The Shortstop’s Son

About

Through these varied essays on politics, ethics, music, race, and culture Philip Martin admits “a minor obsession” with what he calls “the American Frolic”—the essential lack of seriousness with which many of us approach the questions inherent in living in a free society. He observes that Americans have been conditioned to react, not to consider; that while we are very good at ripostes and snappy comebacks, at cracking wise and looking smart, we often fail to authentically engage the issues with which we pretend to be most concerned. We inadvertently talk past one another, he says, resorting to cant and partisan boilerplate.

In the essays presented in The Shortstop’s Son, Philip Martin rigorously resists easy labels and rote ideological truths. He pursues more subtle meanings with a commonsense lucidity and a fundamental compassion for humanity. Whether writing about the mythos built upon Bonnie and Clyde’s bullet-ridden Ford or the ignoble death and burial of blues legend Blind Lemon Jefferson, Martin strikes the chord that both moves and informs.

Martin is our critic at large. Deeply engaged in the world of thought and experience, he applies his nimble mind and very human heart to those things which should concern us most. He allows us, through his “obsession” and the clarity of his prose, to experience a new vision, one based in our desire for rich life.

Author

Philip Martin, a regular columnist and essayist for the Arkansas Democrat Gazette, has also contributed work to the Oxford American, Newsweek, and the Village Voice. He has been a staff writer for New Times of Phoenix, Arizona, and executive editor for Spectrum Weekly of Little Rock.

Praise

“I have been an admirer of Philip Martin’s prose for a long time. His writing is, as many critics have already pointed out, humane, perceptive, explanatory, useful. But as a writer, what I keep coming back to is the prose: The man can turn a good sentence, a beautiful sentence, a powerful sentence. When I got my copy of the manuscript, I did something I almost never do with nonfiction. I sat down and read it straight through, like a novel. I was not disappointed.”
—Jack Butler, author of Living in Little Rock with Miss Little Rock

“Philip Martin makes quick but deep incisions into the body cultural and politic of our nation. He is one of a handful of tough surgeons trying to resurrect this corpus in the middle-age days of our democracy. And he’s funny.”
—Andrei Codrescu, National Public Radio