The book had everything that the collegiate BQ adored...........the spectacularly overripe prose of a creative writing major, a Hemingway-eque celebration of outdoorsman fishing and hunting,the rancorous divide between the rich and poor always threatening to explode, and the culture clash between entitled bigwigs and a new generation who mocked their corrupt values....the latter a metaphor for the anti-Vietnam War protests convulsing the country.....
Throw in a semi-romantic triangle that reeks of leftover 'Great Gatsby and that's one hell of a bubbling stew threatening to boil over.......
Boil over it does in the form of James Quinn and Vernor Stanton two of the younger members of the Centennial Club, a exclusive, private outdoor resort sprawling across thousands of acres in backwoods Michigan......a sort of ultimate country club for the state's most wealthy movers and shakers.
Stanton, an anarchic, lifelong prankster, possibly teetering on complete madness, seeks nothing less than an apocalyptic destruction of the Centennial Club and its imperious, pompous members. He's reluctantly aided and abetted by his more staid and steady best friend Quinn, who nurses a crush on Stanton's gorgeous fiance Janey. (Janey, for her part, watches all the disastrous events that follow with a mixture of bemusement, bewilderment and fear.)
The ever manic Stanton finally touches off the chaos he craves when he conspires to have the club's gameskeeper/manager job fall into the hands of Earl Olive, a thuggish lout who literally wreaks explosive vengeance on the club and its uppercrust membership.
McGuane describes the sex, violence and general craziness that follows with deep tongue-in-cheek prose that becomes so elaborate and dense, it threatens to turn hallucinogenic in spots. Not an easy read, but you wouldn't want to miss a single sentence.
Three years after the book's release, a film version was attempted.....('attempted' being the operative word here). The filmmakers couldn't ever duplicate McGuane's one-of-a-kind voice.......the best they could do was replicate the lunatic plot, which minus the prose, came off as merely weird and grotesque. (The film sank like a stone and disappeared without a trace.......if any of you know where there's a viewable copy available, please drop us a line.....we've been chasing after it for years....)
52 years after first reading 'The Sporting Club', we still found it a challenging, unique and yes, sometimes funny experience. BQ still recommends it for a startling, offbeat read. 3 stars (***)
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