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Barney Polan's Game: A Novel of the 1951 College Basketball Scandals | 
 enlarge | Author: Charley Rosen
Publisher: Seven Stories Press
Category: Book
List Price: $23.95
Buy New: $0.90
You Save: $23.05 (96%)
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Avg. Customer Rating:  5 reviews
Sales Rank: 1246065
Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 336
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.2
Dimensions (in): 8.6 x 5.9 x 1.2
ISBN: 1888363568
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
EAN: 9781888363562
ASIN: 1888363568
Publication Date: July 1, 2003
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Shipping: Expedited shipping available
Shipping: International shipping available
Condition: Brand new hard cover book with dust jacket
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Amazon.com Review
The United States love sports. The heroes of diamond, court, and gridiron are worshiped like gods, and when they fall, the impact can crack the foundations of American culture. In 1951, college basketball was rocked by scandal; players, coaches, gamblers, and mobsters had conspired to fix games on a massive scale, bringing the sport to the brink of collapse. Charley Rosen--the author of Scandals of '51, the classic nonfiction account of these events--has written a novel that attempts to dig beneath the headlines and explore the deeper implications for both individuals and the nation. The central character is sportswriter Barney Polan, a would-be Faulkner who finds poetry in college basketball. Polan is a hero in the Willy Loman mold, feeling adrift in a world where the old certainties are disappearing and the nobility of the sport he loves is being swallowed up by greed. His crumbling idealism in the face of scandal and corruption mirrors the broader themes woven through the novel. Rosen allows other characters to take center stage in first-person-narrated chapters that present events from a myriad of perspectives, including those of the players and Johnny Boy Gianelli, the gangster who set the wheels of corruption in motion. This brings a documentary weight to a work that is balanced by rapid-fire, expertly paced writing, particularly in the basketball scenes, making Barney Polan's Game much more than a retelling. Rosen takes one of the great myth-making factories of American culture and uses it to reflect on the enormous changes that swept the country at the beginning of the 1950s--a time when racism and political paranoia began to bubble up though America's postwar optimism. In the clumsy conspiracy of petty gangsters and fresh-faced college boys, Rosen finds a microcosm of the rapidly souring American dream.
Product Description
One of America's foremost basketball novelists takes on the legendary point-shaving scandals of early 1950's college basketball. The book is based in fact but tells the story from a human perspective, weighing the issues of character and morality as only a novel can.
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| Customer Reviews:
 dribbling bits of hilarity May 25, 2006
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
i must tip my proverbial hat to rosen for his comical attempt to personify some of these characters. the dialog spits out in the most vile of all stereotypes. had hip-hop existed in the time frame, i'm sure rosen would've had a few laughable rhymes. all in all though the read is worthy of your time. it rolls out so fast that one is finished before one approaches "waste of time" status. had this pile of words lingered on for much longer, it would qualify as fertilizer. the scene with the pathetic father eating crackers and tomato soup was gut-bustingly good. the descriptions of jerking off are priceless, perhaps suggesting that rosen is indeed himself a chronic wanker. solid, heady material....no doubt.
 good book June 18, 2003
Rosen's very good--and this is a fine and readable book of the early 50's scandals...it's nowhere near, however, the book that Rob Roberge's "Drive" is--by far the best basketball book of recent years. But this was agood read.
College Student's Impression October 8, 1999
I was given this book to read for a literature class at the University of Kansas. (Basketball is literature out here where it was born). The book starts out slow, instead of a begining that has some kind of hook, it muddles around with Barney Polan talking about his gut (Yawn) and the ancient barnacles that once roamed the sport's world. If you like reading the sports section, you'll like this book. Once you get through the first quarter of the book, it picks up speed and complications. By the end I stayed up to finish because I had to know who got caught in the tightening net,and I couldn't concentrate on my homework. The book has a really unique style; it is all first person, but it switches from person to person, so you get inside everyone's mind, sometimes even as they're having a conversation and you get to see their rationalizations, arrogance, fears, and thoughts on how to play basketball. It's also fascinating to see how they all try to outsmart each other, even when they're being outsmarted. Hoop it up Charley!!
 Great material flawed by credibililty questions April 21, 1998
A subject of eternal fascination especially for basketball "nuts" who grew up in New York. We idolized the terribly tarnished CCNY "Wonder Five" who set an unbreakable record by winning both the NIT and NCAA titles in 1950 (it can never be repeated because of the way the tournaments are now scheduled). This book is a fictional addendum to Rosen's non-fiction treatment of the original basketball "scandals", as he outlines in his NPR interview. Unfortunately there are glaring albeit minor errors -- Broadway and 43rd Street cannot be on the east side of Manhattan; Madison Square Garden has been on 23rd Street, and is now above Penn Station; in between it occupied the block bounded by 49th and 50th Streets and Eighth and Ninth Avenues. These errors are particularly galling in a book by a New Yorker who played at Hunter College, and they undermine the author's credibility and care in writing. Since this is a fictionalized account of a real occurrence, the game of who is this really is inescapable. Hence it is most unfortunate that Rosen in his interview avers that some players who were not prosecuted went on to pro careers, and "a couple are in the Hall of Fame." This tarnishes by inclusiveness such stalwarts as Bob Cousy (Holy Cross, '49), Dick McGuire (St. Johns, '48), Bobby Wanzer (Seton Hall, '46), and Frank McGuire, the legendary coach at St. John's, North Carolina and South Carolina.
 Pretty good March 12, 1998
This book will keep your interest because the subject matteris fascinating. Rosen's writing style is direct -which is anotherplus. His portrayals of people and their intrwoven stories are well done. The flaws in the book are such dramatic events such as these could be described in greater detail-detail that could have been gripping. He kind of glosses over some of the actual events opting for recounts. Also, it seems some of the basketbal vernacular sounds like 1998 instead of 1951. This is a minor criticism- and for all I know may be off base as I wasn't around in 1951. In short, I recommend this as a nice, light read. It could have been a little better, but any basketball fan should enjoy reading Barney Polan's Game
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