Lewis Lapham’s much beloved quarterly of historical essays and speeches takes on sports and games in this summer issue. Nabokov discusses chess, George Plimpton takes dictation from Muhammad Ali, Ovid has Venus recount Atalanta’s foot races against marriage, and Lou Gehrig’s final speech at Yankee Stadium in 1939 is published in its entirety, bringing tears to the eyes. Bullfighting scenes from Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises along with John Steinback’s hilarious extended letter to Sports Illustrated explaining the inexplicability of sports and why he could never write about the subject (in detail), rounds out the issue. Outrageous quotes from Yogi Berra and Charles Barkley are a coda.
