Memoir Mondays — Stillness and Speed — Dennis Bergkamp
One of soccer’s quietest but most admired players decides to finally speak on his career and run laps around the question fans across the world have asked for decades: how exactly does he do what he does.
Here’s how it CATCHes readers:
Character — Sports, like entertainment, is full of larger-than-life egos and bravado. Even when these personalities come down to earth, it’s only briefly and always with an eye back on the sky. Dennis Bergkamp, as he was known on the field during his illustrious career, reads as a humble and refreshingly human. He explains things in a voice that’s could just as easily come from a content old man as a recently retired superstar. Part of this success comes from the as-told-to interview style that much of the book is written in, it’s almost like an elongated magazine story as much as a memoir.
Adventure — Any athlete who has played in famous stadiums in cities across the world will have a degree of adventure to spare, but in this memoir, Bergkamp flips this adage on its head. As much adventure as he covers, he also documents his fear of flying and the barriers he personally erected to try to contain the hyper-speed lifestyle that athletes are sometimes pressured to occupy.
PULL QUOTE:
“So in the end you have not just a complete football player but a person who is good for others, who means something in the world. He’s not just a stupid football player, but someone with a good story to tell, who is outgoing; someone who is genuinely interested in helping or changing the world, for example, not just interested in girls and cars”
Tribulation — Bergkamp’s trials are not limited to the playing field and he’s forthcoming initially in that regard but very little attention is paid to how much the obstacles he faced made him feel internally. Sometimes this reflection can get redundant, but sometimes it’s just what a book needs to resonate with readers.
Culture — One challenge many sports memoirs have is the tendency to write too much for the idealized crazy fan reader. It’s tempting to dive deep into a subject assuming all the readers know about some of the material, but it also . In Bergkamp’s memoir, too much about soccer culture is glossed over to speak to work for a casual readership. Although it makes sense to target books to demographics, there is a way to refresh and explain parts of a story in a way that also paints a cultural picture. It’s what brings the story to life.
Honesty — Any sports fan can come away from just about any athlete memoir and feel good. It’s the nature of a sports-lover to feel jubilant when they can escape their regular life for a while and be immersed between the lines of their favorite games. However, when sports memoirs can also mean so much more than that, they can illuminate the elements of an athletes life that fans can not just escape with but applaud for. Bergkamp’s memoir misses the mark there, largely because there are swaths of his life that are completely avoided in favor of lamenting on his career.
CATCH score: 6/10