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Cold-Cocked: On Hockey
Cold-cocked is the first book to explore a woman's way of watching the game poet Al Purdy called a "combination of ballet and murder." Written by author and born-again hockey aficionado Lorna Jackson, Cold-cocked looks at hockey through a woman's eyes and heart but is written with a sportswriter's energy and rigor and a hip cultural critic's cynicism and wit.
208 pages, Paperback
First published September 1, 2007
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60 people want to read
About the author
Lorna Jackson
8 books1 followerA classically trained vocalist who spent a decade singing country rock in small-town BC bars, a big city Vancouver girl who shears sheep and plants corn in the country on Vancouver Island, an exacting university writing teacher by day and raucous hockey aficionado by night: Lorna Jackson is full of the sort of contradictions that make for bright, original writing.
After the saloon singing years, Jackson returned to university to pursue degrees in English and take writing classes with Jack Hodgins and Mark Anthony Jarman. By the end of her student years at UVic, she had published a collection of short stories, Dressing for Hope (Gooselane Editions, 1995) and was teaching in the departments of English and Writing. Her first novel, A Game to Play on the Tracks (Porcupine's Quill) was published in 2003. She has been a columnist for Quill and Quire magazine, a contributor to the Georgia Straight, and serves on the editorial board of Malahat Review. Her writing—fiction and creative nonfiction—has appeared in such magazines as Brick, The Fiddlehead, The New Quarterly, Canadian Notes and Queries, and Canadian Fiction Magazine. She is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Writing at UVic.
After the saloon singing years, Jackson returned to university to pursue degrees in English and take writing classes with Jack Hodgins and Mark Anthony Jarman. By the end of her student years at UVic, she had published a collection of short stories, Dressing for Hope (Gooselane Editions, 1995) and was teaching in the departments of English and Writing. Her first novel, A Game to Play on the Tracks (Porcupine's Quill) was published in 2003. She has been a columnist for Quill and Quire magazine, a contributor to the Georgia Straight, and serves on the editorial board of Malahat Review. Her writing—fiction and creative nonfiction—has appeared in such magazines as Brick, The Fiddlehead, The New Quarterly, Canadian Notes and Queries, and Canadian Fiction Magazine. She is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Writing at UVic.
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
July 28, 2018
Goddamn, the emotional arc of this book nearly wrecked me.
What I enjoyed about this book is how infinitely relatable I found it. I don't have a daughter. I'm not nearing menopause. I don't live on a farm. My sister is still alive. My father did not fight in a war and while he suffered mild memory problems at the end of his life, this was due to brain cancer. But the way Lorna Jackson talks about hockey, the way she explains why she -- and, ostensibly, other women -- find it attractive, and the players, is so exact to my own limited, demented worldview as a hockey fan. I don't give a flying fuck about statistics. I don't know what's happening 98% of the time when I watch a game. I guess if the puck is moving, that's good thing? I couldn't even tell you for certain what position Ovechkin plays and he's supposedly one of my favorite players. But my god could I talk all day about how his mom negotiated his contract, how he's a leader in the locker room, how he earned every single drunken moment with the Cup. I could talk all day about how I want him to lie on top of me like a weighted anxiety blanket, just fucking crushing me to death. I could argue all day with friends about whether finding him attractive means I've hit rock bottom or ascended to a higher plane of existence. My attraction to hockey is not to the game; it's to the players. Jackson talks about this and validates it. She is fluent in the mechanics of the game but more than that, she presents a hockey game that is filled with stories, with narrative: why this hit is undeserved; why this goal is earned; why this player is struggling; why this player is in the sin bin and the ways in which he, both in and out of the game, deserved it. In this book, desire for the players is wrapped up in the game, but Jackson seems to tell us that it's okay if our desire is simply desire.
And I think, too, in women's unending quest to prove herself, this book is a kind of comfort reading, despite its flaws. Did I chafe against her comments that women don't care about the violence of the sport, the war metaphors? At first, yes. Who is she to say I don't care about the violence of the sport? I can run with the boys who watch hockey for the fights! And then I remembered that when Becky first tried to get me into hockey, she showed me pictures of hockey players hugging mid-air, because that was what delighted me. I remembered the solid two months Jasmine and I spent coming up with increasingly absurd ways Sidney Crosby might procure a child, because we so badly want for him to be in possession of a little baby girl. I remembered the entire AHL game Jasmine and I spent, bored and drunk, cruelly deprived of the player we'd bought tickets to see who had gotten called up that week, coming up with things we'd do with hockey players for a day: teach Evgeni Malkin to knit; take Tyson Barrie to the farmer's market; take Jamie Benn to a natural history museum. The violence and violent language puts me off of the game; I care about the human elements, the guys thanking their wives after games or putting their children in the Cup when they win it all. I can't pretend to know anything about the game, because I don't. I can't prove myself in a world of men asking me to know enough to join the boy's club because I don't know enough and I never will and I don't want to. I want to watch Pride and Prejudice on a couch, covered in blankets, cuddling with Dylan Strome. Jackson says that's okay.
This book was not without flaws, but as a thesis on the erotic female gaze in and fandom of hockey (of which there are like....no other books?) it's beautifully done. Professor Kelly on the You Can't Do That podcast recommended this book and it took me awhile to read but I enjoyed it immensely.
