‘playing football fiction’: leveraging the strengths of autodiegesis...

‘Playing Football Fiction’:

Leveraging the strengths of autodiegesis in a football narrative.

A novel and exegesis by Lee McGowan

Creative Industries Faculty Queensland University of Technology Research MA in Creative Writing submitted 2007

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‘Playing Football Fiction’: Leveraging the strengths of autodiegesis in a football narrative.

Table of Contents

ABSTRACT..................................................................................................... 2

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ............................................................................... 4

STATEMENT OF ORIGINALITY..................................................................... 5

AUTHOR’S NOTE:.......................................................................................... 6

SOME TARTAN HYDE ................................................................................... 8

LEVERAGING THE STRENGTHS OF AUTODIEGESIS IN A FOOTBALL NARRATIVE................................................................................................ 192

1. Introduction ...........................................................................................................................................193 1.1 Autodiegesis and football fiction – an overview............................................................................193 1.2 Methodology ....................................................................................................................................196

2. Point of view and football fiction ........................................................................................................199 2.1 Autodiegesis .....................................................................................................................................201 2.2 Diegesis in football fiction ..............................................................................................................209 2.3 Strength and Weakness in the use of present tense autodiegesis ..................................................215 2.4 Leveraging the strengths..................................................................................................................221

3. Case studies ............................................................................................................................................223 3.1 Third person heterodiegesis in football fiction narratives .............................................................223 3.2 Autiodiegesis in football fiction narratives ....................................................................................225 3.3 Some Tartan Hyde ...........................................................................................................................228

4. Conclusion ..............................................................................................................................................233

BIBLIOGRAPHY......................................................................................... 235

APPENDIX .................................................................................................. 242

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Abstract

This thesis consists of a novel, Some Tartan Hyde, and an exegesis, Playing Football

Fiction: Leveraging the strengths of autodiegesis in a football narrative and will

address my research question; How do I leverage the strengths of an autodiegetic

narrator to represent ‘playing football fiction’ in an engaging way?

Some Tartan Hyde is the story of immigrant Mish Gordon, an amateur footballer, who

joins a local team to help him become more comfortable in his new surroundings. He

is having trouble settling into life in a new country and getting his head around

cultural barriers.

The protagonist’s dealings with these issues and his character development are

symbolised and paralleled in the football games that periodically take place within the

narrative. Some Tartan Hyde is written in a present tense autodiegetic perspective.

Approximately 25% of the page space is given over to ‘playing football fiction’.

The exegesis explores the portrayal of the football game events from a player’s real-

time on the pitch perspective. It examines the use of present tense autodiegesis within

the broader football fiction genre, and the strengths and weaknesses associated with

using the perspective as a means of narration. It will then examine Some Tartan Hyde

and consider the level of success and previously unrealised benefits achieved in using

this perspective in a football fiction narrative.

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Together, the elements of this practice-led research will present an overview of the

historical and contemporary developments and understanding of the autodiegetic

perspective, address the dominant perspectives within the genre, offer an

interpretation of the conventions as they have been presented in football fiction, and

examine the context of a new approach in a novel-length work of creative writing

research.

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Acknowledgements

Bolland, you are a champion supervisor; Bourke, your brain is immensely impressive,

but best of all, you are the best of people. Thank you.

To QUT and the opportunity of a lifetime, I am immensely grateful.

Leah, I am grateful to you for a whole lot more than the patience you offer, the

support you too willingly give and the relentless belief you have in a wee soul like

me. Dear sweet wife of mine, with all the love I have, I thank you.

To H & H for missing your Dad and never complaining, I promise to make it up to

you.

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Statement of Originality To the best of my knowledge, the work contains no material previously published or

written by another person except where due reference is made in the work itself.

Signed: _______________________

Date: _______________________

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Author’s Note: This creative writing research thesis consists of a novel, Some Tartan Hyde, and an

exegesis. The novel is presented first as it is important that the reader to encounter the

creative piece before the exegetical work.

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‘Playing Football Fiction’:

Leveraging the strengths of autodiegesis in a football

narrative.

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1. Introduction

I've never particularly wanted to read a football novel. Like most football

fans, I suspect, I wouldn't believe in a Melchester Rovers, nor in a player

I'd never heard of. And I'm not sure what the POINT of such a book would

be. Real-life sport already contains all the themes and narratives you could

want.

Nick Hornby

(http://www.penguin.co.uk/static/cs/uk/0/minisites/nickhornby/faq/index.h

tml accessed September 27, 2006)

1.1 Autodiegesis and football fiction – an overview

I am a fan of football. I was also a very ordinary enthusiastic amateur player. It led

one unscrupulous coach to tell me, “you certainly don't have the skill, but you have

the heart”. Patronization aside, I enjoyed playing a great deal. Being a voracious

reader I have enjoyed reading about “the beautiful game” (Pele and Fish 1977, 1)

since I was a wee boy reading boys' own adventure stories, Melchester Rovers

included.

Roy Race played for Melchester Rovers in Roy of the Rovers, a comic strip created by

Frank Pepper in 1954. Roy, a golden-maned, midfield maestro and resolute good

sportsman, could play equally well with both feet. He was a visionary who dominated

every game he played. Time and time again, Roy and his team mates snatched victory

from the jaws of insurmountable odds.

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He is also, arguably, the single most common first point of contact for readers of

football fiction of any age until the 1990s, when the comic officially folded after

almost 40 years. Roy’s adventures, as player and manager, have since been

resurrected several times, most recently in February 2007 when the publishing rights

were obtained by English fanzine Players Inc who will publish both new and original

Roy of the Rovers stories (The Independent 2007,1).

Roy, like a large part of the other football fiction I have read, was and continues to

contribute to the issues I address in my research. Like his more erudite football

writing counterparts, including John King, Hunter Davies and Will Buckley, the story

is presented most commonly from a third and/or first person perspective where the

primary objective is to convey an interest in the game as an observer - a spectator or

fan.

As a player and a writer with an interest in football fiction from an on-the-pitch point

of view, I have always been interested in how to capture the game as it is happening,

from the player’s perspective; what I see as the ‘playing football fiction’.

Like football fiction writer Will Buckley (2005, 1), I often wondered why so much is

written about football and yet so very little of it is fiction – unless of course you count

the spurious sensationalism used to fill tabloid newspapers sports sections.

I have played and read football almost all my life. I understand it so well, along with

every fan, I believe, given the chance, I could do a better job than the highly

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remunerated coach of my favorite team. In the absence of a job at Celtic, Liverpool or

Real Madrid, I decided to write about it. I needed to find a way to translate my

knowledge and understanding of the game onto the page, to capture it in a literary

form, to simultaneously engage the novice and the expert and, more difficult still, to

make it worth reading.

Except in extremely rare examples in short stories, a football narrative from a ‘playing

football fiction’ perspective had, to my knowledge, not appeared. I wanted to know

why this was so and if it was possible to fill the gap. I feared it might be a dull way to

portray what is, essentially, an exciting event. At worst, I was concerned that it would

not make sense to the uninitiated.

Nevertheless, it was important to me to pry open the ‘cultural’ window of the football

player. The actual playing of the game is so important to players and fans alike, and

endlessly over-analysed, yet the singular experience, the player’s attitudes, emotions,

and perspective, contained within the game’s 90 minutes are very rarely documented.

Here was a unique opportunity to gain, or offer an insight into the sport from the mind

of a protagonist.

While football fiction sits comfortably in broader genre dug-outs like lad fiction and

sports fiction, my challenge for the creative piece of this Research MA was to write a

present tense, autodiegetically-narrated work of ‘playing football fiction’ that could

just as comfortably sit on the same bench.

