- Joined
- Jul 26, 2003
On Edge by Jon Jackson, with James Pereira
I finished this tonight, and enjoyed it for the most part, if "enjoyed" is the correct word to describe reading an excellent account of corruption and dysfunction.
The back cover of the book contains an endorsement by Ron Pfenning (no surprise), and by the booksite webmaster of WalMart.com. That's it. I don't think this is a big deal, but I just found it unusual, especially when compared to the plethora of prestigious endorsements on the back covers of the books by Christine Brennan and Joy Goodwin.
The text flows nicely and is well-written, even witty in places, although Jackson isn't as funny as he thinks he is when he suddenly tries to emulate Al Franken or Dave Barry, which he does on occasion and without warning. I found it a little jarring, so although he can relay information to the reader in a concise and flowing manner, his few attempts at outright humor were a little flat.
There are also moments in which his frustration breaks through the professionalism and he sarcastically speaks directly to the person or persons he's dishing on at that moment, if he feels they've been exceptionally mean or are just being clueless. It's smoothly done and doesn't read nearly as badly as most other people would have written such passages, but again, it's surprising when it happens because it's so sudden and jars with the rest of the text.
The text also contains a few more typos and grammatical errors than it should, and it commits what I consider to be the most irritating literary crime of all, the misuse of the word literally, as in, "My head will literally explode if I hear this word misused one more time." (Boom.)
The book is really divided into two halves, with no discernable point at which one ends and the other begins. The first half is Jackson's autobiography, the second is a thorough takedown of the USFS and the ISU, with a few darts thrown at the IOC for good measure.
When reading his autobiography, I thought to myself, "Well, this is nice, but it's not what I bought the book for. When do we get to the dirt?" But when we got to the dirt, I realized why the first half was so important. Knowing his background as a skater and as a judge, and reading accounts of his first childhood encounters with dishonest people, shows the reader how much of a skating insider he is. Without this basis, the second half of the book wouldn't have much merit.
The final two chapters are the money chapters, the ones in which he really puts a serious smackdown on the people in charge of skating. It's one of those accounts which, even if you throw out 75% of it on the basis that it might be biased or incomplete, it still sounds extremely damning. He doesn't mince words. He goes into detail, and he never lost me even when he went into a maze of legal matters.
Full disclosure: when I picked up the book, I already was of the opinion that the ISU is corrupt and in bed with the Russian mafia, although I had no opinion one way or the other about the USFS. I am trying not to be someone who is simply satisfied that he read something which reinforced what he already believed (America's favorite pasttime), but even so, there are various places in this book in which he simply tells it like it is and kicks some serious hooha.
Jackson rags on the Russian Federation a bit, and really, really gets negative about Irina Slutskaya. He acknowledges that she's a sweet person (I'm thinking about that other stupid long thread we had -- HA!), but complains that she's really overrated and gets high presentation marks because of constant politicking, not because she deserves it. However, unlike any other artistic criticism throughout the book, he actually takes the time to explain his reasons for believing she's overrated (such as the fact that she skates hunched over). I'll leave it to others who know more about skating technique and presentation to debate the merits of this, but Jackson doesn't really seem to like the Russians very much.
The book does have some problems.
First, when citing examples of judging misconduct, he might say something like, "Skater X clearly skated better, but was not scored high enough for it because the judges had already made up their minds." Of course, since it's a book and not a visual medium, we can only take his word that skater X truly skated better, even when he directly quotes other judges telling him that they had indeed already made up their minds. This is a minor issue caused by the medium, not by Jackson himself.
But most of all, what really bothered me was a section in the middle of the book in which Jackson takes a wild detour and spends a few pages defending Tonya Harding. It's very jarring, and feels as if it was shoehorned in out of nowhere.
It doesn't bother me that someone wants to defend Tonya. It doesn't bother me that someone points out her upbringing; I understand the effects of abuse and a bad environment as well as anyone. What bothers me is when someone wants to defend Tonya and does so by omitting inconvenient facts, which is what Jackson does.
