When San Diego writer and former Division I basketball player Mac Crane set out to finally write a book about basketball, it came only after years of distance from the sport.
"I was too in it for so long," Crane said. "I needed a lot of space away from basketball before I was able to write about it with any sort of clarity or wisdom."
Part of the complication of a post-competition life, Crane said, is how it becomes inherently wrapped up in loss.
"I was grieving myself, the loss of basketball and figuring out who I was going to be moving forward. When you throw your entire identity into one thing — whether it's art, writing, basketball, parenting, something else — when you lose that thing, it's sort of like, well, now what?"
In Crane's new novel, "A Sharp Endless Need," loss, grief and identity take center-stage alongside basketball.
The book follows Mackenzie “Mack” Morris, a high school senior in "a red part of Pennsylvania" on the verge of committing to a Division I college. Early in the book, as Mack contends with the sudden loss of their father, a new teammate barrels into their life. Mack struggles through commitment, identity, escapism, a blossoming first love and a world turned upside down.
Crane will discuss and sign books at 7 p.m. tonight at The Book Catapult in South Park.
Interview highlights
On red states and queer desire
Mack is going through a lot. They live in sort of a red part of Pennsylvania — I mean, most of Pennsylvania is red. And they're growing up in the early aughts, which is when I grew up. And it's a really homophobic town. They're playing high-school basketball and they're really good. They're a Division I recruit, so lots of colleges are recruiting them.
"Their life is basically basketball, but underneath all of that there's a lot of queer desire, tension — things that are bubbling under the surface."— Mac Crane
Their life is basically basketball, but underneath all of that there's a lot of queer desire, tension — things that are bubbling under the surface. This isn't a spoiler — their dad dies really early in the book. So, they're navigating grief, what it means to try to parent yourself, what it means to have no models for queerness, for transness and all of that while navigating being on this sort of public stage as far as being this really well-known athlete in their area. And trying to navigate the pressures of where to go to college and who they want to be, what they want their legacy to be.
On finally writing about basketball
It was also my life, just like Mack. I played it since I was 2 years old and then played college basketball — and I intended to play pro overseas, but I was just riddled with ACL tear after ACL tear. I sort of called it quits and didn't follow through on that dream — which has its own consequences as far as the "what if" of my life.
I knew I wanted to write, and be a writer, and I could write about other things, but I was still just going through my own process of losing basketball. I wouldn't have been able to write about it. And also I wouldn't have been able to write fiction about it. I think I would just put all of myself into it. I wrote this more than a decade after graduating from college. I was able to give Mack their own journey, separate from mine. And that was really important as far as wanting to craft a novel that felt like a story and not reliving my own story.
On basketball as performance
"The mom is like, "Have fun out there" or something, and Mack is like, "What's fun about basketball? This is life or death." And that was how I felt for so long. Stepping on the court, it was like, this is all I do. There's nothing fun about this."— Mac Crane
Max has a line in the book that feels true to me. The mom is like, "Have fun out there" or something, and Mack is like, "What's fun about basketball? This is life or death." And that was how I felt for so long. Stepping on the court, it was like, this is all I do. There's nothing fun about this.
I've talked to fellow writer Jean Kyoung Frazier — who I'm going to be in conversation with in L.A. — and we compared basketball to Shakespearean drama — and all sports really — if you boil it down to it. People can be so biased towards sports like, oh it's just physical or it's just jocks or brutes or whatever the sort of language is. But if you watch over a season specifically, the Shakespearean drama of watching a team is so funny. Just the ups and downs, the tragedies, the comedies. I think it can really mirror that in a lot of ways.
Because you, as a player, are cognizant that you have an audience, there is a performative element to it. You practice in private, just like a performance, just like a play and then you come out and the curtain drops, and then you have the audience there and it's happening live. So you know it's not filmed like a movie or TV where you get a million takes. It's whatever happens, happens and you've been preparing for it, but you actually can't always fully prepare and the audience participates in so many ways that it feels impossible to separate it from a performance.
On writing the games
I didn't want to skip over the basketball scenes that are important to Mack. I didn't want to fill it with a million basketball scenes, but I wanted to relish those moments of pleasure and intensity and joy and even maybe a psychological violence that happens when you're playing.
It felt really innate. I wrote toward a basketball audience. I didn't really put much layperson language in it. It was basically like, here's my ideal audience, what is maybe a queer basketball player or fan. But I didn't want to alienate everyone who's reading it. I just leaned into the physicality of it, where their bodies are, what Mack is feeling too. I think it's important to pair physical play with that emotion and desire and marry those two so that we know what the stakes are.
On being a point guard
Mack is a point guard because I was a point guard. It's what I know the best, and I also think it's such a special position. I'm biased, but it is like a quarterback. It's like a pitcher. The entire team is run through this point guard.
