Legs Hearts Minds: A Guest Post by Chris Jones

In this raw, potent memoir of heartbreak and the life-saving power of fandom, an award-winning sports journalist tells the story of how he hit rock bottom—and the unlikely, unlucky soccer team that would carry him through. Read on for an exclusive essay from Chris Jones on writing Legs Hearts Minds.

I’ve written almost exclusively about other people for more than 25 years. Writing about myself was harder. There were all the practical concerns: the fallibility of memory, the reliving of traumatic events, the costs of self-revelation to you and the people you love. There was also a bigger, structural problem to navigate. Your life, and how you feel about its events, are moving targets. You’re telling a story that’s incomplete. 

The first iteration of the book began with my breakup with my girlfriend on the same day Burnley, the English soccer team I follow and had come to think of as a talisman, were relegated from the Premier League. I thought I’d write a book about trying to rebuild my life over the course of Burnley’s next season, hoping we could make it back up top, together. (Burnley did; I took a little longer.)

But midway through my writing of that book, my mum got sick. I’m a Burnley fan because of her. Burnley are the family club. And what began as a story about the loss of romantic love became a story about the loss of maternal love. I thought I was pretty good at dealing with heartbreak. But my mum’s journey, like Burnley’s triumphs and struggles, taught me much more about loss and its remedies.

So, the book became a grander meditation about grief and how we find our way through it. Soccer played its role for me. It still does. For years, watching Burnley was my way to forget. Now my fandom is an exercise in remembering. My mum’s love for me, and my love for her, doesn’t have an ending, because Burnley’s search for a trophy doesn’t either.

A memoir is like a photograph in that way. It’s a true reflection of a certain moment in time. If you’re lucky, invisible pages, with invisible ink, will follow the last printed page. There are more chapters, the way there are always more games, and more wins and losses. You’re never finished. You’re always just getting started.

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Fever Pitch by Nick Hornby: It’s a classic of the genre, and newly relevant after Arsenal’s Premier League win. Whenever I struggle to explain what my book is about, I just say it’s Fever Pitch but Burnley and sadder. I’m not sure that’s a great marketing strategy.

Blood Horses by John Jeremiah Sullivan: I couldn’t articulate why, but I can remember where I was when I’ve read nearly everything of Sullivan’s that I’ve read.

A Sense of Where You Are by John McPhee: It’s not a memoir, exactly. A young John McPhee wrote a beautiful account of Bill Bradley’s senior season at Princeton. But it’s also about McPhee and his finding his own feet. You can feel him trying to learn something from Bradley while learning of him.

The Game by Ken Dryden: I’m not sure we’ll ever experience a greater polymath. Dryden was a Hall of Fame goaltender, a towering intellectual, a formidable lawyer, and a clear-eyed writer. He was a comet.