Playing for Pizza |
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27 May 2024 - Adetswil
I'm making a pizza today for lunch as I often do - from scratch of course using whatever we have in the fridge. I've been craving Italian food while reading John Grisham's Playing for Pizza the past few days. It was a surprising Grisham. It doesn't start with a murder. In fact there's no murder at all. The story follows a washed up NFL quarterback, Rick Dockery, who goes to play football americano in Italy. Culture shock ensues of course. As an American expat I can relate to those early experiences of Europe. Living in Switzerland Italy now seems a bit like Florida - that place to the south where the beaches are - but with more history. And better food. I think half of Grisham's novel is describing meals that Dockery eats as he falls in love with Italian cuisine. Unlike anything else I've read from Grisham this book seems like it was an excuse for him to do some extensive research in Italy. Surprisingly many of the Italian football teams he writes about are real, and the Bergamo Lions really had dominated the league for a decade at that point. Dockery's team, the Parma Panthers, sets their sights on beating Bergamo and winning the Italian Super Bowl. Since the book came out Bergamo's reign has fallen and Parma has won half the championships while moving to a newer, bigger stadium. Life imitating art? More likely a bump in their fanbase and thus revenue from a best-selling novel. Even stranger is where I found this book: on Iwona's bookshelf. Since she trained in law and knows zilch about American Football, I'd assumed it would be a more typical Grisham with a lawyer in the leading role. I read The Client and The Firm when I was maybe twelve before I started keeping track of the books I read. Their film adaptations along with Jurassic Park around the same time were some of my first disappointments of books turned into films even though they were box office successes. And then I gave up Grisham for three decades. I must admit that I enjoyed Playing for Pizza even though it somewhat embarrasses me to be enticed by such plebeian entertainments. Still, there's a good reason Grisham has had so many bestsellers.
