Seabiscuit
I’m not a crossword puzzle maven: I’m unable to rip through a Friday NYT puzzle during my morning commute, and I’ve finished the Sunday puzzle only a couple of times; it’s not as hard as Friday or Saturday, but it’s a marathon of words and phrases. The first Sunday I finished was in college, and the theme of the day was horse racing. For some reason, the names of old racehorses popped out from the depths of the subconscious, giving me the long clues quickly, making the short ones easy. I don’t know how or when the names of thoroughbreds were planted deep in my mind. I know nothing about horses and racing. And yet there they were — Man O’ War, Seabiscuit, Secretariat — perhaps breathed in with the cultural fog we all pass through day to day.
So, while I knew the name “Seabiscuit”, I knew nothing about what this horse — was Seabiscuit a “him” or “her”? — had done to be famous. The Seabiscuit movie was then a surprise: it’s a very good film about a slice of America I knew next to nothing about.
I’m writing this long after seeing the movie during the summer but right after reading the book. The movie inspired me to read the book, perhaps the happiest outcome of film adaptations, rather than the grumpiness that usual occurs when seeing the movie after reading the book: in the former case, details are filled in rather than left out, characters become deeper, and, most importantly, horizons are expanded. As said, I knew nothing about horses or racing before the movie. After the book I read because of the movie, I know a little bit more.
(Speaking of adaptations, one of the previews before the recent Matrix movie was for the upcoming Trojan War mega-movie next summer. “Sing, O Muse, of the wrath of Achilles, Peleus’s son.” I have no idea what they’re going to do with one of the founding works of Western literature, but one can hope that some people will go pick up a copy of The Iliad and read it for the first time.)
From book and movie, we get the basic story of Seabiscuit: how he was rescued from the backwaters of racing to eventually defeat War Admiral, how both Seabiscuit and Red Pollard were grievously injured, but both came back to win the one big race that had eluded them. We also feel the texture of racing culture: the purgings and dangers jockeys go through, the tactical challenges of pace and positioning during the race, the unbelievable popularity of racing during that time in America (I guess something like Nascar’s popularity today, but nationwide instead of regional).
And we get a feel for the men around Seabiscuit, though more interestingly in the book than the movie. In the movie, all the men are linked together by a narrative hook: they all need to be redeemed from loss, be it Howard’s son killed in an accident, Red’s father abandoning him on the bush racetracks, Smith’s anachronism in an industrializing world. All need to be redeemed by the horse and each other. In the book, we learn that Howard, though badly hurt by the death of his son, did have another, older son, whom he engaged with in friendly competition in horse racing. We see that he started racing because of an old interest in horses, and because he had few other worlds to conquer after rising from poverty to wealth. Pollard, also, is far more interesting: Hillenbrand notes that, despite how physically inappropriate he was to be a jockey and how many times he had been severely injured, he was doing what he loved. In that sense, Pollard was more free, more alive, than many other people. As for Smith, he is as silent and enigmatic in both book and film, though the book illustrates his wicked pleasure at humiliating journalists, the respect he received at the height of his career, and his lonely death in obscurity long after Seabiscuit and Derby winner Jet Pilot. And we have a far better feel for how great a jockey George Woolf was, how he used pre-race planning and research decades before anyone else would, and how he raced despite his diabetes. These men didn’t need to be redeemed by Seabiscuit; what Seabiscuit did was bring out each man’s best, and then some.
Besides the narrative divergences needed in any adaptation, there’s one more difference between book and movie. The book was written during the boom, during a time of peace. The shadow of the Depression falls lightly through its pages: there are references, and actions undertaken because of it, but there’s no feeling that it’s throttling the nation. Perhaps it’s because we’re exploring a sport sponsored by the rich, and therefore spend a great deal of time at well-appointed race tracks and wealthy stables stocked with prized animals. The movie, on the other hand, was made after the end of a boom. The shadow of the Depression is darkest near the beginning of the film, — with Pollard’s family, the newsreels and David McCullough’s narrative — and remains tangible throughout. Here, Seabiscuit’s story rallies the nation less because of the wonder of his athleticism, but more because his indomitable spirit is a symbol for America: we will recover from injuries and Depression and the looming war; we will prevail against seemingly insurmountable odds. It’s a movie made in a time of recession and war, though its main themes of reinvention and second changes is universally American, during both war and peace.
Lastly, the version of the book I got was for “book clubs”. It included an interview with Hillenbrand, where she notes the difficulties in writing about this topic. While she can get a bare-bones account from contemporary newspapers, what was missing was the texture of the time. Most of her effort was devoted to recovering ephemera (niche magazines, board games and souvenirs; celebrity marketing existing then, too) and interviewing the few people still alive that worked with Seabiscuit or knew the men involved. Pollard’s blindness, for example, was something she discovered in her interviews, and is the most likely explanation for Seabiscuit’s inexplicable loss in the Santa Anita. Cultural history isn’t easy, especially at the edge of living memory. We should be thankful someone went through the effort to show this slice of life from a different age.