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1.2 Methodology

This thesis consists of a novel, Some Tartan Hyde, and an exegesis, Playing Football

Fiction: Leveraging the strengths of autodiegesis in a football narrative and will

address my research question; How do I leverage the strengths of an autodiegetic

narrator to represent ‘playing football fiction’ in an engaging way?

Different research methodologies were used to create each of these pieces, as outlined

in the remainder of this section.

1.2.1 – Creative methodology

The thesis as a whole is a practitioner’s account, as opposed to a theorist’s, and should

contribute to the body of knowledge around narrative by providing a close

examination of a genre-specific narrative. It is an examination of my research

question and the practice-led research undertaken as a result.

I have found Haseman’s (2006, 99-100) articulation of performative research to be

particularly helpful in defining my research. I see the core of my thesis being the

creative work, with the exegetical arising from a situated problem within the creative

process.

There is some slippage between the methodological terms ‘practice led’ and

‘performative’ research and my methodology in creating the novel borrows from both.

Haseman notes that some qualitative researchers have become equally frustrated with

the rigours of discursive textual qualitative outcomes and their inductive methods of

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enquiry as they have with numerically dominated quantitative or scientific methods of

enquiry. This frustration, likely to stem from the qualitative method’s concern “with

the improvement of practice”, is understandable in reporting creative practices such as

art, theatre and creative writing through traditional methods (ibid).

Performative research offers an alternative paradigm to the traditional demarcation of

the boundaries differentiating quantitative and qualitative research that will, “not only

place practice within the research process, but…lead research through practice” (ibid),

where key characteristics of performative research strategies are accepting the need of

practice-led researchers to “construct experiential starting points from which the

practice follows” (ibid) and make research claims that are made in the “symbolic

language and form of their practice” (ibid).

My own thesis bears these characteristics, particularly where new epistemologies of

practice are “distilled from the insider’s understanding of action in context,” (ibid,

100). As a novelist, I also concur with Brien, who observes that “creative practice as

research in creative writing comprises a number of interlinked components, including

the physical act of writing” (2006, 54).

Written from a present tense autodiegetic perspective, with approximately 25% of the

page space given over to ‘playing football’ game time, Some Tartan Hyde is the story

of immigrant Mish Gordon, an amateur footballer, who joins a local team to help him

become more comfortable in his new surroundings. He has trouble settling into life in

a new country and getting his head around cultural barriers. These issues and his

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character’s development are symbolised and paralleled in the football games that take

place within the narrative.

1.2.2 – Exegetical methodology

This exegesis looks at the portrayal of the football game events from a player’s real-

time ‘playing football fiction’ perspective, and examines the use of autodiegesis

within the football fiction genre.

In line with de Freitas’ view of what an exegesis should contain, this thesis is an

examination and interpretation of my own creative work. It will place the work in the

creative football fiction context, discuss the methods of approach and theoretical

underpinnings, identify and discuss issues tackled in and during the creative practice,

describe practical responses to the research question and provide evidence through the

development of the creative piece, (adapted from de Freitas 2002, 1).

While the creative piece and this exegesis inform and influence each other, the

combination of these elements–the interlinked components–culminates in the

‘symbolic data’ (Haseman 2006, 103) that simultaneously expresses the research and,

in its expression, becomes the research (ibid).

My creative writing/research method, in closely following the “exploratory cycle of

reading, writing, testing, reading, rewriting, retesting” (Brien 2006, 57), resembles the

“fluid, open and responsive” Action Research Spiral posited by Kemmis and

McTaggart (in Denzin & Lincoln 2005, 565). I have followed Schön by reflecting in

action and on it (in Haseman 2006, 100), a view supported by Stake, who frames

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reflective practice as the act of “placing the intellect in the thick of it” (2005, 445). As

a method of enquiry, my research practice draws on elements of qualitative research

and on the fundamental elements of Haseman’s performative research (2006, 109-

106).

The first section of my research, the literature review, will present a brief overview of

the historical and contemporary development and understanding of the autodiegetic

perspective. Section 2 addresses the dominant perspectives within the genre and offers

an interpretation of the conventions as they have been presented in football fiction.

Section 3 is a reflective consideration of my own work. I examine the use of present

tense autodiegesis within the broader football fiction genre, and the strengths and

weaknesses associated with using the perspective as a means of narration. I consider

the level of success and previously-unrealised benefits achieved in using this

perspective in a football fiction narrative. I also contextually consider the key theories

that enabled the development and understanding of the autodiegetic perspective.

2. Point of view and football fiction

I chose to use present tense autodiegesis when writing the novel because it offers a

greater intimacy and immediacy to a rare point of view of football, a subject which

has a great deal written about it from many other perspectives.

The narrator’s lack of distance from his story allows, I would argue, a more emotive

communication of ‘playing football fiction’. It allows the reader a degree of insight

into the game from a player’s perspective, to experience the same “physical,

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emotional and intellectual challenges”(Prince 1982, 13), while overcoming lack of

football knowledge or understanding.

This penetration of a cultural perspective also allows a singular individual exploration

from the Scottish migrant experience in Australia. It is possible that a reader could

gain more knowledge of the game from this first hand perspective than other more

orthodox methods of learning. I would also argue that the football provides an

entertaining vehicle for themes and character relationships in the creative work.

An additional impact first person autodiegesis has on the narrative arc of the

protagonist can be demonstrated through significant development in his emotional

maturity. I would argue the reader is offered an embodied experience reliant on real

time momentary, and sometimes flawed, information rather than a holistic point of

view. Being placed in ‘thick of the action’ (Leaska 1996, 159), the reader is able to

determine their own view, despite the values placed on events or actions by the

narrator.

I therefore forward the notion that it can be used to offer a unique, entertaining and

informative insight into the game as it is played, and positively affect the narrative arc

of the story and the development of the central character.

In order to unpack my reasoning here, I will go on in this section to look at some

theoretical notions around diegesis. Section 2.1 provides an overview of theoretical

development underpinning autodiegesis. Section 2.2 considers diegetic devices in use

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in football fiction. Section 2.3 examines the strengths and weaknesses of the

perspective and section 2.4 considers my own use of it.

2.1 Autodiegesis

A tale conceived in a particular way has certain affective potentialities

over a reader’s feelings and attitudes…how the tale is presented to the

reader will determine whether those affective potentialities either become

vivid or remain lifeless on the page.

Leaska (1996, 159)

It is beyond the scope of this paper to fully unpack the historical development,

arguments and theories of notable contributors to the narratological body of

knowledge such as Peter Rabinowitz, John R. Searle, Mary Louise Pratt, Wolfgang

Iser and Robyn Warhol, and others referenced throughout this paper (Keen 2003, 10).

I will examine autodiegesis as a narrative perspective, and the notion of focalization

as it relates to autodiegesis. In order to do so, there are a number of contextual

theoretical distinctions to be made. I have outlined the more salient developments that

place autodiegetic perspective within the context of narrative theory.

2.1.1 Context

Contemporary creative writing textbooks often reflect the broad categories of

narrative point of view as they are most commonly referred to. In Grenville (1990, 61-

62) and Hodgins (1993, 186-188) the categories are as simple as first person (‘I

kicked the ball’), second person (‘you kicked the ball’) and third person (‘she kicked

the ball’). The third person perspective is commonly split further into omniscient (‘she

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kicked the ball and the goalkeeper thought he had it’) and limited omniscient (‘she

kicked the ball, she hoped the keeper would miss it’) perspectives (Hodgins1993,

188). Hoffman and Murphy (1996, 116), in highlighting Wayne Booth’s argument

that distinctions beyond these categorisations need to be considered and reflecting

Leaska (1996, 158-171), have reinforced my own view, experientially learned through

the Research MA process, that while the broad categories offer useful distinctions,

they are over-simplistic.

