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In print for the first time in the United States, acclaimed novelist Benjamin Markovits’s Playing Days is a mostly autobiographical narrative concerning the author’s season playing minor league professional basketball in Germany and the love affair with another player’s estranged wife that ushers him into adulthood.
Growing up in Texas, Ben experienced basketball as a mostly solitary pursuit, one he gave up after riding the bench in high school. But as his college classmates prepare for the real world, Ben is seized by an idea. All he needs is a video camera, an empty court, and his mother’s German citizenship.
Improbably, he lands a roster spot on a lower division pro team in Landshut, forty-five minutes outside of Munich. It’s Ben’s first taste of competition in years, not to mention his first job. And like most jobs, it’s defined by repetition, boredom, and gossip. There’s Charlie, the trash-talking mercenary from Chicago; the coach, Herr Henkel, a recently retired player anxious to justify his paycheck; and Karl (based on the author’s real life relationship with Dirk Nowitski), a gangly teenage prodigy flashing the raw talent that will make him an NBA star. As a group of men learn how to navigate one another, Ben falls in love with the young mother of a teammate’s child, and begins an affair that will change his life.
Wry, poignant, and tenderly observed, Playing Days is an evocative meditation on the joys of youth, the triumphs and terrors of post-college life, and one of the best books ever written about what basketball can mean to an American man.
- Sales Rank: #2614205 in Books
- Published on: 2015-11-03
- Released on: 2015-11-03
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 8.00" h x .79" w x 5.31" l,
- Binding: Paperback
- 352 pages
Review
“[A] frank, disarming autobiographical novel…In scenes that are striking both for their insight and for the chasteness of their characters’ behavior, Markovits effectively portrays Benjamin’s stumbling entry into the adult world…the affecting story of a young man starting to find his way in the world through basketball.” (Shelf Awareness)
“Excellent.” (The Times (London))
“Markovits is an exceptionally adept chronicler of human interaction… in this elegant, thoughtful novel.” (New Statesman)
“Markovits draws himself with exceptional delicacy…This is the territory of the rites-of-passage novel, but it is territory that the author navigates with subtlety and poignancy.” (The Guardian)
“PLAYING DAYS delivers a sharply honest account of the mostly selfish impulses of a young man…astutely rendering the restlessness of that ill-fitting period between schooling and manhood, in which mettle needs to be found before it can be tested.” (The Independent)
“PLAYING DAYS…succeeds in combining an emotionally honest coming-of-age narrative with a convincing evocation of the artificial, cynical, yet curiously idealistic, world of preofessional sport.” (The Times Literary Supplement)
“Playing Days is a humble and sensitive portrayal of a young adult trying to find his feet on the basketball court and in the world…The subtlety of Playing Days is that though the subjects for interpretation are teased out, the ultimate meaning is left poised for our own consideration.” (The Financial Times)
“Markovits’s plot is as smoothly nonchalant as a sea breeze in summer, yet the reader is enticed by his subtle yet powerful characterization and a wonderfully lucid writing style…His story becomes almost unbearably appealing as it ratches up towards a magnificently suspenseful and apt conclusion.” (The Sunday Business Post)
“This unusual autobiographical episode is lit up by Markovits’ eye for psychological and social detail…Both matter of fact and acutely observant, it wears its wisdom with a shrug.” (The Independent)
From the Back Cover
“Excellent.” �—The Times (London)
Growing up in Texas, Ben experienced basketball as a mostly solitary pursuit, one he gave up after riding the bench in high school. But as his college classmates prepare for the real world, Ben is seized by an idea. All he needs is a video camera, an empty court, and his mother’s German citizenship.
