Dan Jenkins' Needle
Drama critic Maurice Charney has written that comedy "provides a form of awareness by which we may understand and deal with a puzzling reality" (5). Dan Jenkins' Billy Clyde Puckett echoes Charney when he says that "laughter is the only thing that'll cut trouble down to a size where you can talk to it" {Life 272-273). Billy's country-shrewd remark could serve as his creator's underlying assumption in his sport-centered fiction and journalism. Indeed, Dan Jenkins has fashioned a lucrative career out of deflating sportsworld, lampooning the excesses and foolishness of organized sport so that we can "talk to it," doing so from a position of common sense and, paradoxically, deep affection. In his fiction, he reveals himself as a satirist very much in the American grain, a Mark Twain of the NFL, the Soumwest Conference, and the sports media. Larry L. King, a fellow master of redneck prose, has said in private conversation that some of the funniest moments in his life have occurred simply listening to Jenkins read and comment on the morning paper over coffee and cigarettes in Manhattan. In his recent journalism, especially his regular monthly column for Playboy, Jenkins has become our Mencken, outrageously and unabashedly prejudiced, jaundiced, eccentric, ornery, taking well-