Since Henry James outlined his concerns with problems in achieving greater reality

through literary and, more specifically, narrative methods, and Percy Lubbock, in

developing James’ ideas about “the proper handling of plot, character and the ‘center

of consciousness’” (Keen 2003, 8), formulated point of view into a rigid and coherent,

if transmuted, concept (Leaska 1996, 158), the notion of the narrative perspective has

been developed and analysed well beyond the broad categories I started with on this

journey.

Wayne Booth, despite the heavy criticism regimented statement of theory received,

used Lubbock's work as the basis for his own significant revision of point of view (in

Leaska 1996, 159). His efforts are commended in The Essentials of the Theory of

Fiction (1996) by Hoffman and Murphy (1996, 116).

The relationship between the reader and the text in Booth’s model (ibid) has three

modes of narration. The model reflects the ‘implied author’ as having no distinct

narrator and works as a kind of hands-on stage management. The ‘undramatised

narrator’ sees the author and narrator as separate, where the story passes “through the

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consciousness” of the storyteller. The third element of the model, the ‘dramatised

narrator’, is based on Lubbock’s adaptation of James’s ‘reflector-character’, it offers

the closest view of the narrative in one of two ways, as the finessed “complex mental

experience” or the “turbid, sense-bound 'camera eye'” (Booth 1996, 122).

In The Concept of Point of View (1996, 158-171), Mitchell Leaska suggests there is

more to perspective than the first/second/third person point of view of a narrator. In

the case of Some Tartan Hyde, Leaska’s question of who the narrator is (in Hoffmann

& Murphy 1996, 159), seems to be a simple answer: the protagonist, Mish Gordon, a

mediocre immigrant football player. However, the issue here is how the diegesis–the

telling (Keen 2003, 8), the “affective potentialities over a reader’s feelings and

attitudes”, and the difference, on Leaska’s suggested scale between the ‘vivid’ and the

‘lifeless’ (1996, 159) –will function.

Having chosen autodiegesis as my “narrative strategy” (Card 1988, 129), narrator

reliability and unreliability (Chatman, 1990), focalization (Genette, 1980), tense, and

the point of view or perspective of the narrator are among the key factors placed

between Leaska’s ‘vivid’ or ‘lifeless’ (1996, 159) stages of narrator’s participation or

mediacy.

2.1.2 Autodiegesis

While Booth (1996, 122) provides useful parameters for distinction in levels of

narration, it is Stanzel (1986, 4-5) who articulates the essence of a narrative in terms

of the generic concept of mediacy. By offering what I feel is the more pragmatic

model, if only because it facilitated my understanding of the theories of Gerard

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Genette, who, in his work Narrative Discourse (1980), compartmentalised diegesis

and developed a theoretical framework for focalization, Stanzel (1986, 4-5) suggests

three narrative situations that are at once similar and more exacting than those

outlined in 2.1.1. The first, the ‘first person narrative situation’ is the place where the

mediator is a character and belongs to the world of the other characters; this

perspective describes the narrator of Some Tartan Hyde and offers an excellent

theoretical understanding of Mish’s point of view. Stanzel’s other narrative

distinctions are the ‘authorial narrative situation’ where the narrator exists outside the

world of the characters and the ‘figural narrative situation’ where a character is less

the mediator and more the reflector who does not speak directly to the reader as a

narrator.

Gerard Genette, as outlined in Chatman (1990, 120), breaks down point of view into

two distinct categories: the ‘homodiegetic narrator’ as a character in the story who

witnesses the events, in a similar way to Stanzel’s ‘first person narrative situation’

(1986, 4), and the ‘heterodiegetic narrator’ as a reporter of the story who is not

involved, similar to Stanzel’s ‘authorial narrative situation’ (1986, 5). Building on

this, Genette, further distinguishes his categorisations, by arguing that there are

varying degrees of both hetero- and homodiegetic narration (1980, 248). By defining

their relationship with the story, he places the narrator into one of following

paradigms:

(1) extradiegetic-heterodiegetic, a narrator telling a story they are absent from;

(2) extradiegetic-homodiegetic, a narrator as a character telling the story from outside

the story;

(3) intradiegetic-heterodiegetic a narrator inside the story, but not a character; and

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(4) intradiegetic-homodiegetic, a narrator as a character inside the story (Genette

1980, 248).

Genette uses Homer to illustrate extradiegetic-heterodiegesis, an example of a first

person narrator absent from the story he tells. For intradiegetic-heterodiegesis, he

uses Gil Blas (Marcel) as a narrator “in the first degree who tells his own story”

(1980, 248). In Some Tartan Hyde, the protagonist, Mish Gordon, is a character in his

world, reporting on his world as he willingly or unwittingly shapes it: an intradiegetic-

homodiegetic narrator.

Nieragden (2002, 687-696), in adopting Lanser’s Narrative Act (1981) model of

degrees of autodiegecity as a formal breakdown of the varying levels of homodiegetic

narration, (see Figure 1) offers further refinement to Genette’s hetero-homo diegesis

model.

Homodiegetic Narration

Autodiegetic Narration Alterodiegetic Narration

Sole Protagonist Co-Protagonist Minor Character Witness-Participant Uninvolved-eyewitness

high high-medium medium medium-low low

Degree of autodiegecity

Figure 1. Subtypes of homodiegetic narrators according to their degree of autodiegeticity

(Nieragden 2002, 689).

In Nieragden’s view, the autodiegetic narrator is the internal focalisation of a sole

protagonist. It offers a personalised, if limited, view of the protagonist’s experiences

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within a particular narrative structure where the narrative behaves in its most straight-

forward form, the telling or showing of a story (Keen 2003, 32).

Mish Gordon, the ‘sole protagonist’ of Some Tartan Hyde, is a narrator telling the

story from within his own story. This perspective allows me use of the unique ‘from

the pitch’ view of the football game events as they unfold in a ‘playing football

fiction’ context. While this is discussed further in section 2.4, it is important in the

context of the research to consider ‘focalization’ (Genette 1980, 189) before I proceed

with an examination of the genre of Some Tartan Hyde.

2.1.3 Focalization

Nieragden notes that a character’s perspective cannot be autonomous, “The 'What?'

and the 'How' of a character’s perception of the objects (situations, actions, persons)

of his or her (fictive) world always form part of the narrative act” (2002, 690). How

then, does the narrator–in my case, a present tense autodiegetic, immigrant amateur

footballer–see and place the story they are telling, the action, on-the-field, as it is

happening in and around them?

Focalization, “the point from which the elements are viewed” (Bal, in Nieragden

2002, 691) is a term Genette lifted from its use in film study and applied to

narratology (Bal 1996, 116). Chatman (1990, 143) argues that focalization is the

Genettian differentiation between point of view and voice, which blurs the distinction

between the story and discourse (1990, 143). Bal, in refining it, sees focalization as

the “relationship between the ‘vision’, the agent that sees and that which is seen”

(1996, 116). In my own work, in terms of mediacy (Stanzel 1986, 10), this is the

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relationship between what happens on the pitch, how Mish sees the game unfolding

and how the reader interprets it.