He basically says that Tonya was targeted by the USFS despite a complete lack of evidence that she knew about her ex-husband's plan. In other words, he takes Tonya at her word; what she did to earn such trust, he does not say. In still other words, he claims the USFS used the Tonya-Nancy affair as an excuse to get rid of someone they didn't like anyway.
He omits the fact that the FBI claimed that there was evidence, but because of Tonya's agreement, it was sealed. That's not the same thing as no evidence. He neglects to mention that she was convicted of an actual crime -- obstruction of justice -- and could have been convicted of more.
Now, the focus of this book is not Tonya Harding, so I don't want the focus of this thread to be Tonya Harding, either. My point here is, if Jackson is capable of lies of omission on this topic, I have no choice but to accept that he's capable of lies of omission on other topics, as well. These few pages lowered the value of the entire work, which is unfortunate, because the rest of the book is mostly very good.
This becomes even more damning when he suddenly snipes at Anton Sikharulidze with sarcasm later in the book. Anton is quoted as saying that he doesn't know why the duplicate gold medal was given. Jackson, losing his patience with people who take that attitude (which I can understand), responds with something like, "Here's a clue, Anton. A judge cheated and admitted to it. Got it?" So Jackson feels perfectly okay leveling such sarcasm at someone else, but can be equally guilty of glossing over facts, as he demonstrated when defending Tonya Harding.
But the Harding passage was an odd aberration. For about 99% of the time, I felt very, very much that I was reading an honest, straightforward account that absolutely needed to be written, one from deep inside the heart of the sport of figure skating, told by someone who's been through it all. If even half of what he wrote is true, then I want to stand up and applaud him for writing this book. It's a book we all needed, and I have no doubt NBC will be all over it in Turin.
Plus, it was so lovely to finally have an account of the formation, battles, and demise of the WSF.
Overall, this book was a good, solid, entertaining read, and despite the problems I listed above, I would recommend it highly, and give it an 8 out of 10.
I finished this tonight, and enjoyed it for the most part, if "enjoyed" is the correct word to describe reading an excellent account of corruption and dysfunction.
The back cover of the book contains an endorsement by Ron Pfenning (no surprise), and by the booksite webmaster of WalMart.com. That's it. I don't think this is a big deal, but I just found it unusual, especially when compared to the plethora of prestigious endorsements on the back covers of the books by Christine Brennan and Joy Goodwin.
The text flows nicely and is well-written, even witty in places, although Jackson isn't as funny as he thinks he is when he suddenly tries to emulate Al Franken or Dave Barry, which he does on occasion and without warning. I found it a little jarring, so although he can relay information to the reader in a concise and flowing manner, his few attempts at outright humor were a little flat.
There are also moments in which his frustration breaks through the professionalism and he sarcastically speaks directly to the person or persons he's dishing on at that moment, if he feels they've been exceptionally mean or are just being clueless. It's smoothly done and doesn't read nearly as badly as most other people would have written such passages, but again, it's surprising when it happens because it's so sudden and jars with the rest of the text.
The text also contains a few more typos and grammatical errors than it should, and it commits what I consider to be the most irritating literary crime of all, the misuse of the word literally, as in, "My head will literally explode if I hear this word misused one more time." (Boom.)
The book is really divided into two halves, with no discernable point at which one ends and the other begins. The first half is Jackson's autobiography, the second is a thorough takedown of the USFS and the ISU, with a few darts thrown at the IOC for good measure.
When reading his autobiography, I thought to myself, "Well, this is nice, but it's not what I bought the book for. When do we get to the dirt?" But when we got to the dirt, I realized why the first half was so important. Knowing his background as a skater and as a judge, and reading accounts of his first childhood encounters with dishonest people, shows the reader how much of a skating insider he is. Without this basis, the second half of the book wouldn't have much merit.
