"That son of a bitch doesn't like hockey" I said.

From David Adams Richards' "Hockey Dreams : Memories of a man who couldn't play" :



One time a friend told me of his hockey memories over beer.
He told me who he played against when he was voted most valuable player in the OHL.
"Why, those lads are all in the NHL," I said.
He nodded.
"You - you could have made it too"
He shrugged.
"There is no doubt in my mind," he said. "I could've played up there - "
"Well?"
"Well, what?"
"Well, why the hell aren't you up there?"
He looked at me very seriously, as if being a writer, I would understand.
"I fell in love with a woman - and I discovered Shakespeare"
"A plauge on both your houses" I said. "You owed it to us."
"What?"
"You owed it to us - to us - WE WHO COULD NEVER EVER DO IT."


Found this book at the library the other day. Very heavy focus on what hockey means to Canada, but not in the usual "paul henderson in '72 as a defining moment in our history" sort of way. More about what it means to the national identity as a whole. From the part i've read so far about his childhood, he writes growing up in New Brunswick and knowing that hockey was a distinctly "our thing" even though it was played in cities he knew only because of their NHL association. It was not American because it just couldn't be.

I'm still only a quarter of the way through it, but I can tell already that this will be the sort of book that I'll need to finish and then reread almost immediately to fully comprehend. I have the feeling it's working towards some grand thesis about hockey's place in the national psyche today, but it was written in 1996, so who knows what he might say now.