Genette (1980, 189), arguably complicating things a little further, splits the mediation

of focalization into two categories. ‘Nonfocalization' or ‘zero focalization’ and

‘internal focalization’. Where non-focalization is often regarded as the classic

narrative (ibid), internal focalization is subdivided into three modes, they are ‘fixed’,

‘variable’ and ‘multiple’. The fixed internal focalization, with its “restriction of field”

(ibid), is the highly personalised perspective used by the autodiegetic narrator in Some

Tartan Hyde.

Genette (in Nieragden 2002, 690) offers a differentiation between narratological point

of view and focalization that is useful in framing my understanding of narrative

perspectives. Onega and Landa consider Genette’s work as having, “corrected

preceding theories of narrative point of view, like those of Norman Friedman and

Wayne Booth, by separating the functions of the focalizer – who sees – and narrator –

who tells” (1996, 115). Bal, more controversially, insists that focalization is “the

subtle means of manipulating the information presented to the reader” (in Onega &

Landa 1996,115). This alludes to what I see as the inherent difficulties arising from, in

the case of Some Tartan Hyde, the choice of tense and the level of spin offered by the

narrator, particularly as a ‘fixed internal focalization’. In line with Bal’s view (1996,

117), events or ‘objects’ in Some Tartan Hyde, are seen from a specific angle: that of

Mish Gordon, with their own built-in value/judgement system and, predominantly,

from the present tense, the “Here and Now” (Stanzel 1986, 220). While this attitudinal

perspective develops as he grows as a person, the angle and tense do not change. Mish

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Gordon’s narrative point of view – the autodiegetic perspective – is closely aligned

with how he sees the game because it is happening in the present tense (see section

2.1.4). He literally tells it as he sees it, with no hindrance of informed judgement,

hindsight (Keen 2003, 34) or the ‘distance’ (Prince 1982, 16) from the events.

2.1.4 Tense

Todorov (1966) defines tense as the means “in which the relationship between the

time of the story and the time of the discourse is expressed” (in Genette 1980, 29).

Genette sees the “narrated discourse” (1980, 31) as the extent to which it tells a story

and that someone tells it (ibid). Paying scant attention to the importance of tense,

Genette appears to write it off as a null factor, seeing it as one contributor to the

degree of narrative information that furnishes the reader with more or less detail; a

small part of his much broader grammatical category: Mood (1980, 161).

Where he does deal with tense explicitly in first person narration, it is as reminiscence

rather than present tense (ibid, 168). Genette builds on Mendilow’s (1952) articulation

that first person novels rarely succeed in portraying or capturing the intimacy of

immediacy and that the core of such a work is that it is retrospective. He asserts that

there is the barrier of temporal distance between the fictional time – when the events

occur – and the narrator’s actual time – the recording of events and the notion that

there is any significant difference between writing a story moving forward from a

point in the past and writing one to the past from the present. Genette puts forward the

view that any “temporal distance between the story and the narrating instance

involves no modal distance between the story and the narrative” and therefore suffers

“no loss or weakening of the mimetic illusion” (in Genette 1980, 168).

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For Genette, the reader is not affected by the intensity of the mediation. This is why I

believe tense, in this case present tense, is less important for Genette. This is a curious

omission by the theorist, as it could be argued that tense and focalization are

axiomatically entwined.

There are a number of other practical strengths and weaknesses that result directly

from my choice of narrative perspective and tense. They will be considered in section

2.4 of this paper. I must place autodiegetic narration within the wider context of the

diegeses used in and across the football fiction genre before the relationship between

football fiction narratives and autodiegesis is examined.

2.2 Diegesis in football fiction

Printed works on football range from historical perspectives and fanzines to literature

and popular fiction, celebrating every aspect of the game from equipment and stadia

to hooliganism and the cult of the ‘soccer’ celebrity. Fictional perspectives offering an

understanding of the game as it is played are much less common. Consequently, it

should not be surprising that there is a proportionately limited range of diegetic

devices in common use. What follows is an exploration and examination of the most

favoured forms currently used within football fiction.

2.2.1 Fiction versus non-fiction

My primary interests are in the writing and construction of football fiction narratives,

I have therefore chosen to concentrate on analysing works of fiction in this exegesis.

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Due to their prevalence, however, a brief note on diegetic devices in non-fiction

football narratives is called for.

It would appear that everyone from commentators, managers, players and referees to

groundsmen, fans, hooligans and ticket scalpers, has written, ghost-written or inspired

real life stories for some form of auto- or biographical football text. A quick scan of

any bookshop or search on the internet will highlight the enormous abundance of non-

fiction football books. Outnumbering football fiction books, in my estimate, by a ratio

of approximately 20:11 they are the most common form of football narrative.

They are also often incredibly dull. Quantative accounts of players’ careers such as

Kenny Dalglish: My Autobiography (1997) by Kenny Dalglish and Henry Winter, and

Managing My Life: The Autobiography (2000) by Alex Ferguson and Hugh

McIlvanney are two such examples. General apologies and justifications for

wrongdoings on, and off, the pitch like Addicted (1999), Tony Adams’s

autobiography (by Adams and Ian Ridley), are also among the most popular.

Occasionally these works can be very entertaining, colourful and controversial. Full

Time: The Secret Life of Tony Cascarino (2005) by Cascarino and Paul Kimmage and

Hunter Davies’s The Glory Road (2001) are two such examples.

These works can also provide insightful slices of real-life football like Jeff Connor’s

Pointless, Left Foot Forward (1996) by Garry Nelson or Sheilas, Wogs and Poofters

1 This ratio is based on search engine returns of football, football fiction and soccer and soccer fiction searches on the internet particularly in Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk, Sportsbooksdirect.co.uk, footballheaven.net, football-books.com, a wide range of more generalised online book stores including the book people, word power, barnes and noble, and both Brisbane City Library services and Logan City Library services catalogues.

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(2003) by Johnny Warren. They can even, on occasion, be inspirational, like the

eloquent Football in Sun and Shadow (2003) by Eduardo Galeano.

It is worth noting, however, that the while use of the first person homodiegetic

perspective dominates these works of non-fiction, in my reading of them, I have yet to

discover any work that presents ‘playing football’ from the present tense perspective.

In Nick Hornby’s much lauded Fever Pitch (1992), the football games are described

from a historic or a spectator’s point of view, “At the beginning of the second half,

Mick Jones wriggled to bye line and crossed for Alan Clarke to score,” (Hornby 1992,

65). This is typical of the presentation of ‘playing football’ within the genre, whether

it is written homo or heterodiegetically.

2.2.2 Prevalence of third person heterodiegesis

Unlike non-fiction, instances of the first person homodiegetic narrative are sparse in

contemporary football fiction. To identify the breadth of narrative approaches in use, I

have surveyed 52 (see the appendix) of the most popular (and, it might therefore be

argued, most culturally pervasive) titles in the genre. Approximately 75%2 are third

person heterodiegetic.

These works include, for better or for worse, Des Dillon’s Return of the Busby Babes

(2000), Dominic Holland’s The Ripple Effect (2004), The Season Ticket (2000) by

Jonathon Tulloch, The Van (1991) by Roddy Doyle, Sexy Football (2004) by Peter

Gilmore, Dougie Brimson’s fictional works The Crew (2000) and Top Dog (2002).

2 13 of the 52 football fiction works mapped for this study are collections of short stories. This is a reflection of the marginally greater popularity of short story collections over first person homodiegetic works in the genre. Consideration of the individual short stories within these collections reflect a similar ratio to the novel length works, I estimate one in five stories are first person homodiegetic and the remainder are third person heterodiegetic.

