Notes & Excerpts from Beyond a Boundary

I'll start off with some good advice from James:

The Parts about Victoria

CLR James details his great passion for cricket and Victorian literature, two things I'm pretty cold on. I went in expecting to get more explicit Marxism and political history about the West Indies. Tho I think he'd say that I'd learn just as much political history by learning about cricket.

From this familiarity and appreciation for the Victorian mind he details how cricket came to have such a big role in education and British society, all the way to the periphery of its empire. He also compares this to the flourishing of games and competition in Greece.

This is Wordsworth, but I like James' arrangement better. "Late and soon, the world is too much with us."

When talking about a great batsman gives us a "tough word", Prolegomenta, and it's this word under the whole book, because it's about cricket as an antecedent itself and the way that the game is transformed in another place when played by a different people.

 

The Parts about Art

Look, it's "are games art discourse" in 1963!

He introduces the work of Bernhard Berenson as a frame. I find this section so interesting because the ways that cricket contrasts with visual art are similar to how video games do.

I'll quote the section in full:

 

He breaks art down this way: you have accurate representation, or mere illustration; then there was literary art which is imaginative, "the totality of the visual image which the object had evoked in a superior mind." But neither of these he characterized as "true art", a term reserved for "the quality that existed in its own right, irrespective of the object represented."

The idea of "tactile values" is useful: it's the "decorations" that work like a particular lens or angle that emphasizes the "significant form," and that form is what makes it "true art." This really resonates with how I think about games. The mechanics and features that we decorate our game are there to draw attention to what the game is actually about. And what the game is about is not actually put there by the designer.

Then there's this idea of "movement": "making us realize it as we never can actually", what a great way to describe the role of art. On the underlined bit: the ability to capture "what at no moment really is -- namely movement." It reminds me of Scott McCloud's discussion of the gutter panels in comics. The idea that from that depiction we're able to understand other possible movements applies to games as well, even if we're looking at a clip rather than a still frame. But you have a similar experience where you're able to appreciate the range of the system, the muscles of the game.

The Parts about Cricket

With the two aesthetic qualities of "tactile value" and "movement" he has us look at cricket:

That idea of an recreating or extending an image is fascinating. It seems to me that thru the variations of an image, with all the minute particulars, or "decorations", you are seeing more clearly the significant form. What love for the game!

I like that he describes cricket as a drama, and his comparisons to baseball helped drive the point.

That play between the one & many was something I explored both Changes and the Art of Flight and is the most discernible thru-line between them.

Interesting design detail in batting order. And I appreciate the emphasis of the player here, because it's thru the player that the game is performed.

Huizinga-heads will have a good time with this one. That conniving and confounding duality of games to be unalterably games, no matter how consequential they wind up being.

After reading this book I still don't know how cricket works, so I'm lost when it plunges into thorough detail of certain matches and careers, but a certain term would often stick out.