I agree with you re: Longreads. I’d prefer spend an afternoon reading some of these higher-quality long form essays over some of the quickie posts at, say, Gawker. But this hints at the problem (or might be the central problem, really) that content producers on the Internet are going to face. It looks like most of the essays in the Electric Typewriter post are from professional authors who’ve already been published; the essays have all appeared in paper form elsewhere. It’s nice to have these essays online, and free at that, but until there’s a consistent source web-exclusive quality writing, I suspect the Internet will continue to suffer its dumbed-down reputation.

And yes, Spotify is a wonderful thing. I feel far more engaged with new music because of it.

While Premier League ticket costs have priced out many and there is the ‘prawn sandwich brigade’ I still don’t see football as properly transcending class. I think the hype and scandal that surrounds it makes it a lot easier to look down upon than say cricket.

One half-baked theory I have is that sport appears to be integral to the US university experience, while in the UK it is the either the boat race for the Oxbridge lot or the rugby team being sick in a bin for everyone else. So, British writers (working on the assumption that the majority of them went to university) may not have had the formative sporting experiences that US writers had. Or something along those lines anyway.

I loved the Friday Night Lights film so should really check out the TV series.

Thanks for writing this, really interesting piece. You are right that British writers seem to be ‘above’ sport somehow and I can only think you are right when you mention class. The idea that after Cantona, Islington dinner parties were full of people discussing the art of the volley or Ginola’s dribbling was always absurd, football – and when I think of sport in the UK I am afraid I think of football – is still frowned upon. In fact, I would say that when Nick Hornby wrote Fever Pitch, which I thought was great, he was similarly frowned upon by the great and the good. But I may be talking balls.

Away from literature, I recently finshed watching the first season of Friday Night Lights, a really good US series centering on American Football. It was so good it made me actualy want to watch American Football which is saying something. What do we have over here? Mike Bassett.

Thanks again, enjoyed reading the post.

From that there is still a degree of interest in football generally, but my interest has wained, despite getting back into it for a couple of years about 2005 or so.

But the fantasy game is well beyond my very limited knowledge. Perhaps I’ll try it as a way of getting back into things.

Regular NFL games in the UK are fun, but the tickets have been super-expensive and hard to come by. Perhaps if and when the Rams permanently relocate I’ll get more into it. I’ve only watched one game live and it was a lot of fun.

Or maybe I’ll just try to get into college ball instead…too much sport, too little time.

Maybe when the St. Louis Rams relocate to London, you’ll be all in.