Status
Available
Call number
Collection
Publication
Harper Perennial (1993), Edition: Reprint, 290 pages
Description
Consider the possibilities: In the middle of a pennant race, a team's star shortstop falls in love with his second baseman. Which is exactly what happens to Randy Dreyfus, the best-hitting, best-fielding, best-looking, and most happily married young shortstop in the major leagues. The Dreyfus Affair combines romance, comedy, social satire, and some of the finest baseball writing in years. The result is a rollicking, provocative odyssey through one unforgettable World Series championship.
Media reviews
User reviews
LibraryThing member richardderus
The Book Report: The eponymous Dreyfus, baseball star Randy, is an All-American Guy with a wife and two daughters. We meet him with that family as he opens a strip mall named for him near his suburban California home. Randy is a man with a problem, however: He's coming to know, at age 28, that he
My Review: I'd love to live in the America of the ending of this book. In fact, what with some more adventurous sports stars like Ben Cohen starting to come out as against bullying and homophobia as cultural forces, it might *be* this world soon. Why, he's even started a foundation to combat these pernicious, ancient evils! Good on him, and his wife, and his two kids! But he was released from his international rugby-playing job after he started talking about these matters, despite being the MVP for his team. Plus he's over 30, which in rugby as in football means headin' for the barn. Still, bravo for doing it. Now, the reaction to this in the rugby-playing world has been muted because of his superstar status, but I note a singular quietude among teams in his former league.
Pro sports is not gonna welcome or acknowledge gay players if they're not even gonna let a gay-FRIENDLY guy work to change his childrens' world while working for them. So I find the Hollywood ending of the book, with the two men walking onto the field together to play a World Series game, poignantly amusing if improbable to the point of alternate-Universe-ness.
But the trip to get there is, well, amusing and improbable: the soon-to-be-ex-wife is all sympathy and understanding, a thing no woman of my acquaintance is when she's being left for someone else, and I mean *not*one*of*them* who've had it happen, the two daughters not being shown to be bullied mercilessly for having a fag-daddy (ha!), and the Salty Old Sports Columnist coming out (oops) in their favor...! Oh the glories of Lefcourt's imagination! Let this world come into being, and soon, if you please o kind and beneficent God! (Another improbable-to-the-point-of-humor concept.)
And then there are the odd choices, like making D.J. a black man who's the bottom and Randy a white top who plays *pitcher*! Top and bottom (pitcher and catcher, get it?), for the straight, are the sexual positions of the parties. They are also the source of stress and tension in the gay mating market, because logically two men having sex can't BOTH do the same thing at the same time, and a great big stigma attaches to the bottom (I hope I don't need to explain the source of these names...that would be too depressing...although Randy, our hero with the porn name {srsly, RANDY?!}, is specifically revealed to be clueless about how to satisfy his lust for D.J. until a specific moment quite late in his 28 years of life!), as it does to the effiminate man. In other words, homophobia among the homos is alive and well. And Lefcourt chose an ethnic minority for his secondary character that has historically been completely, utterly, and often violently unsupportive of gay life. I have to wonder why he did that. Oh, but never fear: We're not given any actual sex to wince over, straight people. It's all implied. Honest and truly.
And baseball is, I mourn to report, an ever-more-marginal sport. In Murrika today, the uber-violent and pointless and boring football (which involves feet only tangentially, so far as I can see) is the dominant sport. Why pick on poor, fading baseball? Although the venality, the coarseness, and the criminality of the management are played against that sport's backdrop, I feel very sure that the same behaviors, attitudes, and law-breakings would happen in any of the professional sports. They're handling a LOT of money here. No way in hell does that not attract, if not breed, criminality. It simply can't help but do so.
So why'd I read it? And why would I recommend it? Because it's upbeat and it's nicely plotted and it's got its moments of trenchant commentary. Everybody needs a fairy tale every now and then. In baseball season, let this be yours.
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is really a gay man living a straight man's dream life. He's fallen in love with D.J. Pickett, second baseman to his pitcher (the joke here will become obvious in the review), despite the existence of a perfect wife, blonde and beautiful and hot for him. Not only is D.J. a man, he's a BLACK man! The scandal, the shock, the general all-around kerfuffle that ensues when the two men are caught in a clearly sexual situation! But true to Mr. Lefcourt's Hollywood writing pedigree, there is A Happy Ending. No, not *that* kind of happy ending, get your mind out of the gutter! This isn't a romance novel, it's A Love Story. Even the subtitle says so.My Review: I'd love to live in the America of the ending of this book. In fact, what with some more adventurous sports stars like Ben Cohen starting to come out as against bullying and homophobia as cultural forces, it might *be* this world soon. Why, he's even started a foundation to combat these pernicious, ancient evils! Good on him, and his wife, and his two kids! But he was released from his international rugby-playing job after he started talking about these matters, despite being the MVP for his team. Plus he's over 30, which in rugby as in football means headin' for the barn. Still, bravo for doing it. Now, the reaction to this in the rugby-playing world has been muted because of his superstar status, but I note a singular quietude among teams in his former league.
Pro sports is not gonna welcome or acknowledge gay players if they're not even gonna let a gay-FRIENDLY guy work to change his childrens' world while working for them. So I find the Hollywood ending of the book, with the two men walking onto the field together to play a World Series game, poignantly amusing if improbable to the point of alternate-Universe-ness.