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While John King’s sequels Headhunters (1998) and England Away (1999) make

greater use of one or more forms of the third person heterodiegetic perspective, his

first novel The Football Factory (1996) is predominantly homodiegetic and is

discussed in greater detail in 2.2.3.

The stories in heterodiegetic works are generally about fans or football teams. While

Dillon’s work fictionalises a story around a real team, Holland’s team is the fictional

kind discussed in the opening quote of this paper.

Of critical importance here is that the actual football in these third person

heterodiegetic accounts is incidental to the main thrust of the narrative - in a similar

way to that of Fever Pitch (1992) highlighted above, ‘playing football’ amounts to a

couple of lines of description, an issue which is considered more closely in 3.1.

In these works, the sport is an aside, the football games even more so. The work of

Brimson and King, for example, focuses on the violence of hooliganism associated

with football, while Gilmore concentrates on sex and lust for a team; in The Van

(1991) Doyle constructs a fictional story around the actual events of the 1990 World

Cup. Readers may encounter moments from a game, a penalty, a goal, a save, but

never experience the event from the pitch. I choose to use the word ‘may’, because

among some of the works cited, and some that are not, it is not uncommon for there to

be no ‘playing football’ on the page.

Surprisingly, while the novels and books in this category focus more on what happens

off the field and generally have little concern for what is seen of the game, it is

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equally uncommon to see ‘playing football fiction’ in first person homodiegetic

narratives.

2.2.3 From the pitch

Of the 52 fiction books surveyed for the purposes of this thesis (see the appendix),

approximately 23% are first person homodiegetic narratives, primarily concerned with

the ‘sole protagonist’. The preference for autodiegesis (Nieragden 2002, 690) in these

works, arguably, places them within the crossover between lad fiction and football

fiction.

They include a number of the short stories contained within collections such as A

Book of Two Halves (1997) edited by Nicholas Royle, The Hope that Kills Us (2003)

edited by Adrian Searle, The Children of Albion Rovers (2001) by Irvine Welsh et al,

For Whom The Ball Rolls (2003) by Ian Plenderleith, and novel-length football fiction

narratives including, The Football Factory (1996) by John King, The Man Who Hated

Football by Will Buckley (2005) and Pitch Black (2004) by Richard Brentnall.

Despite their dependence on football and their common use of the autodiegetic

perspective, these football fiction narratives contain very little ‘playing football

fiction’. The ‘played’ or ‘playing football’ is presented from the touchline or the

stand. For example, King’s protagonist is a hooligan spectator, Buckley's is a jaded

journalist reporting matches and ghosting players’ newspaper columns and Brentnall’s

is a disillusioned fan. Further analysis of key characteristics of first person

homodiegetic perspectives are presented in 3.1 of this paper.

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2.2.4 ‘Playing football fiction’ in football fiction narratives

Within the narrow categorisation of autodiegetic football fiction narratives,

approximately 1%, include ‘playing football fiction’, making the game, as seen from

the pitch, the rarest of perspectives within the genre.

Readers very rarely experience the thoughts, feelings or motivations of a player or the

results or consequences of any emotive response by the player during a game.

A Tip from Bobby Moore (Joyce, in Royle 1997, 163) and Nae Cunt Said Anyhin

(Ferguson, in Searle 2003, 105) do feature significant use of the autodiegetic

perspective. In both cases, the reader sees little more than superficial action and

reaction with little effect outside of conveying a series of entertaining events.

In my creative practice, I echo and build on this series of events, and have built on

them by drawing the reader more fully into the headspace of the protagonist, engaging

the reader in the emotive aspects of the game as it is played. I will unpack this more in

sections 2.3 and 2.4 before considering how they apply to my creative work in section

3.3.

A fictionalised autodiegetic present tense account of the real life of an actual manager

during a particular period of his career, The Damned United (2006) by David Peace, is

worthy of note here. While football games are seen from the touchline, rather than

participated in, there are some unique instances of ‘playing football fiction’ in present

tense second person (Hodgins 1988, 187). In 345-pages, Peace offers what amounts to

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approximately 2 to 3 pages of ‘playing football fiction’. The scenes are very short,

however, and not used to substantially progress the narrative.

Some Tartan Hyde, wholly concerned with, and even dependent on, how the ‘playing

football’ is portrayed, offers a reaction to this general lack of ‘playing football fiction’

particularly among novel-length works. That the perspective has been so under

utilised speaks to the challenges in making the narration engaging, comprehensible,

entertaining and relevant.

2.3 Strength and Weakness in the use of present tense

autodiegesis

2.3.1 Strengths

In his work, Narratology, Gerald Prince (1982, 12) talks to the explicit

characterisation of the first person narrator; he also highlights some of the advantages

of using the autodiegetic perspective.

Mish Gordon’s ‘distance’ from his story (Prince 1982, 12) recalls the value of

mediacy (Booth, in Hoffman and Murphy 1996, 122) in terms of the “especially

striking way the characters’ or the personalised narrators’ perceptions are presented

entirely from their own perspective and in their uncorrected subjectivity” (Stanzel

1986, 11). In using the present tense autodiegetic perspective, my narrator is so close

to the events he relates, it has allowed me to communicate ‘playing football fiction’ at

a more emotive level.

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The “lure of the narrative” (Tambling 1991, 33) unconsciously gathers “the reader

into the value-system, beliefs and ideology of the narrator” (ibid) and gains “certain

affective potentialities over a reader’s feelings and attitudes” (Leaska 1996, 159). The

reader is more readily ‘aligned’ to the narrator (Tambling 1991, 40) and thereby to

experiencing the physical, emotional and intellectual challenges (Prince 1982,13) the

narrator undergoes through Booth’s “turbid, sense-bound 'camera eye'” (Booth, in

Hoffman and Murphy 1996, 122).

It is my belief that the autodiegetic perspective is able to negotiate and overcome the

obstacles generated by non-football fan reader opposition: the need to know how

football is played, or understand the rules. Potentially, it offers a degree of insight into

the sub-textual, tacitly learned understandings that it would otherwise take a

childhood saturation of the sport to learn.

In third person heterodiegetic narration, the characterisation of the subjects is often

described by signifiers; their clothes, their actions, their personalities (Tambling 1991,

7). In first person homodiegesis, specifically autodiegetic narration, this

characterisation takes place directly through the protagonist’s perspective. It is limited

to what they can see and know (Prince 1982, 52), but it ‘vividly’ places the reader in

the ‘thick of the action’ (Leaska 1996, 159).

Through the narrator’s sense of value on events as they occur (Tambling 1991, 7), the

reader is able to better understand the narrator’s ideological framework and the

motivations for their actions. Stanzel argues that this can determine the orientation of

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the reader (1986, 220), but the reader can also determine their own view or value of

the narrator’s character or actions (Tambling 1991, 11). Even if the reader does not

necessarily agree with or like the action taken, they can at least understand it (Prince

1982, 12).

Neither does the present tense autodiegetic narrative “simply record events; it

constitutes and interprets them as meaningful parts of a meaningful whole” (Prince, in

McQuillan 2000, 129). This raises the notion of the autodiegetic narration’s ability to

penetrate cultural perspectives. I argue that where the reader is allowed such a close

examination of the narrator’s world they are offered a ‘cultural window’, an

opportunity to learn, interrogate and respond to a new cultural experience.

Engaged and effective use of the autodiegetic focalization can therefore offer a

singularly unique look at ‘playing football fiction’ that is at once intimate and

immediate. The reader can see the game from the pitch. ‘Playing football fiction’ can

become more than just a game. It can serve as a vehicle for the themes of the creative

work, the relationships of the narrator/characters and other valuable aspects of the

narrative as a whole.

2.3.2 Weaknesses

Where the degree of familiarity a reader has with a subject influences their perception

of it (Bal 1996, 117), it follows that unfamiliarity in a reader will make the author’s

job more difficult. The limitations that result from this unfamiliarity or what can

plausibly be known to the narrator (Keen 2003, 37), will disadvantage the reader who

must then gauge the narrator’s actions from the reactions of the other characters

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(Stanzel 1986, 214). This, in itself, is tainted by the narrator’s understanding of them

(ibid). Nieragden (2002, 690) notes that this reliance on the narrator’s criteria for what

is included is a serious frailty.

Unlike the football fan, with their implicit comprehension of the game, the football

novice may not be allowed the same level of access to a football fiction without the

work being intellectually weaker or over-simplistic.

There are dangers, particularly in ‘playing football fiction’, where the narrative is

dependent on football game action. Written poorly, or detached from the course of the

story, they could slow down or even stall the movement of the narrative. If the scenes

become too complex or simple narrative ‘engagement’ problems arise.

The dull, boring, uninteresting and unengaging dangers of this potential dryness of

over-explanation are as detrimental as the reader’s potential incomprehension through

lack of included subject knowledge. This forces the writer to consider whether or not

the reader needs to know every single rule. If not, which ones need explaining? Does

the reader need a historical, geographical and anatomical reading of football to

accompany the text? Would the reader need to have at least seen a game or understand

its less-regulated inner workings? How far does the author go in terms of explaining

it, if they do? Too close and it looks like a rulebook, too far away and it becomes

more of a spectator sport than a narrative event.

The People’s Game (2000) by James Walvin is widely regarded as the most “concise

and colourful” history of football written to date (Hornby 1995,159). Yet, in some

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quarters, it is also regarded as one of the dullest. The line between the explained and

the implied is delicate in football narratives.

As an amateur player, Mish Gordon could not realistically know as much about the

game as a seasoned professional or a career manager, but it would be equally

unrealistic for him to explain an event in a game he understands inherently

specifically for the benefit of the narratee, or the implied or real reader as per

Chatman’s paradigm for narrative structure (Chatman, in Keen 2003, 33).

As Nieragden (2002, 691) suggests, any given narrative strategy will have a degree of

impact on characterisation and narrator reliability. Either of the approaches outlined

above would certainly make the reliability of the narrator questionable.

Where narrative language assumes an implicit understanding, knowledge and

reliability, Chatman (1990, 152) offers two distinct states of untrustworthiness based

on the level of irony inherent in the relationship between the reader and the narration.

When the narrator’s account of events seems at odds with what the action or ‘object’

of the text refers to, it is ‘unreliable narration’. Where the traits or aspects of other

characters appear to be at odds with what the narrator is telling or showing, Chatman

calls it ‘fallible filtration’ (ibid).

Mish Gordon can be regarded as an ‘unreliable narrator’ where the reader can draw

different conclusions to Mish's from his narrative, despite being given the same

limited view and information. While Mish may become unreliable as a witness to

events or actions, his unreliability stems only from his character norms. He is a

reliable narrator in the terms outlined by Chatman (1990, 153) and by Booth (in

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Hoffman and Murphy 1996, 127) that account for consistency of voice, veracity and

telling the story with the expectation that the reader believes everything (ibid).

Other weaknesses I was able to identify include the flawed or clumsy use of devices

such as ‘eavesdropping’ (Stanzel 1986, 215) to inform the narrator of events outside

of his or her control or field of vision. Handled badly, these techniques are capable of

inflicting damage to the credibility of the narrator and the author, both real and

implied.

Alternative narrative devices, such as a vessel for the narrator to explain the game to,

would need to be handled gingerly (Stanzel 1986, 214). A co-conspirator could

potentially add dimension to the narration (ibid), but extraneous explanations would

be as awkward and unnecessary for the ‘implied reader’ as they would be for the

‘implied author’ (Chatman, in Keen 2003, 33) and could just as easily be interpreted

as patronising, unnecessary or detract from the storytelling.

I will now consider, how I have leveraged the strengths and worked my way around

perceived weaknesses in writing Some Tartan Hyde.

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2.4 Leveraging the strengths

Behind every kick of the ball there has to be a thought.

Dennis Bergkamp (The Independent 2006, 1)

I have found that the strengths of using a present tense autodiegetic perspective to

achieve my aesthetic aims (writing ‘playing football fiction’ that is vivid and

engaging) far outweigh the weaknesses.

The reliability and resultant authenticity of Mish Gordon’s narration bring the reader

as close as possible (Stanzel 1986, 220) to events on the field as they occur. In doing

so the present tense autodiegetic perspective provides the reader with a unique insight

into Mish Gordon as a characterr and on a localised football culture. It also lends itself

to the comprehension of ‘playing football fiction’ and even some, but not all, of the

game’s complexities from the vantage point of a life-long fan and player. Given these

factors it is possible that readers of Some Tartan Hyde will gain a measure of the

physical, emotional and intellectual challenges articulated by Prince (1982, 52), and a

consequent grasp or understanding of football as a sport, that could not be gained

elsewhere.

In outlining the rudiments of the game from Mish’s ‘real-time’ commentary, the work

also assists in overcoming a major obstacle for non-football fans. I would argue these

readers, dropped into Leaska’s “vivid” (1996, 159) ‘thick of the action’, will quickly

gain an implicit level of football knowledge that is deeper and more personable than it

would be were they given a straight forward explanation of the game from a

traditional source. The reader is provided this level of knowledge amid the excitement

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and emotive rough and tumble of the games as they are being played; more

importantly, they learn a great deal more about Mish Gordon as a character through

his engagement with the world around him.

Some Tartan Hyde offers a powerful insight into the mind of one player from a

perspective that takes the reader inside a very specific culture. This has been achieved

in a more readily accessible and comprehensible way than other diegetic devices

could offer. The effective implementation of this ‘cultural window’ is less about the

football than it is about the narrator; through the authenticity implied in his descriptive

reading of any of the matches, the reader is in a position to learn more about Mish

Gordon as a character than they are about football. This technique effectively forfeits

the need to have the rules explicitly explained, negates the dull, boring, uninteresting

or unengaging issues attached to such a necessity and denies the need for an awkward

device or vessel for the sole purpose of extraneous explanation.

The immediacy and immersive nature of the present tense autodiegetic perspective

helps build a solid bond of empathy between the reader and the narrator which makes

for an efficient means of advocacy on its subjects, in this case Mish and football. The

use of this perspective makes ‘playing football fiction’ more accessible and more

engaging without the necessity of prior knowledge or in-depth explanation.

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3. Case studies

The following case study offers a detailed analysis of the diegetic devices in common

use within the genre.

3.1 Third person heterodiegesis in football fiction narratives

The whole stadium was singing.

'We’ll never be mastered by black and white bastards [Newcastle United],

’cos Sun’lun’s the best of them all.'

Gerry and Sewell sank lower in their seats. The ball swung in from the

corner; a straining group of heads rose to meet it.

‘If ye hate Newcastle clap yer hands,’ sang the crowd.

(Tulloch 2000, 145)

This quote from The Season Ticket, presents a football game event from the

perspective of a fan. The crowd sing and a description of the match is offered before

the narrative swings back to the singing crowd. The narrative is not concerned with

football so much as it is concerned with the experience of the two central characters.

Despite this infrequent use of ‘playing’ or ‘played’ football, The Season Ticket, a

novel about two lads raising money to go to the home games of their favourite team,

is saturated with football references and sits solidly in the football fiction genre.

However sparse, Tulloch’s working of the football game into his narrative, is the most

common technique used to present ‘playing’ or ‘played football’ in third person

heterodiegetic narratives.

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Less common are examples where the focus of the narrative is on a player in a game.

Jesus Saves (Cornwall, in Searle 2003, 115) features a brief (two and a half pages)

account of a small boy’s experiences in a school team football match related by an

extradiegetic-heterodiegetic narrator.

In the opposition goalmouth, a fight was in progress, boots flying

everywhere, but after several ricochets and a few wild bounces, the ball

scuttled out for a corner. Wee Davy stopped, glanced around…

(Cornwall, in Searle 2003, 117)

While exceptional in that almost all the story takes place on the pitch, it is a short

story in a collection of some 187 pages. The work would not qualify as ‘playing

football fiction’, the sub genre I am writing, on the grounds that, despite being

occupied with a football game, it uses the popular third person heterodiegetic

narration.

There are a number of other examples, as highlighted in section 2.2 and Appendix 1.

Although it is beyond the scope of this paper to unpack all of them, I believe these

two examples typify the portrayal of the game within this aspect of the football fiction

genre and, particularly in Tulloch’s (2000), where the relevant content is limited to a

handful of lines dotted throughout the text. Sadly ‘playing football fiction’ in the first

person homodiegetic perspective is sparse.

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3.2 Autiodiegesis in football fiction narratives

Norwich hit a beautiful long pass that cuts the Chelsea defence and the

farmers[Norwich] bury the ball in the back of the net… we all admire the

goal, the forty yard precision pass and the first time shot into the roof of

the net…

(King 1996, 108)

This quote from The Football Factory, a novel length work of predominantly first

person homodiegetic narration is typical of fictive football descriptions in this

narrative perspective. Notably, this is not a great deal different from those prevalent in

the third person heterodiegetic perspective (see 3.1). In a majority of the examples I

considered, the ‘playing’ or ‘played’ football is from an observer’s perspective.

In the same work, King offers an excellent example of the similarity between the way

the two perspectives offer a descriptive measure of the game. While first person

homodiegesis is the prevalent narrative perspective in The Football Factory (1996),

there are a number of other narrative perspectives. The following quote is from a third

person heterodiegetic perspective. Sid, the character presented, is daydreaming:

The first goal had come just before half time as he finished off a long run,

which had seen him cover the length of the pitch…midway through the

second half, a diving header from a pinpoint cross from the left wing, Sid

ducking his head…

(King 1996, 33)

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While the content and the use of ‘football’ language to describe the goal is remarkably

similar to those in the previous quote, incidences of football here are limited to a

dozen or so on as many pages, and are typical of the portrayal of ‘playing football

fiction’ within this element of the genre.

The following examples of present tense autodiegetic narratives in ‘playing football

fiction’ are narrated from the player’s perspective on and off the pitch. While the

actual ‘playing football’ is brief and on both accounts presented within a larger,

reminiscent, first person homodiegetic perspective the ‘playing football’ takes place

as a present tense event. These are also the closest examples I have found of present

tense autodiegetic narration of a football fiction narrative.

I tipped one shot over the bar, palmed another round the post…They were

set to give us a pasting and suddenly my team…looked like frightened

little boys.

(Joyce, in Royle 1997,163)

In Joyce’s A Tip from Bobby Moore (1997, 163) the protagonist remembers his young

team-mates’ football tournament adventures; the ‘on the pitch’ page space amounts to

approximately two the story’s fourteen pages.

Tam starts sprayin the ba boot. He’s playin these wee chipped passes intae

space, ontae the edge ae the box, finding the gaps. The first couple I

dinnae get ontae quick enough, and I’m closed doon…

(Ferguson, in Searle 2003, 106)

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In Ferguson’s Nae Cunt Said Anyhin (2003,106) the first two of the eight pages are a

solid block of ‘playing football fiction’. Again, in a reminiscence, this is a story about

two players visited by hulking football fairies, the magic must be seen on the pitch

and so the ‘playing football fiction’ is intrinsic to the story.

They also represent some of the strengths of using the perspective, they are both

immediate and immersive, “Here and Now” (Stanzel 1986, 220), present a cultural

window of the event and inform the reader of the narrator’s character, particularly in

Ferguson’s (in Searle 2003, 105-114) work, which uses the vernacular to further

entrench the narrator’s perspective. “I tipped one shot over the bar, palmed another

round the post” (Joyce, in Royle 1997, 163) shows the reader that he is a good keeper

and that he’s having a busy game. “The first couple I dinnae get ontae quick enough,”

(Ferguson, in Searle 2003, 106) may indicate to the reader that the narrator is not as

good a player as his team mate, Tam. Both examples use the autodiegetic perspective

to inform the reader of a little more than what is happening in the game.

The comparative percentage of page space here - approximately 25% - is the same as

I’ve used in Some Tartan Hyde. The differences being, obviously, that my work is a

novel length piece where much larger sections of 'playing football fiction' parallel

both move the story forward and parallel other events that happen in the narrative.

The ‘playing football fiction’ is all presented in the present tense.

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3.3 Some Tartan Hyde

How do I leverage the strengths of an autodiegetic narrator to represent

‘playing football fiction’ in an engaging way?

My research question specifically addressed one of the central challenges in writing

my creative work and I believe that the creative work included in this thesis offers

proof of my approach. In being shortlisted for the Queensland Premier’s Literary

Awards Emerging Author Category, 2007, I believe Some Tartan Hyde has succeeded

as an engaging work. I conceived the following strategies to make ‘playing football

fiction’ work on the page.

Using the present tense autodiegetic perspective does not allow the realistic use of

game explanation or allow the game to be stopped in order to discuss the rules or

nuances of the playing of the game; the reader is literally plunged into the deep end.

This forced me as the writer to ensure salient information is presented in a way that

enhances story continuity and sets the scenes as they arise naturally. This allows the

reader an immediate and immersed view of the narrator/character’s development

within the world he inhabits.

Sensing the danger of my momentum from the periphery, he’s faked the

shot and tried to draw the ball back. Give himself some space. I should’ve

blown past him. Being so slow, I catch him off guard. By accident.

Trailing his foot to drop another feint and turn past me has left him

exposed, so when I mistime my challenge and slide in, it looks like I’ve

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anticipated it.

(Some Tartan Hyde 2007, 83)

This quote describes the actions of two players, one of whom is the narrator. The

player with the ball has “faked the shot and tried to draw the ball back”, which on top

of his quick physical motion, implies that he is an inventive and deceptive, possibly

highly skilled player, the line “Give himself some space” alerts the reader to the

reason the player acted and to an extent the speed.

The lines concerning Mish’s own actions are equally telling. Being so slow and

catching his opponent “off guard”, “by accident” and mistiming his tackle alert the

reader to Mish’s general lack of skill and competence. The appearance of anticipating

the tackle informs the reader of Mish’s good fortune and not his abilities as a player.

Both these sets of information are valuable: they let the reader know what the

protagonist is up against; in hinting at his lack of ability, the narrative identifies him

as an underdog.

This particular moment is an important one for other reasons. Despite Mish’s actions

not changing directly, it would appear his luck has. It is significant to the narrative

that this happens during a football game. It highlights the value of the game to Mish,

reflects the start of his perceived betterment–his entry into the football team–and

foreshadows the coming change.

