Readers Up #27: 10 Lb. Penalty

Ah, you are thinking, at last! A Dick Francis novel, the obvious choice, why did it take so long?

Well, for one thing, Dick Francis does not write about US Thoroughbred racing, so even though his mysteries obviously count as racetrack lit, I don't feel them in my jaw. When he died and his son took over, Felix Francis did what sons taking over famous fathers' literary estates generally do: he made it suck (see also: Todd McCaffrey, Brian Herbert, Christopher Tolkien). Incidentally, Felix-As-Dick Francis does write about American racing, and someday I'll tell you everything terrible about the book Triple Crown, but that day is not today. The other reason we're this far into this little venture and only now does ol' Dick appear is that I'm not his audience. I'm so not his audience that, according to Goodreads, I read 10 Lb. Penalty a few years ago and completely forgot about it until marking this read as Complete.

Whoops?

In a way, my initial reaction to 10 Lb. Penalty, one of dispassionate neutrality, maps onto US racing neatly. I think a Gallup poll would reveal that the majority of non-racing fans neither love nor hate racing; they don't think about it at all. As a sport and industry, it was never in my mind until about five years ago, and now it's pretty much always there. You'll hear that taking up racing as an adult is rare, akin to becoming a late-onset coffee drinker (which I also did, around the same time, in addition to going full queermo. It was a big year for late bloomers)--but I think people are more flexible than marketing departments give them credit for. I'm writing this on the cusp of Derby Week '20, the Sunday before the Sunday after the fastest two minutes in sports and the richest--in names and blood and pomp, if not actual purses--event in horse racing. In case the Machines come for us and human reality has to be rewritten starting September 4, 2020 and all records of equine sport are lost except this one, let me state that the Kentucky Derby is happening on September 5, 2020. It's been a long, strange summer, and yet one in which I've observed and participated in intimate connections, new bonds, electrifying possibilities. One of the most amiable human tendencies is to expand under pressure. What have the only gentle elements of this pandemic been but people discovering they love baking bread (everyone I  know) or embroidery (me)? Racing... unsurprisingly... has failed to capitalize on homebound screen-glued states; on people looking around and wondering for the first time whether they should try a 5k, join the Democratic Socialists, or write a poem; on sheer discovery.

10 Lb. Penalty is all about doing a new thing and finding a new version of yourself. Benedict Juliard is a would-be steeplechase jockey, cut off from boyhood dreams by a forceful father's own ambitions. Depending on what you enjoy about father-son fictional relationships, this plot is either heartwarming or infuriating. Ben's narrative voice is warm and wry enough that I finished reading (...again) and I wouldn't even say I disliked the book. But it privileges innate genius, talent, and charisma above drive, and I can't rock with that. George Juliard is a Good Man™, unimpeachable in character, a natural leader, and therefore any tool at hand is his to use by divine right, including his son. Strangely for a sport featuring both amateur and professional jockeys, 10 Lb. Penalty seems sure that any reader must agree: if Ben isn't a good enough rider to reach the top rank of jump jocks, he should hang up his silks. There is no place for dilettantes, even though that's exactly what amateur British jockeys are. Further, Ben's venture into local politicking on behalf of his father is hardboiled dilettantism--he doesn't go into politics himself after George wins a Parliament seat, nor does he become a lobbyist or campaign manager. He goes to college. A summer aiding his father's quest for MP glory takes the place of a gap year, functioning as a crucible for his personality with the implication that the racetrack would not deliver such a firming-up of character.

Ben's reward for assisting George's campaign is that his dreams are returned to him--but always with a string dangling. Ben perceives these strings to be his newfound filial love and devotion; this reader perceives otherwise. The point is that I may never freehand flawless embroidery like Sophie in Portrait of a Lady On Fire, just coolly stitching perfectly-formed flowers over wine with my gals. Does that mean I should stop, that I should never have started? I will never strike it big on an impeccably-played Pick Six. Should I stop watching racing? All or nothing is fatal to love. The spiritual tightfistedness of US racing is so strange to me, the artificial gatekeeping, the fearful eagle-eye. Yet the evidence of this foundation is continually revealed, as by responses to an anodyne statement from TVG after several NBA teams went on strike last week. Some of racing's Powers That Be may believe that you have to crack a few eggs to make an omelette, but dollars have always spoken louder than words. George Juliard's coin commands his son's attention; it's his luck that Ben falls into line, and luckier still for both that Ben's reaction to being thus shaped is awe for the force of George's personality, respect for his ambition, and eventually love.

But that love is stultifying. If there's one thing that dates 10 Lb. Penalty, it's the book's sexlessness. Not to say that sex should be on the page in every book, or that every narrator's sexuality should be examined--it's more that the author's unwritten but clearly communicated confidence of audience agreement extends to the notion that having a family member more publicly-situated than you kills any possibility of a personal private existence. Are the sacrifices of Ben's young life--his riding, his relationships--worth what is presented as a higher devotion, a more pure calling? He has no friends, no featured or even named romantic or sexual partners, no family relationships other than his father. His character development is entirely within the bounds of George's life. He's a Mordred type, but virtuous; his person is consumed by his father's; and all of this a sacrifice at the altar of the falsest god, perfection. Ben, a fine human at the outset, can never be perfect and the pursuit of it kills parts of him, chokes air from potential spaces and turns him into a fanatic. Racing, a sport composed of beautiful and flawed organisms, seems sure that its imperfection dooms it to lovelessness.

Not to say I don't relate.

Yours entangled in embroidery floss,
Diana