The final two chapters are the money chapters, the ones in which he really puts a serious smackdown on the people in charge of skating. It's one of those accounts which, even if you throw out 75% of it on the basis that it might be biased or incomplete, it still sounds extremely damning. He doesn't mince words. He goes into detail, and he never lost me even when he went into a maze of legal matters.
Full disclosure: when I picked up the book, I already was of the opinion that the ISU is corrupt and in bed with the Russian mafia, although I had no opinion one way or the other about the USFS. I am trying not to be someone who is simply satisfied that he read something which reinforced what he already believed (America's favorite pasttime), but even so, there are various places in this book in which he simply tells it like it is and kicks some serious hooha.
Jackson rags on the Russian Federation a bit, and really, really gets negative about Irina Slutskaya. He acknowledges that she's a sweet person (I'm thinking about that other stupid long thread we had -- HA!), but complains that she's really overrated and gets high presentation marks because of constant politicking, not because she deserves it. However, unlike any other artistic criticism throughout the book, he actually takes the time to explain his reasons for believing she's overrated (such as the fact that she skates hunched over). I'll leave it to others who know more about skating technique and presentation to debate the merits of this, but Jackson doesn't really seem to like the Russians very much.
The book does have some problems.
First, when citing examples of judging misconduct, he might say something like, "Skater X clearly skated better, but was not scored high enough for it because the judges had already made up their minds." Of course, since it's a book and not a visual medium, we can only take his word that skater X truly skated better, even when he directly quotes other judges telling him that they had indeed already made up their minds. This is a minor issue caused by the medium, not by Jackson himself.
But most of all, what really bothered me was a section in the middle of the book in which Jackson takes a wild detour and spends a few pages defending Tonya Harding. It's very jarring, and feels as if it was shoehorned in out of nowhere.
It doesn't bother me that someone wants to defend Tonya. It doesn't bother me that someone points out her upbringing; I understand the effects of abuse and a bad environment as well as anyone. What bothers me is when someone wants to defend Tonya and does so by omitting inconvenient facts, which is what Jackson does.
He basically says that Tonya was targeted by the USFS despite a complete lack of evidence that she knew about her ex-husband's plan. In other words, he takes Tonya at her word; what she did to earn such trust, he does not say. In still other words, he claims the USFS used the Tonya-Nancy affair as an excuse to get rid of someone they didn't like anyway.
He omits the fact that the FBI claimed that there was evidence, but because of Tonya's agreement, it was sealed. That's not the same thing as no evidence. He neglects to mention that she was convicted of an actual crime -- obstruction of justice -- and could have been convicted of more.
Now, the focus of this book is not Tonya Harding, so I don't want the focus of this thread to be Tonya Harding, either. My point here is, if Jackson is capable of lies of omission on this topic, I have no choice but to accept that he's capable of lies of omission on other topics, as well. These few pages lowered the value of the entire work, which is unfortunate, because the rest of the book is mostly very good.
This becomes even more damning when he suddenly snipes at Anton Sikharulidze with sarcasm later in the book. Anton is quoted as saying that he doesn't know why the duplicate gold medal was given. Jackson, losing his patience with people who take that attitude (which I can understand), responds with something like, "Here's a clue, Anton. A judge cheated and admitted to it. Got it?" So Jackson feels perfectly okay leveling such sarcasm at someone else, but can be equally guilty of glossing over facts, as he demonstrated when defending Tonya Harding.
But the Harding passage was an odd aberration. For about 99% of the time, I felt very, very much that I was reading an honest, straightforward account that absolutely needed to be written, one from deep inside the heart of the sport of figure skating, told by someone who's been through it all. If even half of what he wrote is true, then I want to stand up and applaud him for writing this book. It's a book we all needed, and I have no doubt NBC will be all over it in Turin.
Plus, it was so lovely to finally have an account of the formation, battles, and demise of the WSF.
Overall, this book was a good, solid, entertaining read, and despite the problems I listed above, I would recommend it highly, and give it an 8 out of 10.
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Thanks for the link.