It felt important for me for Mack to have that. It's where they can really step into their own and be like, I'm this leader and I'm sort of this commander on the court. And juxtaposed against off the court, they're very lost. Like they don't know what they're doing and they want someone to tell them what to do.
That passivity off the court is then changed on the court and they are this passive agent. They know what they're doing. They're running the team. They're doing this, that and the other thing. But off the court they're just like, "Please someone boss me around."
On queer adolescence in the early aughts
You didn't have constant access to other people. We had this onset of AOL Instant Messenger. You put your away message up. I'd always go on and look for my crushes and their away messages would be up and I'd be like, "Oh, my God, what are you doing right now?"
"I find something really interesting about that element of unavailability in writing this book, because there's so much queer yearning and pining. It felt a lot easier to access Mack's particular yearning in this time period where we still didn't really have constant access to somebody."— Mac Crane
I love that everybody still had house phones. And yeah, we had these cell phones eventually and we could use the flip phone, but it was always, well, don't use all your text messages this month — and I find something really interesting about that element of unavailability in writing this book, because there's so much queer yearning and pining. That maybe it couldn't be possible with having constant access to another person in the same town. It felt a lot easier to access Mack's particular yearning in this time period where we still didn't really have constant access to somebody.
On 'complicated' parents
What's on the line is that they're at risk of being those teenagers who grow up into people who have to figure out how to parent themselves in adulthood, or give themselves the kind parents that they didn't have. And maybe not kind because I think that's maybe unfair to the parents in this story.
"Being a parent myself now, I give complicated parents in books much more grace. We don't want to flatten any character into just villain or good guy."— Mac Crane
Being a parent myself now, I give complicated parents in books much more grace. We don't want to flatten any character into just villain or good guy. Obviously, these parents are also … you know, it's the cycle. They were probably not parented. And they're in a place where there's just certain expectations of behaviors too. There's somewhere where like binge drinking and blacking out in the Eagles parking lot is totally normal and good behavior. And that's normalized and that's sort of part of their subculture.
You feel empathy for the parents who probably have no tools themselves — and as such, they're giving no tools to Mack and Liv and the other sort of peripheral teenagers in this story. So, they're really at risk of continuing that cycle of maybe looking for parental figures elsewhere. That's an important part of the book as well.
Mack's coach becomes also a flawed parental figure. Their coach isn't the most normal, reliable parental figure either and that's what's beautiful. He's complicated as well and he has his own kids and he has his own issues. Are these kids going to find models and if not, what does that mean for their futures? What does it mean for how they approach their relationships in the future?
On sports and sex
"I see so much similarity between sex writing and sports writing. Of course there's the obvious, there's the physicality, but I think that's really there's so much more than that."— Mac Crane
I see so much similarity between sex writing and sports writing. Of course there's the obvious, there's the physicality, but I think that's really there's so much more than that.
I think some of the only times where you can strip down a character to their true self and get deep into their psyche is playing sports, because I think the mask comes off. Whatever sort of roles you wear in society — the mom mask, the sister mask, the teacher mask, whatever — they come off when you step onto a court or a field and you become that primitive part of yourself.
And I think that parallels with sex writing. Of course people wear masks and roles in sex scenes as well, but there's ways that you can sort of strip those off and show a person at their more primitive or their more innate desires. So I think that they mirror each other in a really interesting way.
On drugs, alcohol and the pressures of performance
I think something that a lot of people don't know is culturally a lot of athletes use a lot of substances. I don't want to generalize here, but there's a lot of research around it. Increased substance misuse, addiction rates in athletes and especially competitive athletes, sort of the higher up you go.
And of course some of that is the opioid crisis and getting prescribed painkillers, and that's sort of a separate issue than what we're talking about with my book. But it becomes a bonding ritual for a lot of athletes. It also becomes an escapism thing for when they're dealing with pressure.
So many of these people, they're getting the internal pressure — like I need to be the best, I need to perform the best — the external pressure from coaches, from the audience, whoever. Pressure to make the team, to get the scholarship, to make the pro team, whatever. So, it becomes that as well for a lot of athletes.
The drinking isn't fun either, the same way that the basketball isn't fun. It's almost just a necessary tool or something. Add all of that into these specific characters Mack and Liv dealing with internalized homophobia, dealing with their own queer desires that they don't want to acknowledge — this is all just a hotbed for using any escapism elements that they have. And what I touched on before about this culture and where they live in Pennsylvania is they're not talking about therapy. The word "mental health" was never mentioned in my entire childhood or adolescence. It was like, smoke some weed, drink some booze, whatever and that was what everybody was doing. So Mack and Liv don't really know any different. They're in a town where that's the normal way to cope with stress, and it's who they're seeing. Mack's mom is doing that… that's what their models are. So they're like, all right. Let's deal with the pressure of basketball and the pressure of loving each other and not knowing how to love each other with these tools that we have.
