Blood Sport: A Journey Up the Hassayampa

So glad to see this amazing novel back in print. I read a Dell paperback (with a beautiful full-color cover) when I was in junior high (middle school to you youngsters) back in '75 or so. Blew the top of my head clean off. Broke a bunch of rules and made up some new ones in the process. After I read this I graduated directly to Vonnegut, Brautigan and Castaneda. Blood Sport changed the way I look at writers and writing, and it deserves a spot on the same shelf as The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Heart of Darkness and Deliverance. The chapter listing "27 Things I Learned About Ratnose" is itself worth the cover price. Long live R.F. Jones. He has written a true adventure classic.

The best look at life as a man and the best description of (necessary?) madness ever put in print, there's simply nothing like this book, nothing nowhere, nohow. R.F. Jones wrote a 'lost' masterpiece back in the 70s and I am SO glad to see it back in print. I can start giving it to the weak and the strong again, it's good for what ails all of 'em. This saga of a man and his son's journey up the Hassayampa river, complete with exotic mixed grill, tourist traps and deadfalls, madness, mau-maus and Ratnose qualifies as a defining point in Mens Fiction of the latter 20th century. Let me repeat that, this is fiction for Men. No one get their politically correct undies in a wad, that was just a fair warning, the last you'll get around here. Anybody whining after that was said, Ratnose throws to the dogs. The point is, you're on your own up the Hassayampa, and that's a big hint. Come on along, anybody interested, you'll figure out whether you need something you ain't got soon enough. The bunch of yez, load your pockets with ammo and jerky, check the knife in your boot and start steppin'. See what's waiting for you up the river. Something different waiting for everyone, a vision quest that will end or it won't, maybe just a new assessment of your foodchain pecking order. The Hassayampa giveth and it taketh away. You'll see what I mean, just look at the flotsam floating by, mastadons and marlin, atlatls and motorbikes. You're checking your backtrail? Then you're as ready as you'll ever be. What're you waiting on? The water's just fine. It told me so it's own self.

I have been obsessed with this book since the 80's, when I found a used version under "sci fi". Then, in 1997, I found another copy in dark corner of a used bookstore in a tiny Vermont town. To own this book twice is to be doubly lucky. I am uncommonly happy that the book has been released again. Bloodsport describes a unique rite of passage for a young boy and his father as they travel up a mythical river, the Hassayampa. It's a very interesting read, as difficult as you wish to make it. The book also examines the peculiar value of pain, suffering, hardship to the male spirit.

I first read the book in its Spanish version. The reviewer said "Jones manages to master the magic of Castaneda and the violence of Peckinpah". The original is even better, a masterpiece. The story digs deep into the male soul, and distills the best from the sum of the experiences. Not for the delicate of stomach, Jones forces the reader to analyze his own circumstance. At the end one cannot but agree with Ratnose, "a man is the sum of all his scars". The apparent contradiction of a bloody-handed phylosopher is only apparent. Ratnose (and Jones!!!) speak to all of us. We just have to learn to listen.

Casting for Marlins. Living with Ratnose. A three part morality play with characters that have lived amongst us forever. The Greeks and the Norse weren't the only people who had it right in their telling of tales and trials of those of us who only wanted to catch one more fish, shoot one more beast; or ride one more motorcycle... I have personally given more than 50 copies of this book to friends and others in need. It deserves to be read! ----- David Stalle