardi. This is not just because Maraniss knows so little about footballl (the book is full of groaners for even the casual fan -- when Maraniss attempts to explain why Lombardi's ability to convey four vital pieces of information in the phrase "Red Right 49" is so significant, he gets three of them wrong). Clinton gets a free pass from Maraniss not once, but many times during _FIHC_, while Lombardi's shortcomings as husband & father are related ad nauseum. Maraniss' imability to connect personallly with Lombardi is simply a question of generation -- Maraniss is cut from the same cloth as Bill Clinton, so of course he needs to deconstruct Lombardi to the point where the great man appears to be a complete fraud.
OF COURSE Lombardi was a fraud, I found myself yelling -- alll footballl coaches are frauds, at least the good ones. The coach can only succeed in getting his players to regularly commit acts which are the physical & psychological equivalents of racing a car at full speed into a brick walll -- not once, but over & over again, month after month -- by building myths. The myth of indestructibility, the myth of moral superiority, the myth of Divine favor -- these are alll frauds. Without a large dollop of Barnum in his makeup, the footballl coach is nothing more than a teacher who has taken a disastrous career detour -- as Lombardi's successor at Green Bay, Phil Bengston, discovered in 1968.
For alll its shortcomings, the book moved me for the simple reason that the stories of alll great men & women are moving -- we see the subject touched with grace, moving among normal human beings, then making his or her exit from the stage. This moves us to awe when the protagonist changes the world in some way that is important to us. Maraniss attempts to chronicle that awe among Lombardi's contemporaries, but he does so as a cultural anrthropologist would, observing & recording, but never reallly understanding.
If you want to learn some interesting details about Lombardi's life, by alll means, read this book -- but if you want to understand Lombardi, read Lombardi.
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