Restorying the Sport Performance Masterplot: Jaclyn Gilbert’s Late Air

Abstract

Sport and exercise studies (SES) scholars have begun harnessing the power of fictional discourse to communicate research. However, they have not yet considered how generic fictions may serve as an interlocutor for athlete/coach/fan negotiation of SES-identified (and potentially harmful) concepts such as the performance storyline, nor have they duly considered the role generic fictions play in interpellating readers to a sporting narrative habitus. I use Jaclyn Gilbert’s novel Late Air as a case study to demonstrate how a rhetorical and socio-formal approach to fiction can serve as a vital resource for identifying, critiquing, and restorying away from the performance masterplot in athletics, particularly when directed towards athletes, coaches, and consumers of sport media. Fiction as thought experiment allows for these readers to mediate their engagement with represented “truths” of fictional worlds relevant to their own life. Fiction writers use a wide range of resources, including narration, characterization, and plotting to conduct these experiments. My inquiry is one that seeks a synthesis between sport studies and narrative theories of fiction that will result in each field contributing to the other. This article represents one case study and concludes with ideas for future collaboration.