Recommendation: A Most Beautiful Thing, memoir by Arshay Cooper
Right from the subtitle, Arshay Cooper’s memoir creates intrigue: “the true story of America’s first all-black high school rowing team.” OK, count me in! Firsts of any kind are interesting. A Most Beautiful Thing is about rowing — but like all great sports books, it’s about much more than rowing. It’s about universal human issues like perseverance, friendship, personal growth, discipline, role models, self-doubt, and self-acceptance. Again, like all good sports books, it brings to life the unique joys and heartaches of its subject, but also uses those details to illustrate lessons applicable to all the rest of us who may never pick up an oar, racket, or ball.
In our podcasting course and workshops, we talk a lot about the four universal elements of any effective story:
Character
Setting
Conflict
Resolution
Cooper puts the life-and-death conflict of neighborhood gang violence right on page one — a terrific lesson for storytellers of any kind. By doing that, he also accomplishes another key storytelling goal: help us root for the underdog, because who is more of an underdog than a kid who has to fear for his life just walking to the bus stop?
The setting is a vividly-drawn Chicago and Manley High School, which backdrops the story with Chicago Bulls championship pride, and broken homes, systemic inequity, and police injustice.
The multiple layers and types of conflict are another key reason why A Most Beautiful Thing is such an effective and engaging story: Person against person (neighbors, family members, drug-selling friends, even teammates). Person against society (expectations of young black men from rough neighborhoods, treatment by police). Person against nature (harsh Chicago winters, the water itself). And of course, person against themselves (their own self-doubts, their own bodies).
The resolution (without giving too much away) is what we want from any satisfying story: personal transformation.
The book is also a worthwhile study for anyone working on a scripted podcast or other kind of story, because the writing generally gets out of its own way, and lets the characters and the story and the life lessons be the hero. With some authors (looking at you, David Foster Wallace or Oscar Wilde), the linguistic pyrotechnics sometimes obscure the larger message, but Cooper doesn’t fall into the trap of being “too writerly,” which also means that his occasional gems of human insight really shine. If I could give this book one compliment, it’s that Cooper really captured his personal experience — and shared it in a way to inspire readers with universal truths.
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P.S. A few of my other favorite “sports books that are bigger than sports:”
Open, Andre Agassi’s memoir (tennis)
Into Thin Air, by Jon Krakaeur (mountain climbing)
Born to Run, Christopher MacDougall (distance running)
Pacific Rims, by Rafe Bartholomew (basketball)
