The Throwback Special

by Chris Bachelder

Overview

Finalist for the National Book Award in Fiction
Winner of The Paris Review's Terry Southern Prize for Humor

"Chris Bachelder is a witty, compassionate troublemaker, and we need more like him." —George Saunders

Here is the absorbing story of twenty-two men who gather every fall to painstakingly reenact what ESPN called “the most shocking play in NFL history” and the Washington Redskins dubbed the “Throwback Special”: the November 1985 play in which the Redskins’ Joe Theismann had his leg horribly broken by Lawrence Taylor of the New York Giants live on Monday Night Football.

With wit and great empathy, Chris Bachelder introduces us to Charles, a psychologist whose expertise is in high demand; George, a garrulous public librarian; Fat Michael, envied and despised by the others for being exquisitely fit; Jeff, a recently divorced man who has become a theorist of marriage; and many more. Over the course of a weekend, the men reveal their secret hopes, fears, and passions as they choose roles, spend a long night of the soul preparing for the play, and finally enact their bizarre ritual for what may be the last time. Along the way, mishaps, misunderstandings, and grievances pile up, and the comforting traditions holding the group together threaten to give way.

The Throwback Special is a moving and comic tale filled with pitch-perfect observations about manhood, marriage, middle age, and the rituals we all enact as part of being alive.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780393353785
Publisher:	Norton, W. W. & Company, Inc.
Publication date:	02/07/2017
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	224
Sales rank:	549,244
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.10(h) x 0.60(d)

About the Author

Chris Bachelder is the author of four novels, including National Book Award finalist The Throwback Special. He lives in Cincinnati, Ohio.

Editorial Reviews

"[Bachelder] excels as an analyst of the anxieties that undergird social mores."

The New Yorker - Miranda Popkey

"A hilarious literary novel about our least hilarious—and least literary—national pastime. No one who reads it will ever be able to think about football, Joe Theismann, Lawrence Taylor, or indeed the male psyche in quite the same way again."

Tom Bissell

"Bachelder’s quirky, defiant style…achieves something fresh and surprising."

Dallas Morning News - Chris Tucker

"[The Throwback Special] is not about football. But about relationships and all that go with them: trust, mistrust, joy, sadness, elation, heartbreak and more."

Memphis Daily News - Vic Fleming

"What a brilliant book!"

Kevin Wilson

…wistful and elegantly written…Chris Bachelder plays Jane Goodall to a large group of middle-aged men who assume the role of his chimpanzees. Bachelder observes their rituals with a blend of affection and befuddlement over the course of a weekend, when they have gathered to take part in an activity that feels somehow both wildly imaginative and completely familiar…[The] imaginative freshness [of Bachelder's conceit] allows for sly new questions to be implicitly asked about men's relationship to sports, to violence, to nostalgia and to one another…When Bachelder steps right up to the edge of the sentimental while remaining in full control of his tone, The Throwback Special conjures the rewarding melancholy of Richard Ford's Frank Bascombe novels. But whereas Ford's books are deep dives into a single consciousness, The Throwback Special is about how groups of men interact with one another in a way that nearly subsumes their individuality. What Bachelder is after, and often captures, is akin to the noise he describes at one point emanating from the hotel lobby: "waves of masculine sound, the toneless song of regret and exclamation."

The New York Times Book Review - John Williams

01/11/2016
A real-life football tragedy—the sacking of Washington Redskins quarterback Joe Theismann by New York Giants linebacker Lawrence Taylor in a 1985 game, and the career-ending injury that Theismann sustained as a result—is the foundation of this wryly amusing rumination on manhood and male bonding. Every year for the past 16 years, 22 men have convened at a hotel at an unnamed location off of Interstate 95 to physically re-enact the historic game. What at first seems a slightly screwball form of fantasy football—the men are assigned their roles through a lottery governed by an idiosyncratically detailed set of rules—gradually reveals itself to be a metaphor-rich elaboration of the rules and regulations that shape mature male life. As the men discuss their static marriages and their difficult relationships with their children, the allure of the game—especially the time before the fateful play when “the things that had not happened yet were greater than the things that had happened”—becomes clear. Although Bachelder’s (U.S.!) characters sometimes blend indistinguishably into one another—perhaps not unintentionally—the anxieties and concerns that define them are genuine. One man, considering why people marry, theorizes that “the only thing marriage can really give you is the sense that your life is witnessed by another person.” In one hilarious scene, three men supposedly step out to share a ritual smoke, making it awkwardly impossible for each to reveal to the others that he gave up smoking that year. Filled with subtle humor and incisive insights, Bachelder’s novel will resonate with anyone who has pondered the game of life. (Mar.)

Publishers Weekly

"Bachelder reveals the magic of professional sport spectating, the silliness and profundity of traditions, and the tender illogic of friendship. . . . There is absolutely something for everyone (even the sports-averse) in this rollicking, irreverent but sweet human drama."

Shelf Awareness (starred review) - Julia Jenkins

"A comic meditation about marriage, ritual, friendship, parenthood, aging, and unlikely obsessions, The Throwback Special is a funny, insightful, and surprisingly poignant book."

Julie Schumacher

"A gem . . . Bachelder’s ‘football’ novel is an eerie, witty work dissecting a modern-day sacrificial ritual."

The Millions - Matt Seidel

"Powerful, intelligent, and entertaining. . . . Chris Bachelder works a kind of poignant comedic magic, expertly locating and drawing out central truths about life."

Los Angeles Times Book Review - Drew Nellins Smith

"Wistful and elegantly written…The Throwback Special conjures the rewarding melancholy of Richard Ford’s Frank Bascombe novels"

John Williams

"The Throwback Special is 2016’s first Great Book. . . . A hilariously sorrowful rendering of American masculinity and a wise, patient examination of American culture."

Minneapolis Star Tribune - Weston Cutter

As a group of men bring their own emotional baggage to their football-obsessed reunion, R.C. Bray delivers his usual solid narration. He shifts his tones slightly but enough to put the listener in the motel with the men, revealing their foibles as the story progresses. The narrator’s role in this book is a descriptive one, and Bray is a good guide. His narration becomes extra important because this is a rare instance when there almost isn’t a protagonist. The author’s well-written story—which alternates between serious and laugh-out-loud funny—uses quarterback Joe Theismann’s 1985 injury, a broken leg, as a McGuffin. M.B. © AudioFile 2016, Portland, Maine

DECEMBER 2016 - AudioFile