The Whore of Akron: One Man's Search for the Soul of Lebron James - Softcover

Raab, Scott

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0062066374 ISBN 13: 9780062066374

Publisher: Harper Perennial, 2012

Synopsis

After 52 long years, the city of Cleveland finally has a new championship team, thanks to LeBron James and his Cavaliers. Scott Raab--Cleveland super-fan--has suffered for every one of those five decades of drought. In the tradition of Frederick Exley's cult-classic sports book A Fan's Notes, The Whore of Akron is Raab's hilarious and unhinged plea for deliverance from all those years of pain. Traveling from Cleveland to Miami and back again, Raab heads out on an obsessive quest to uncover the soul of one of today's greatest basketball players: LeBron James, the man who finally brought Cleveland out of sporting exile.

About this title

Review:

"A powerful storyteller in full command of his game...wonderfully immoderate."--New York Times

"There is more passion, anger and sublime writing in Scott Raab's The Whore of Akron than any 50 other books you'll read this (or any other year) combined."--New York Post

"The book is both poem and polemic, a lyrical inventory of rage and appetite and loss."--Jeff MacGregor, ESPN.com

"[A] pleasure to read. Raab is an inspired, energetic writer. . . . . The Whore of Akron is a poignant exploration of sports fandom. It's insane. . . . . And it's also redeeming. . . . . After reading The Whore of Akron, you'll be hard pressed to think sports don't matter."--Time

"[The Whore of Akron] is very funny. It is also wise...If you've a taste for the sort of overstatement Raab shares with the late, great Hunter S. Thompson, this is perhaps the sports book for you. Keep it on a shelf the kids can't reach."--NPR

"A (very heated) Fan's Notes. . . . . Rollicking and profane. . . . . Raab's sustained attack on James is diverting, [but] it is the author's self-portrait of a man and a fan of serious extremes, one who loves his wife and son as fiercely as he hates most of the rest of the world, that engrosses."--Sports Illustrated

"[A] splenetic wonder...For all of its rousing, air-clearing invective, The Whore of Akron is strangely celebratory, making a particuclarly Jewish-American case for family and place, and for waiting and hoping past the point of reason."--Will Blythe, New York Magazine

"In pursuing James pre- and post-'Decision' . . . . the author never does complete the subtitle's mission to find James' soul. Instead, Raab . . . . discovers his own. And, in some twisted sense, maybe ours, too."--Cleveland Plain Dealer

"The Whore of Akron is hilarious, heartfelt and wincingly honest. This is the best kind of book, one that surprises."--Buzz Bissinger

"With all due respect to Frederick Exley, Scott Raab has just written the smartest, funniest, most passionate, loving, hateful, bathetic, honest, and deeply personal sports jeremiad slash memoir of our time...The Whore of Akron is about a basketball player the way Moby-Dick is about a whale."--Stefan Fatsis, author of Wordfreak and A Few Seconds of Panic

From the Back Cover:

A native son of Akron, Ohio, LeBron James seemed like a miracle heaven-sent by God to transform Cleveland's losing ways when he was drafted by the Cavaliers in 2003. But after seven years--and still no parade down Euclid Avenue--he left, announcing his move to South Beach on a nationally televised ESPN production with a sly title that echoed fifty years of misery. The Catch, The Drive, The Shot . . . The Decision.

Out of James's treachery grew a monster. Scott Raab, a fifty-nine-year-old, 350-pound Jewish Santa Claus with a Chief Wahoo tattoo, would bear witness to LeBron's every move, and in so doing would act as the eyes and ears of Cleveland itself. Crude but warmhearted, poetic but raving, hilarious, profane (and profound), The Whore of Akron is both a rabid fan's indictment of a traitorous athlete and the story of Raab's obsessive quest to reveal the "wee jewel-box" of LeBron James's soul.

About this edition

• Publisher: Harper Perennial
• Publication date: 2012
• ISBN 10: 0062066374
• ISBN 13: 9780062066374
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 320