Improbably, he lands a roster spot on a lower division pro team in Landshut, forty-five minutes outside Munich. It’s Ben’s first taste of competition in years, not to mention his first job. And like most jobs, it’s defined by repetition, boredom, and gossip. There’s Charlie, the trash-talking mercenary from Chicago; the coach, Herr Henkel, a recently retired player anxious to justify his paycheck; and Karl (based on the author’s real life encounters with Dirk Nowitzki), a gangly teenage prodigy flashing the raw talent that will make him an NBA star. As a group of men learn how to navigate one another, Ben falls in love with the young mother of a teammate’s child, and begins an affair that will change his life.
“Markovits draws [himself] with exceptional delicacy. . . . This is the territory of the rites-of-passage novel, but it is territory that the author navigates with subtlety and poignancy.”—The Guardian (London)
About the Author
Benjamin Markovits is the author of You Don’t Have to Live Like This, forthcoming from Harper. He left an unpromising career as a professional basketball player to study Romanticism. Since then he has taught high-school English, worked at a left-wing cultural magazine, and published seven novels, including a trilogy on the life of Lord Byron.
Most helpful customer reviews
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful.
An excellent and enjoyable novel
By Bookreporter
While reading PLAYING DAYS by Benjamin Markovits, I mentally compared this basketball-themed title to other favorite sports novels. There aren’t that many. I thought of THE NATURAL by Bernard Malamud, BANG THE DRUM SLOWLY by Mark Harris, THE ART OF FIELDING by Chad Harbach and NORTH DALLAS FORTY by Peter Gent. Why is sports such a barren topic for fiction writers? Perhaps real-life sports, with countless examples of extraordinary achievements and overcoming great odds, make the fictional counterpart tricky to capture on the pages of a novel. It also might be that sportswriters spend their time writing about actual events and find it difficult to transition to fiction. Whatever the reason, sports-themed novels are rare, and notable ones are even more uncommon.
While one might argue that PLAYING DAYS is more biography than fiction, it is indeed a novel and makes for an excellent and enjoyable reading experience. In college, Markovits played basketball. After graduation, he made an audition video of his basketball skills and sent it to various European basketball teams. On the basis of that footage, Markovits signed to play with a German second-division team. Europeans are passionate about basketball, and there are a multitude of teams in European cities both large and small. While we cannot be certain how much of the book is based on his true-life experience, he did play a season in Europe, and the main character here bears his name and life history.
PLAYING DAYS revolves around the players on the provincial Landshut team, a mix of American and European athletes, with most of the stereotypes one would expect to find occupying the team’s roster. Some are just beginning their basketball careers and dream of being discovered by the NBA or a major European club. Others are on a downward spiral and hope to hang on for one more season. One character in the novel is clearly a young Dirk Nowitzki, now an NBA Hall of Famer, who played on the DJK W�rzburg team and was picked in the first round of the 1998 NBA draft.
The novel’s two main characters are Ben and Bo Hadnot, one of the players on the team whose career has seen better days. Ultimately Bo will leave the Landshut team but reappears for a final one-on-one battle with Ben in the division championship game. He also leaves behind his wife, Anke, and young child. Ben begins an affair with the woman, and their relationship forms a backdrop for much of Markovits’ introspective narratives.
PLAYING DAYS captures the “empty time,” the hours and days when players are not preparing for games or practicing. During these moments, the players and management of the Landshut team share their lives and feelings of disconnection and indirection. When Markovits shifts to describing actual games, his knowledge of basketball is clear. Author John McPhee described basketball as “a game of subtle felonies”; the novel makes that point in its on-court action.
It requires a certain skill to write sports fiction and a certain reading interest to pick up a sports-themed novel. If basketball is your thing, then PLAYING DAYS is the book for you.
Reviewed by Stuart Shiffman
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful.
I enjoyed it
By Gualtiero Forte
Solid read from Benjamin Markovits. I picked up a free version from my work's library and got hooked after reading the first few chapters. An interesting look at the life of a semi-professional basketball player in Germany and overall a relatable story of that second coming of age that stems from moving overseas. Reminds me in some ways of 'Playing for Pizza' by John Grisham.
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