What I enjoyed about this book is how infinitely relatable I found it. I don't have a daughter. I'm not nearing menopause. I don't live on a farm. My sister is still alive. My father did not fight in a war and while he suffered mild memory problems at the end of his life, this was due to brain cancer. But the way Lorna Jackson talks about hockey, the way she explains why she -- and, ostensibly, other women -- find it attractive, and the players, is so exact to my own limited, demented worldview as a hockey fan. I don't give a flying fuck about statistics. I don't know what's happening 98% of the time when I watch a game. I guess if the puck is moving, that's good thing? I couldn't even tell you for certain what position Ovechkin plays and he's supposedly one of my favorite players. But my god could I talk all day about how his mom negotiated his contract, how he's a leader in the locker room, how he earned every single drunken moment with the Cup. I could talk all day about how I want him to lie on top of me like a weighted anxiety blanket, just fucking crushing me to death. I could argue all day with friends about whether finding him attractive means I've hit rock bottom or ascended to a higher plane of existence. My attraction to hockey is not to the game; it's to the players. Jackson talks about this and validates it. She is fluent in the mechanics of the game but more than that, she presents a hockey game that is filled with stories, with narrative: why this hit is undeserved; why this goal is earned; why this player is struggling; why this player is in the sin bin and the ways in which he, both in and out of the game, deserved it. In this book, desire for the players is wrapped up in the game, but Jackson seems to tell us that it's okay if our desire is simply desire.
And I think, too, in women's unending quest to prove herself, this book is a kind of comfort reading, despite its flaws. Did I chafe against her comments that women don't care about the violence of the sport, the war metaphors? At first, yes. Who is she to say I don't care about the violence of the sport? I can run with the boys who watch hockey for the fights! And then I remembered that when Becky first tried to get me into hockey, she showed me pictures of hockey players hugging mid-air, because that was what delighted me. I remembered the solid two months Jasmine and I spent coming up with increasingly absurd ways Sidney Crosby might procure a child, because we so badly want for him to be in possession of a little baby girl. I remembered the entire AHL game Jasmine and I spent, bored and drunk, cruelly deprived of the player we'd bought tickets to see who had gotten called up that week, coming up with things we'd do with hockey players for a day: teach Evgeni Malkin to knit; take Tyson Barrie to the farmer's market; take Jamie Benn to a natural history museum. The violence and violent language puts me off of the game; I care about the human elements, the guys thanking their wives after games or putting their children in the Cup when they win it all. I can't pretend to know anything about the game, because I don't. I can't prove myself in a world of men asking me to know enough to join the boy's club because I don't know enough and I never will and I don't want to. I want to watch Pride and Prejudice on a couch, covered in blankets, cuddling with Dylan Strome. Jackson says that's okay.
This book was not without flaws, but as a thesis on the erotic female gaze in and fandom of hockey (of which there are like....no other books?) it's beautifully done. Professor Kelly on the You Can't Do That podcast recommended this book and it took me awhile to read but I enjoyed it immensely.
Read
July 1, 2019I just didn't connect with Ms. Jackson's writing style. I found her phrasing convoluted and her sentence structure choppy. What really made me stop reading were the many asides, about her father, Vancouver, her farm. I wanted the hockey, not the biography.
February 28, 2025
Review for Cold-Cocked can be found on Hockey Blog In Canada.
February 20, 2009
Cold-cocked: On Hockey is by Victoria author and creative writing professor, Lorna Jackson. I really enjoyed it, she takes a woman's pov to the game, mixes in the WW2 history of her father, a long love affair with the Canucks, complete disdain for Ron Mclean and the CBC media machine, problems with age, children and family, and wraps it up in a compelling story that always reminds us why hockey is the great game. Plus she used to sing in a country band - how could I resist?
Her web site is here where you can read a bit of Cold-cocked if you're interested.
Her web site is here where you can read a bit of Cold-cocked if you're interested.
January 29, 2009
One of my many love affairs with the UVic Creative Writing department stems from the sexy faculty and their love for hockey. I LOVE Lorna Jackson for writing a beautiful book about women hockey fans. My lovely experience with this book falls shortly behind watching a Canucks game with Bill Gaston. Everyone at UBC hates hockey and generally think I'm a freak but I know there is love behind a small payment to BC Ferries.
Read
May 8, 2008According to Lorna Jackson in her new book Cold-Cocked: On Hockey, we must read hockey like a good short story. We have to see the games as scenes, and the players as characters, actions as words -- a booming slapshot, an impossible deke, a body sacrificed against a blocked shot, a meaty fist upside an unsuspecting head.
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http://thetyee.ca/Books/2007/10/05/Co...
read more ...
http://thetyee.ca/Books/2007/10/05/Co...
January 8, 2017
Sometimes the best books are the ones you encounter by accident. This is one of those: a woman's memoir, not revolving around hockey exactly, just with hockey as the motif. She lives relatively remotely on Vancouver Island and takes the ferry to Vancouver to watch the Canucks. My dream life! (I would add watching the Royals in Victoria.)
Want to read
September 30, 2014I haven't read this yet, but it sounds like this woman beat me to publication on the book I've been writing for six years! *L* Although this would not be my book's title!
March 17, 2012
Fantastic book. I found myself saying "yes, exactly!" out loud a number of times. Good to see a Western Canadian hockey book.
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews