Dan Jenkins to be inducted into World Golf Hall of Fame

And I remain a big fan of Semi-Tough, but there's no way it's published today by a major house -- and not because it wasn't well-written, but because if frequently lapsed into political incorrectness in some of the nastiest ways imaginable.

 

There was some of that, too, in "You Gotta Play Hurt" with the TCU play calling.

 

It was Orangejello and Limejello, Don. But point taken.

 

Lemonjello was the half-brother.

 

I always thought of Semi-Tough as sort of literary anthropology, a treatise on "how Texans talk dirty." Re-read for the first time in decades just last year when I found an old paperback cleaning the garage. Dated, yes, but I laughed just as hard and often.

 

This is one of my favorite opening sentences ever, from a feature he wrote for SI on Joe Namath in 1966.

Stoop-Shouldered and sinisterly handsome, he slouches against the wall of the saloon, a filter cigarette in his teeth, collar open, perfectly happy and self-assured, gazing through the uneven darkness to sort out the winners from the losers.

 

I hear that. The book remains sui generis, and most of the humor remains hilarious. It's the offhand racism that's offputting, and S-T is by no means unique among DJ's novels, for that.

 

Prototypical, and still delightful.

 

Im re-reading "Dead Solid Perfect" once again (hopeful that Kenny Lee Puckett can hold off Donny Smithern again), just because it's a quick-as-hell read and I was inspired upon hearing of DJ and the Hall. The racism is rampant, but I'd say all of it is spoken from the voice of the most ignorant and least educated characters in the book. I think that's the point, and the device that's being used.

 

Is that the one with the Needhams in it?