Wolfgang Kanduth

Cash, Culture & Violence: the Spell of Hockey in North American Literature Wolfgang Kanduth

Stories about toothless Canadian hockey players who drink and gamble and make a remarkable living by chasing pucks and slamming into boards in a full-contact sport that counts to be the fastest and toughest ever to have been developed on this planet - those were my first ideas of hockey in literature. In case it needs to be mentioned, I'm talking about ice-hockey. Going through my first readings of short stories in Doug Beardsley?s "Our Game: An All-Star Collection of Hockey Fiction", not all, but most of my anticipations on this topic are confirmed. Furthermore, I discover that writers who produce texts about hockey share a deep and emotional relationship to the sport and all that surrounds it, of people who grow up playing the game, their game, of talented athletes that make it to a professional level to become millionaire hero figures, and of fans that urge the desire to follow the game everywhere at any time and any cost. Hockey as a popular sport, a social game and a national identity are the cultural aspects I pick out as essential themes in writings about hockey, which are dealt with also in a lot of works of non-fiction, prose and poetry, and have had a highly visible effect on Canadian literature.