But the trip to get there is, well, amusing and improbable: the soon-to-be-ex-wife is all sympathy and understanding, a thing no woman of my acquaintance is when she's being left for someone else, and I mean *not*one*of*them* who've had it happen, the two daughters not being shown to be bullied mercilessly for having a fag-daddy (ha!), and the Salty Old Sports Columnist coming out (oops) in their favor...! Oh the glories of Lefcourt's imagination! Let this world come into being, and soon, if you please o kind and beneficent God! (Another improbable-to-the-point-of-humor concept.)
And then there are the odd choices, like making D.J. a black man who's the bottom and Randy a white top who plays *pitcher*! Top and bottom (pitcher and catcher, get it?), for the straight, are the sexual positions of the parties. They are also the source of stress and tension in the gay mating market, because logically two men having sex can't BOTH do the same thing at the same time, and a great big stigma attaches to the bottom (I hope I don't need to explain the source of these names...that would be too depressing...although Randy, our hero with the porn name {srsly, RANDY?!}, is specifically revealed to be clueless about how to satisfy his lust for D.J. until a specific moment quite late in his 28 years of life!), as it does to the effiminate man. In other words, homophobia among the homos is alive and well. And Lefcourt chose an ethnic minority for his secondary character that has historically been completely, utterly, and often violently unsupportive of gay life. I have to wonder why he did that. Oh, but never fear: We're not given any actual sex to wince over, straight people. It's all implied. Honest and truly.
And baseball is, I mourn to report, an ever-more-marginal sport. In Murrika today, the uber-violent and pointless and boring football (which involves feet only tangentially, so far as I can see) is the dominant sport. Why pick on poor, fading baseball? Although the venality, the coarseness, and the criminality of the management are played against that sport's backdrop, I feel very sure that the same behaviors, attitudes, and law-breakings would happen in any of the professional sports. They're handling a LOT of money here. No way in hell does that not attract, if not breed, criminality. It simply can't help but do so.
So why'd I read it? And why would I recommend it? Because it's upbeat and it's nicely plotted and it's got its moments of trenchant commentary. Everybody needs a fairy tale every now and then. In baseball season, let this be yours.
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LibraryThing member krysteria
This book came recommended to me after I ranted on the Rainbow list that all queer books had sad endings. Someone said this one had a happy ending. True, it does. No one dies in this.
However, I did have other problems with this book, yet there were some really good points to it too. First the good
And there-in lies my only problem with the book… it was more about the life of baseball than the relationship between the two leads. The subtitle of the book is "A Love Story" but it’s really not. The love story part of it is merely a means to an end in order to play havoc with baseball. The love story isn’t what the book is about. The book is about making fun of baseball by harpooning it! Which is fine.
Many of the scenes and themes in this book are like my own novel THE PRICE OF FAME, right down to the outrage, outting, to the runaway trip to a fishing lodge. However, mine is a serious tale about a relationship and this is a satire about baseball. Even though it’s satire, I really would have liked to have seen more character development of DJ, but I understand that his own understatedness is part of the overall satirical element of the book. I still thought he was pretty cool and wanted to know a little more about him.
Even though this is satire, they say that life is stranger than fiction, so I could totally see this whole thing happening!
On a scale of 1 to 10, it’s a 7.
However, I did have other problems with this book, yet there were some really good points to it too. First the good
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points…. the satire is hysterical. The fact that the President sends out 28 AWACS to find the 2 baseball players and a dalmation in the end in order to get them to Game 4 of the World Series is brilliant! And when the 2 guys are sitting in a rowboat and the seaplane pulls in and an FBI guy asks if they are the baseball players, they act like this happens to them all the time! It is truly a whacked-out satire about the life of baseball players.And there-in lies my only problem with the book… it was more about the life of baseball than the relationship between the two leads. The subtitle of the book is "A Love Story" but it’s really not. The love story part of it is merely a means to an end in order to play havoc with baseball. The love story isn’t what the book is about. The book is about making fun of baseball by harpooning it! Which is fine.
Many of the scenes and themes in this book are like my own novel THE PRICE OF FAME, right down to the outrage, outting, to the runaway trip to a fishing lodge. However, mine is a serious tale about a relationship and this is a satire about baseball. Even though it’s satire, I really would have liked to have seen more character development of DJ, but I understand that his own understatedness is part of the overall satirical element of the book. I still thought he was pretty cool and wanted to know a little more about him.
Even though this is satire, they say that life is stranger than fiction, so I could totally see this whole thing happening!
On a scale of 1 to 10, it’s a 7.
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LibraryThing member TheInvernessie
This was one of the best books I've read. Not for the writing, but rather for the moral, and message that it gave. I think baseball players should read about Randy and D.J..
LibraryThing member Evalangui
So readable! A cool little love story, mostly about the consequences of love in the world. The structure wasn't very tidy (it felt like it had at least 3 endings) since the plots and subplots aren't tied together that neatly. Also found the gay Dalmatian super weird (not sure if the animal was
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meant as a sort of unconscious representation of Randy and harmony with him meant to imply internal harmony) Show Less
LibraryThing member gayla.bassham
A charming if somewhat dated novel. I would have enjoyed it more if Randy hadn't been married; my sympathy for his wife and daughters made it hard for me to root for Randy and D. J. in the beginning.
Subjects
Language
Original language
English
ISBN
0060975598 / 9780060975593