Word: boyds
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...William Boyd, 33, who until recently taught at Oxford, brings considerable zest to this fluent, raucous, untidy narrative. He has written two previous novels--An Ice-Cream War, set in World War I, and A Good Man in Africa, a comedy that takes place in a former British possession. Both are more controlled and disciplined. Beside them, Stars and Bars is something of a hoot, based as much on the garbled America of TV as the real thing. Boyd is fine as long as he stays in New York City. In the South his story tends to unravel...
Because he is English and revels in satire, Boyd has often been compared to Evelyn Waugh. The comparison does not really work; he has neither Waugh's masterly style nor his free-floating malice. Also, when Waugh wrote his comic gems in the '20s and '30s, it was still possible to have a truly innocent hero, like Paul Pennyfeather in Decline and Fall or William Boot in Scoop. A dark half-century later, Boyd's Henderson Dores would not be believable as a pure man; he must be inept and pusillanimous. When last seen, he has lost...
...must also be said that though Gammons' knowledge is appreciated, it sometimes appears in fatuous form. That Scipio Spinks was the college coach of current Sox pitcher Oil Can Boyd is neither an earth-shattering or particularly interesting revelation. Gammons' awkward prose and his tendency to repeat anecdotes (how many times must we hear that after clinching the American League pennant in '75, Sox manager Darrel Johnson drank whiskey with Oakland Athletic Joe Rudi rather than celebrating with his team?) do not help matters...
Junior Doug Boyd also had quite an afternoon. While competing simultaneously in the triple and high jump, he won the latter event with a seven-foot effort and finished second in the triple jump with a leap of 46 ft., 7 3/4-in., a personal best...
Other members of the pitching staff going north will be Dennis "Oil Can" Boyd, Roger Clemens, Bruce Hurst, Bruce Kison, Mark Clear, Bob Stanley, Steve Crawford and Bobby Ojeda...