Horse racing, America’s second most popular spectator sport, remains as vital as ever. But its age, great drama and historical appeal as the “sport of kings” ensure that it also has a place in the history of literature. Countless writers have been drawn, in their search for themes, by the romance of the racecourse: the triumph and tragedy of equestrian life. It would take the stamina of a draft horse to compile a comprehensive list of such novels – former Thoroughbred horse racing writer turned mystery Dick Francis has only written a small library of them, but here are a few of the most important.
National Velvet
A classic of children’s literature, this 1935 novel by Enid Bagnold tells the story of Velvet Brown, a working-class English teenager who unexpectedly realizes her dream of owning and racing thoroughbred horses when a mysterious old man leaves her a racehorse. in your will. . A memorable film adaptation with Elizabeth Taylor in 1944 helped ensure that young Velvet, along with her horse, became a symbol of female independence and strength long before GI Jane, Title IX, or Sally Ride.
The Reivers
William Faulkner’s latest novel, and his second Pulitzer Prize winner (after A Fable from 1954), a picaresque comic about an unfortunate road trip. Published in 1962, the novel is about three young “er-do-wells” from Yoknpatawpha County, the scene of so many Faulkner classics, who run away from home in a stolen car. They end up in the Memphis of the 1900s, where they experience big city life for the first time, and where one of them, without permission, trades his car for a racehorse. Can he and Coppermine’s speedy horse, who stubbornly prefers half the herd, earn enough money to drive the three children home? Generations of readers have enjoyed Faulkner’s unusually straightforward handling of this suspenseful coming-of-age story, finding it a light but fitting conclusion to one of the best careers in American literary history.
Bertie wooster
The great comic novelist PG Wodehouse created many memorable characters, but none more than Bertram Wilberforce Wooster, the supernaturally superficial minor aristocrat who appears in more than 50 Wodehouse works. Like many English aristocrats, Bertie (as his friends call him) has careers in his blood, having been named after a horse on which his father once gained a few pounds. The lovable and petulant Bertie falls into all sorts of mishaps, from which he is constantly extracted by his seemingly omnipotent servant Jeeves. Wooster can often be found on, near, or on the way to and from the race track, uttering phrases like “He once lost his shirt to Silly Billy” and “They had a certificate dead for less than 10 minutes.”
The Iliad
Chariot racing, one of the oldest forms of horse racing, appears in Book XXIII of Homer’s Iliad, the great epic of the Trojan War. At this crucial point in the story, just after Hector’s death, Homer’s relentless narrative drive relaxes to allow Achilles, the poem’s hero, a moment in which to properly observe the death of his close friend Patroclus. Funeral games (a series of athletic contests that were part of the funeral rites of the time) occupy most of the penultimate book of the Iliad and encompass boxing, foot races, archery, and the javelin, as well as a chariot race. by Diomedes.
Horses heaven
Hailed as “a big and ambitious book” by the New York Times, Jane Smiley’s ninth novel brings together a series of story lines while maintaining a strict focus on the world of contemporary horse racing. The author of the best-selling A Thousand Acres (1991) told an interviewer that the idea for Horse Heaven (2000) came to her when “I was driving down the road listening to NPR, and I heard a commenter use the phrase” spit the bit “and I realized that horse racing had a wonderful language that was a novelist’s treasure.”
Ben Hur
Lew Wallace’s 1880 novel quickly displaced Uncle Tom’s Cabin as the greatest American best-seller of the 19th century, and its combination of suspense storytelling, painstaking historical research, and religious piety not only made it the first work. fictional in winning a pope’s blessing, but it paved the way for American evangelicals: embracing novel reading as a valid and morally acceptable pastime. Set in the 1st century AD, the novel intertwines the story of Judah Ben-Hur, a Jew living under Roman oppression, with that of another more famous 1st century Palestinian Jew: Jesus. A major plot point in the novel’s massive narrative revolves around a thrilling chariot race that pits Ben-Hur against his Roman archrival, Massala. This scene became the centerpiece of the classic 1959 film adaptation of the novel, and that sequence, in turn, was cannibalized for the capsule race scene from Episode I of Star Wars: The Phantom Menace (1999). , something less classic.
These literary representations are part of a tradition that continues today in thoroughbred horse racing. Whether you’re a fan of horse racing or just like the thrill of live horse racing, the sport is as full of drama and passion as any other. Tipping services can help you maximize your enjoyment of thoroughbred horse racing by clarifying the details and letting you know who the favorites are.