D.T. Max on about why ‘David always wanted to be one David’, the solace he found in twelve-step programmes and what his use of wiper-fluid, on a car ride with Jonathan Franzen, reveals about his prose style.
‘Feelings can be very obscure but numbers never lie.’
Kevin Brazil on metrics, obsession and fitness.
‘An intense workout is an ecstasy of punishment packaged as self-improvement.’
Mary Wellesley on exercise, ritual and Barry’s Bootcamp.
‘I was not good at sports because I would not do sports because I did not have the body for sports because I would not do sports.’
Saba Sams on girlhood, embodiment and avoiding sports.
‘Following United rarely brings me any great joy and most often it depresses me. If I could disengage, I would.’
Jonny Thakkar on Manchester United.
‘I deployed my body against an opponent like a blunt and effective instrument.’
John Patrick McHugh on playing Gaelic football.
‘The military recruits around football – they try to pick up the surplus player population. You couldn't make it on the college team? Well, you know, this is kind of similar. Both are violent.’
Nico Walker on American football.
‘Some of these bigger characters, Muhammad Ali or Lennox Lewis, they can become these mythologic, mythological characters, or these godlike figures.’
Declan Ryan on contemporary boxing.
‘It’s more like painting. It’s not like a film.’
Wang Xiaoshuai on the evolution of Chinese cinema and the challenges faced by those working at the vanguard of independent film.
‘Thanks to what Chetan had published, he and his parents were in trouble, and he was exiled from India.’
Fiction by Karan Mahajan.
‘This set of characters are simultaneously medieval kings and modern aristocrats.’
Allen Bratton on adapting the Henriad and his debut novel Henry Henry.
‘The icy hinterland is wretched to live in, but just hospitable enough to allow for the extraction of billions of tons of resources trapped beneath the ground.’
