An Outside Chance: Essays on Sport.

New York:: Farrar, Straus, Giroux,, 1980.. First Printing of the First US Edition. A Near Fine copy with a remainder stripe on the bottom edge in a Near Fine, bright unclipped dust jacket. This collection of 18 essays reflects on the subjects of hunting, fishing, sailing, cowboying which includes roping steers and cutting horses. By sport, McGuane means one-on-one Hemingway stuff: fishing and shooting, mostly. And the self-aware dovetailing of writer/predator Papa as model is never far from our minds, either. The studied elegance of this sort of writing if often quite dandy and entertaining. Also, oddly, when McGuane is at his most adolescent, he's the most charming: ""Me and My Bike and Why""--the confessions of an ex-motorcyclist--is funny; and in reading a piece about a difficult horseback trail-ride in winter, you realize that McGuane pleases more when he's recounting failure than success. But a McGuane characteristic from his fiction--snobbery--shows up here, too; and it threatens to sour you on the voice altogether. Anyone here who isn't a male friend or a professional guide falls automatically into categories of pure polyester vulgarian or plunderer, an uncharity that is truly callow. Sport, to McGuane, is an activity of the elect, a heraldry of the ego--and you may feel pretty well blackballed yourself.