If at this point in your life you have still not read The Sun Also Rises there’s no need to berate yourself. The great thing about great books you have not yet read is that you are in for a treat when you finally do get around to them. After all, if we had already consumed every iconic novel we might be awfully accomplished but it would also take away that magical frisson that comes from the first-time discovery of something really special.
Scene from 1964 GP of Holland (Photo by Robert Daley)
The fantastic record of the state-of-the-art cars of this era — thin, gasoline-filled aluminum monocoques surrounding the driver like a casket with a giant engine newly moved to behind his back — pay tribute to the beauty of the Ferraris, Lotuses, BRMs and all the other land rockets of the pre-safety, pre-downforce era. Interspersed throughout are brief profiles of the drivers and circuits written in Daley’s inimitable wry, Hemingway-esque prose. Showing through, as in all his writing on motorsport, is the paradoxical ambivalence of at once being highly attracted to the derring-do of the men’s wondrous achievements as pilots and revulsion at the wonton waste of life inherent during this era of Formula 1, when the death of drivers and spectators was nearly guaranteed several times a season.
Death of Lorenzo Bandini, Monaco, 1967 (Photo by Robert Daley)
In fact, the footnotes to the photos in the closing “Photo Identification” section are practically another book unto themselves, with detailed ruminations about the deaths of Graham Hill by plane accident in the 1970s and Jim Clark at Hockenheim in a Formula 2 race in 1968, among many other anecdotes. And Daley’s quietly devastating recounting of the death of Lorenzo Bandini in a Ferrari at the 1967 Monaco Grand Prix and his journalistic need to photograph it (the horrifying shot of Bandini trapped beneath his burning Ferrari is the fitting endpaper of the book) makes for essential reading in and of itself as a shattering piece of self-reflective journalism, motorsports notwithstanding. In short, along with Cars at Speed, The Cruel Sport is a must have volume for any serious racing fan and anyone who cherishes the bittersweet history of Formula 1 and the men who lived & died it in its most glorious years, as told by its finest, most clear-eyed chronicler.
Check out more of Robert Daley’s life and work at his website, robertdaleyauthor.com.
It’s no coincidence that on the last day of August we’ve only just finished our summer reading of From Here to Eternity by James Jones. The text of this seminal 1951 military novel clocks in at a whopping 896 pages. And yet it rarely fails to captivate.
Set in and around the Schofield Barracks near Diamond Head in Honolulu, Hawaii in the months leading up to the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, From Here to Eternity tracks the lives of several soldiers and their women in this last peaceful period before WWII. Principal among them are Private Robert E. Lee Pruitt and First (“Top”) Sargent Milton Warden. Pruitt is a poor Kentucky boy who enlisted in the Army after escaping the mining town that consumed his parents and bumming around during the Depression. His aim is to be a “30-year-man”, a career soldier, because he loves the ideal of the Army, the camaraderie of the men and the art of soldiering. It is really the only true home he’s ever known. Continue reading
Arguably one of the greatest books ever written on auto racing, Robert Daley’s “Cars at Speed” covers the Golden Age of the early to mid 20th century’s grand road races and nascent Formula One scene.
As a correspondent for the New York Times, Daley covered Grand Prix racing in Europe and around the world from 1958 to 1964 and the book was published in 1961, right at the crossover period between front and rear engined Grand Prix machines. Along with Carroll Shelby, Daley is largely credited with helping to introduce the thrills of twisty circuit and street racing to the broader United States’ public, which previously only had interest in Indianapolis 500 and stock car-style events.
In “Cars at Speed”, Daley recounts the death defying years before seat belts, fire suits or big money, when men raced for glory and their own strange need to live on the edge and when drivers and spectators died with brutal regularity. In this book, you’ll find stories of Phil Hill & Dan Gurney, Jean Behra and Juan Manuel Fangio, Alfonso de Portago & Stirling Moss and many others. You’ll find tales from the Targa Florio, the Mille Miglia and Le Mans. In this book, you may learn more about the history of road racing than you thought you knew and discover a lifelong passion for motorsports and admiration for the men who take the risks. That’s how it worked out for me, anyway.
In a style heavily indebted to Hemingway, Daley’s wry, brutally honest tales are both funny and horrifying. And always but always exciting and immensely enjoyable. Along with his slightly later, larger photo-centric book “The Cruel Sport”, “Cars at Speed” may go in and out of print but belongs in every racing enthusiast’s library, casual or fanatical.
You can get nearly new copies through used book dealers on Amazon starting at around $4. Not a bad price for a lifetime of enjoyment.
