The Intangibles cover art

The Intangibles

A Hockey Life: Friendship, Fatherhood and the Love of the Game

Pre-order: Try Premium Plus free
Pick 1 audiobook a month from our unmatched collection - including bestsellers and new releases.
Unlimited access to our all-you-can-listen catalogue of 15K+ audiobooks and podcasts
Access exclusive sales and deals.
£8.99/month after 30 days. Renews automatically.

The Intangibles

By: Nick Paumgarten
Pre-order: Try Premium Plus free

£8.99/month after 30 days. Renews automatically. See here for eligibility.

Pre-order Now for £24.99

Pre-order Now for £24.99

The Intangibles is Paumgarten's memoir told through the odd but vivid lens of hockey. Not a book about hockey, really, but one in which a lifetime of obsessively hanging around the game provides a vivid and sneaky-exotic window into a cultish world that hides in plain sight.

The Intangibles is also a timely, sharp, and witty exploration of masculinity, of boys and men, sons and fathers, of both the toxic and non-toxic kinds. And a deep, questioning look at, and finally a celebration of, a certain world of male friendship, in which sport - or the dreams of sport - becomes the lingua franca for a group of men with all their faults and hopes. Paumgarten's memoir both explores and undermines some of the mythologies of manhood and sport, while creating a fresh, rich, and honest portrait of men at play - the kind of male play of such outsized importance that it defies logic, age, orthopaedics, and the responsibilities of grown-up life.

Though he rarely plays anymore, Paumgarten still cherishes the game of hockey. In many respects, The Intangibles is a love letter to the game, and a razor-sharp, original, and mordant anthropology of its participants and their earnest strivings by one of our finest writers.
Fatherhood Hockey Parenting & Families Relationships Sports
adbl_web_anon_alc_button_suppression_c
No reviews yet