The Last Season
A Father, a Son, and a Lifetime of College Football
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- 14,99 $
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- 14,99 $
Description de l’éditeur
Fathers, sons, and sports are enduring themes of American literature. Here, in this fresh and moving account, a son returns to his native South to spend a special autumn with his ninety-five-year-old dad, sharing the unique joys, disappointments, and life lessons of Saturdays with their beloved Ole Miss Rebels.
After growing up in Jackson, Stuart Stevens built a successful career as a writer and political consultant. But in the fall of 2012, not long after he turned sixty, the presidential campaign he’d worked on suffered a painful defeat. Grappling with a profound sense of loss and mortality, he began asking himself some tough questions, not least about his relationship with his father. The two of them had spent little time together for decades. He made a resolution: to invite his father to attend a season of Ole Miss football games together, as they’d done when college football provided a way for his father to guide him through childhood—and to make sense of the troubled South of the 1960s. Now, driving to and from the games, and cheering from the stands, they take stock of their lives as father and son, and as individuals, reminding themselves of their unique, complicated, precious bond.
Poignant and full of heart, but also irreverent and often hilarious, The Last Season is a powerful story of parents and children and of the importance of taking a backward glance together while you still can.
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Stevens (Malaria Dreams), who worked as a lead strategist for Mitt Romney's 2012 presidential bid and wrote for TV shows such as Northern Exposure and Commander in Chief, explores Mississippi culture and how it has changed (or hasn't) in the last half-decade all of which turns out to draw on both his Hollywood side and his political experience. Stevens returns home to attend Ole Miss football games with his 95-year-old father, Phineas, hoping to recapture the feeling he had going to Rebel games with his dad in the 1960s. Phineas is quick as a whip and full of one-liners, and he takes center billing with his son playing the straight man. As for the ghosts of the past including the Civil Rights movement, racism, segregation Stevens combines his memories of boyhood with his 60 years of knowledge to show how far America has come and how far we still need to go. Throughout, Stevens captures the spirit of college athletics, and ties it into his foundation of fun and family. B&w photos.