A Talk with Robert Lipsyte

On the heels of a national book tour for his tenth young adult novel, longtime sportswriter and author Robert Lipsyte discusses what he has learned (or rather, what has been reaffirmed) by speaking with students in his recent travels to schools and libraries. “Jock culture” is alive and well, according to Lipsyte – but that’s precisely the problem.

“The separation of jocks and geeks never ends,” Lipsyte says. “Most presidents, senators and surgeons are jocks. The president, our asshole-in-chief, is the kind of guy who would shoulder kids in the hallways; now he shoulders small countries. Clinton always wants a mulligan. Rumsfeld is a bully on the squash court.”

Lipsyte sees the social constructs that have been created in middle school and high school hallways and locker rooms continuing well past graduation. One might think that Robert Lipsyte, who is approaching his sixty-ninth birthday and speaks softly due to his use of a hearing aide (even while he often talks and acts like a man half his age), would have long ago forgotten the bullies and nerds of his youth. But as many of his readers and countless more Americans know, the lessons learned on the sports field and locker rooms can have a greater impact than those in the classroom.

As Lipsyte has observed with the long-running but unspoken popularity of steroids, the rapid inflation of professional sports contracts, and even his own experiences with certain New York Times editors, jock culture in sports affects all of American culture as a whole. It should come as no surprise that a man who claims to have never been a sports fan (“I’m not uninterested, just disinterested,” he says) would be critical not only of the athletes involved, but of our entire sports-oriented culture.