Brooks on Books: Semi-Tough by Dan Jenkins

Let's say good-bye to football season with a look at this 1977 novel. Now, I've read a lot of books and a fair number of novels in my lifetime. I don't know offhand how many sports novels I've read, though, so I may not have the best credentials, but I'll say this: Dan Jenkins' football novel "Semi-Tough" must be one of the best and funniest sports novels ever written. It has to be.

The conceit is that we are reading the transcribed dictations of star Giants running back Billy Clyde Puckett, mostly dictated during the weekend leading up to the Super Bowl against the "dog-ass" Jets, as Billy Clyde refers to them about a thousand times. It sounds simple, and it is, as we get a breezy read written in Puckett's "down-home" but razor-sharp voice. However, within this gimmick, we also get a whole lot of material for an alleged several days of audio recordings.

On one level, the book is a diary of a fictional pro football player, a work that takes us into the locker room and beyond to give a riotous and insightful look at the sport behind the scenes. We also become well acquainted with the other two points of the trio of lifelong friends that form the book's core: wide receiver Marvin "Shake" Tiller and his girlfriend Barbara Jean.

But through Puckett's narration, Jenkins also examines racism, friendship, love, materialism, popular culture, big business, and a host of other topics. The deceptively casual style of the book often belies its depth. Don't underestimate the narrator's intelligence just because of his Southern dialect and name. The character is a canny commentator with a fine eye for detail and a great wit. Yet he's credible throughout as a professional football player. You never get the feeling Jenkins is forcing his own authorial voice at the expense of his characters.

One might also underestimate "Semi-Tough" because of its no-holds-barred profanity, sex, and other adult themes. Of course, one might also embrace the book BECAUSE OF those things. Either way, this is an adult book all the way. It's often juvenile--one character's defining characteristic is his unparalleled ability to summon awe-inspiring flatulence at will--but never too much so. There's stupid crude and funny crude, and this novel is the latter, though for many, it may skirt the line.

Just as it still seems raunchy nearly 40 years later, it's also still relevant. Jenkins, a former sportswriter, gets a lot of football in here, describing some of the subtleties of the game on the field and poking fun at the corporate nature of it off the field. Even then, Jenkins saw the NFL as overcommercialized, and his comedic expression of that holds up well today. His exploration of race, particularly race relations in the locker room, may shock more today, actually. I get the sense that Jenkins is of the "let's just put all our cards on the table and not be afraid to offend anybody" school of fighting racism, and he sure gets them on the table right from the get-go.

Ultimately, it all comes back to the laughs. This is a hilarious novel, and even when it gets a tad more philosophical at the end, it never fails to entertain. "Semi-Tough" is a fast read but an engrossing and rewarding one. Anyone going through pro football withdrawal after the Super Bowl can do themselves a big favor by picking it up.