The moment also speaks to the physical, emotional and intellectual challenges (Prince

1982, 13) facing the narrator and it highlights the value of immediacy (Booth, in

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Hoffman and Murphy 1996, 122; Stanzel 1986, 11). The reader is gathered into “the

value-system, beliefs and ideology of the narrator” (Tambling 1991, 33) and gains a

definitive affective position over “the reader’s feelings and attitudes” (Leaska 1996,

159). This is also an opportunity to ask the reader to sympathise with the underdog

narrator (Tambling 1991, 40).

Doddie had picked a night to start punching the ball. He hadn’t done it

once all season…

'Look, Doddie. Pit yer hand up.'

After watching me do it, he lifts his hand. 'In a fist,' I says. He’s looking

round, getting a bit self-conscious. 'Now pit the other yin up. An open

hand this time.' I wait, he’s puzzled. 'Which one’s higher?' I asks.

He looks up,

'The fingers,' he says.

'Exactly, if ye can fuckin’ punch the ball, ye can fuckin’ catch it.'


Again, there are no instructions provided for the reader here, but they can understand

what is happening. When Mish finds himself giving advice to the goalkeeper it does

not enlighten the reader to the rules or objects of the game directly, instead the quote

explains a great deal more about Mish’s position within the team; he’s becoming more

confident, comfortable and arguably smarter. It also provides a glimpse of insight into

how football is played that the reader would not experience reading in traditional

sources.

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It would be easier as a football fiction writer to resort to the stereotypical or clichéd

football punditry frames of reference used in the works of King (1996) and Hornby

(1992). As a writer trying to pitch the game from a new perspective, however, I found

myself forced to negotiate the work at a level that allows the reader to pick up

information regardless of levels of prior knowledge. Where the work relies on

drawing the reader into the story through the action itself, this cultural window, the

bridge in the gap between the expert and the novice, serves a vital role. It

simultaneously and tacitly builds the reader’s understanding of the game and provides

an insight into the narrator.

The previous quote speaks of the necessity of this window in making the reader more

interested in the player as a person. This orientation of the reader (Stanzel 1986, 214),

while limited to what the narrator can know (Keen 2003, 32), means the reader gains a

picture of the game from the pitch in layman’s terms, without the benefit of analysis

informed by hindsight (ibid, 34). In being direct, straight forward and engaging, it

tackles the need for familiarity (Bal 1997, 117) and cuts down on unnecessary,

complex or dull explanations (see section 2.3).

I have also thematically embedded the football games into the narrative in order to

symbolise events in other areas of the narrative. This allows ‘playing football’ to act

metaphorically for themes, relationships and other aspects of the story.

The following example sees Mish being forced to make a decision on the pitch at a

point that parallels important choices he must make off the pitch.

232


I could challenge the player with the ball, but in committing myself, I’d

leave the other player free of a marker. If I mark the open player instead of

challenging the player with the ball, he has an easy scoring opportunity. I

can’t make my mind up which way to go and jockey as best as I can.


This quote, taken from a game in the penultimate chapter of the novel, has Mish

trying to decide to tackle one of two players, in the same way he must decide between

two girls and two separate lifestyles in other aspects of the narrative. The

consequences of his decision on the pitch foreshadow the eventual outcome of his

decision off the pitch.

This is a classic football game incident where counter-attacking players outnumber

the defenders left stranded by the attacking efforts of their own team. I have used this

moment, easily recognisable to those familiar with the game and easily described to

those with very little, or a growing, knowledge of the game, as it parallels a

significant step for the autodiegetic narrator. In doing so I have lent the event gravitas

that reflects the entire story, and provides a greater depth of understanding of the

narration as a whole.

In analysing these examples and their use in the novel, I have shown some of the

benefits of present tense autodiegetic narration, particularly in terms of presenting a

‘playing football fiction’ narrative.

233


4. Conclusion

By leveraging the strengths of a present tense autodiegetic perspective with a fixed

internal focalisation, I believe I have been able to find the ‘point’ of a football fiction

narrative that Hornby claimed could not exist.

In storytelling through the action of the game, ‘playing football fiction’ opens a

cultural window and provides insight into the character, the character’s world and

presents a multitude of opportunities to develop themes and conflicts. This allows

football to do more than act as a scaffolding device for a football fiction plot.

My novel, Some Tartan Hyde, has addressed the lack of ‘playing football fiction’ in

the genre and demonstrated the engaging combination of the themes and real time

sports narratives that Hornby talked to in the opening quote.

The reader should hear feet pounding behind them, smell sweat and cut grass and feel

the prickle of hot air being forced into cramped lungs. The reader should experience

the sense of loss or victory as keenly as they feel the crunch of a tackle or cherish the

near perfect pass. Present tense autodiegetic perspective offers immediate and direct

contact with the reader. The accompanying sense of authenticity allows the reader to

experience this emotional level and the difficulty or ease with which the protagonist

assimilates or translates information and subsequently acts.

In practical terms it is my contention that the strengths of a present tense autodiegetic

perspective can be leveraged to represent the game in a way that has not previously

234


been achieved in football fiction. My novel features a fictitious team that does without

a Roy Race ‘golden boy’ dominating every game.

I believe Some Tartan Hyde, while in no way a perfect work, certainly challenges

Hornby’s views on football fiction. It is also an indication that I have gone some way

to achieving my aims for Some Tartan Hyde as a work of creative writing research.

235


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Appendix

52 works of football fiction surveyed for the purposes of this study.

Third person perspective. (28)

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243


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Glanville, B. 1970. The Rise of Gerry Logan. London: Hodder & Stoughton

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Montalban, M.V. 2001. Offside. London: Serpent’s Tail.

244


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Williams, G. 1999. Diamond Geezers. London: Fourth Estate.

Williams, G. 1999. Football Crazy. London: Fourth Estate.

First person perspective. (11)

Bowers, M. 1998. Football Seasons. Pulp Books.

Brentnall, R. 2004. Pitch Black. Leicester: Matador.

Buckley,W. 2005. The Man Who Hated Football. London: Harper Perennial.

245


Gallivan, J. 1998. Oi, Ref!: A Novel About Love, Hate and Football. London: Sceptre

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Sampson, K. 1999. Away Days. London: Vintage.

Tadman, P. 2003. Domestic Football. London: Athena Press.

Welsh, I. 1995. Marabou Stork Nightmares. New York: W.W. Norton.

Short stories (13)

Davidson, P. 2002. Oh Hec! London: Fourth Base.

Findlay, A. 2003. Sex, Death and Football. Edinburgh: Luath Press.

246


Glanville, B. 1999. Footballers Don’t Cry. London: Virgin.

Hornby, N. 2001. My Favourite Year. London: Pheonix Press.

Kelly, S.F., 1997. The Pick of the Season: The Best of British Football Writing, 1995-

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Keret, E. 2003. Shoes. The Bus Driver Who Wanted To Be God & Other Stories.

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Legge, G. 1999. In Between Talking About The Football. Edinburgh: Polygon.

Plenderleith, I. 2003. For Whom the Ball Rolls. London: Orion.

Royle, N. .1997. A Book of Two Halves. London: Indigo.

Searle, A. 2003. The Hope That Kills Us Edinburgh:Polygon.

Royle, N. 1998. The Agony and the Ecstasy: Short Stories and New Writing in

Celebration of the World Cup. London: Sceptre Press.

Welsh, I. et al. 2001. The Children Of Albion Rovers. Edinburgh: Canongate.

Welsh, I. 1994. The Granton Star Cause. The Acid House. New York: W.W. Norton.

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