Pafko at the Wall: A Novella (edition 2001)

by Don DeLillo

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"There's a long drive. It's gonna be. I believe. The Giants win the pennant. The Giants win the pennant. The Giants win the pennant. The Giants win the pennant." -- Russ Hodges, October 3, 1951 On the fiftieth anniversary of "The Shot Heard Round the World," Don DeLillo reassembles in fiction the larger-than-life characters who on October 3, 1951, witnessed Bobby Thomson's pennant-winning home run in the bottom of the ninth inning. Jackie Gleason is razzing Toots Shor in Leo Durocher's box seats; J. Edgar Hoover, basking in Sinatra's celebrity, is about to be told that the Russians have tested an atomic bomb; and Russ Hodges, raw-throated and excitable, announces the game -- the Giants and the Dodgers at the Polo Grounds in New York. DeLillo's transcendent account of one of the iconic events of the twentieth century is a masterpiece of American sportswriting.… (more)

▾Book information

Member:	kalfatovic
Title:	Pafko at the Wall: A Novella
Authors:	Don DeLillo
Info:	Scribner (2001), Edition: 0, Hardcover, 96 pages
Collections:	ePublications
Rating:
Tags:	2014, ebook, Kindle, baseball, Giants, Dodgers

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Pafko at the Wall: A Novella by Don DeLillo

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This novella artfully combines mid-century mores, sports, and the impending Cold War - https://goo.gl/7Wv248. Well turned phrases, the first Soviet nuclear explosion in Kazakhstan, the ironic fascination J. Edgar Hoover evinces for Pieter Breughel -- it all comes together in this tale of the 1951 Giants winning the pennant. (

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jordanjones | Feb 21, 2020 |

I don't even give a crap about baseball. (

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Adammmmm | Sep 10, 2019 |

This book, drama though it is, is a hoot. DeLillo has assembled a fictional cast witnessing at the Polo Grounds in New York Bobby Thomson's "shot heard around the world", a blast that won the pennant on the final day of the season for the Giants. Present are Frank Sinatra, Jackie Gleason, Toots Shorr and J. Edgar Hoover, along with an assortment of fictional characters who are transformed in various ways by the splendor of the day, the game, and Thomson's iconic blast. This novella is actually a prolgue for DeLillo's novel "Underworld", and it makes me want to read that at least. I have to wonder how much of the stuff about Sinatra, Gleason and Hoover is fictional; did DeLillo discover in his research that they were really in attendance together? (

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burnit99 | Jan 8, 2007 |

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Underworld by Don DeLillo

Norton Introduction to the Short Novel by Jerome Beaty

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Pafko at the Wall

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"There's a long drive. It's gonna be. I believe. The Giants win the pennant. The Giants win the pennant. The Giants win the pennant. The Giants win the pennant." -- Russ Hodges, October 3, 1951 On the fiftieth anniversary of "The Shot Heard Round the World," Don DeLillo reassembles in fiction the larger-than-life characters who on October 3, 1951, witnessed Bobby Thomson's pennant-winning home run in the bottom of the ninth inning. Jackie Gleason is razzing Toots Shor in Leo Durocher's box seats; J. Edgar Hoover, basking in Sinatra's celebrity, is about to be told that the Russians have tested an atomic bomb; and Russ Hodges, raw-throated and excitable, announces the game -- the Giants and the Dodgers at the Polo Grounds in New York. DeLillo's transcendent account of one of the iconic events of the twentieth century is a masterpiece of American sportswriting.

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