Quotes from book
Beyond a Boundary

Beyond a Boundary

Beyond a Boundary is a memoir on cricket written by the Trinidadian Marxist intellectual C. L. R. James, which he described as "neither cricket reminiscences nor autobiography". It mixes social commentary, particularly on the place of cricket in the West Indies and England, with commentary on the game, arguing that what happened inside the "Boundary Line" in cricket affected life beyond it, as well as the converse. The book is in a sense a response to a quote from Rudyard Kipling's poem "The English Flag": "What should they know of England who only England know?", which James in his Preface revised to: "What do they know of cricket who only cricket know?"

“There can be raw pain and bleeding where so many thousands see the inevitable ups and downs of only a game.”

C. L. R. James book Beyond a Boundary

Beyond a Boundary (1963)
Beyond a Boundary (1963)

“Cricket is first and foremost a dramatic spectacle. It belongs with theatre, ballet, opera and the dance.”

C. L. R. James book Beyond a Boundary

Beyond a Boundary
Beyond a Boundary (1963)

“It is an historical commonplace that social explosions take place when most of the fundamental causes of dissatisfaction have been removed and only a few remain. This is the result of a feeling of power.”

C. L. R. James book Beyond a Boundary

Source: Beyond a Boundary (1963), p. 229

“Cricket is an art, not a bastard or a poor relation, but a full member of the community. (…) Cricket is first and foremost a dramatic spectacle. It belong with the theatre, ballet, opera and dance.”

C. L. R. James book Beyond a Boundary

Source: Beyond a Boundary (1963), p. 196

“Dickens saw Victorian England always with the eyres of a pre-Victorian. His ideal England was the England of Hazlitt and of Pickwick.”

C. L. R. James book Beyond a Boundary

Source: Beyond a Boundary (1963), p. 161

“The Greeks believed that an athlete who had represented his community at a national competition, and won, had thereby conferred a notable distinction on his city. His victory was a testament to the quality of the citizens. All the magnates of the city welcomed him home in civic procession. They broke down a part of the wall for him to enter: a city which could produce such citizens had no need of walls to defend it. For the rest of his life he ate at the public expense.”

C. L. R. James book Beyond a Boundary

Source: Beyond a Boundary (1963), p. 156

“I could, of course, wait for the Conservative Party or the Labour Party to organise a sample poll. A poll on art. A sample poll! A sample poll can investigate only what the pollsters know, and it cannot do even that properly.”

C. L. R. James book Beyond a Boundary

Source: Beyond a Boundary (1963), p. 153-154

“Trotsky had said that the workers were deflected from politics by sports. With my past I simply could not accept that. I was British and the history of those decades in Britain was very familiar to me, both the politics and the sport. The organisational drive for sport had come from Britain.”

C. L. R. James book Beyond a Boundary

Source: Beyond a Boundary (1963), p. 153

“The people most affected by this are people of the middle class who, lacking the hard contact with realities of the masses and unable to attain to the freedoms of a leisured class, are more than all types of people given to trivial divisions and subdivisions of social rank and precedence.”

C. L. R. James book Beyond a Boundary

Source: Beyond a Boundary (1963), p. 52

“These are no random reminiscences. … The Negroid population of the West Indies is composed of a large percentage of actually black people. … Then there are the browns, intermediates, who cannot by any stretch of imagination pass as white, but who will not go one inch towards mixing with people darker than themselves.”

C. L. R. James book Beyond a Boundary

Source: Beyond a Boundary (1963), p. 51

“Before very long I acquired a discipline for which the only name is Puritan. I never cheated, I never appealed for a decision unless I thought the batsman was out.”

C. L. R. James book Beyond a Boundary

Source: Beyond a Boundary (1963), p. 26

“Respectability was not an ideal, it was an armour.”

C. L. R. James book Beyond a Boundary

Source: Beyond a Boundary (1963), p. 8

“That James could not accept automatically that these athletes were the greedy spawn of an exploitative system is the positive proof of his own liberation and oppression through sports. He was ennobled and crippled by cricket; he reached beyond his boundary but would always have a blind spot.”

C. L. R. James book Beyond a Boundary

Introduction by Robert Lipsyte (p. XX)
Beyond a Boundary (1963)

Similar authors

C. L. R. James photo

C. L. R. James21

Trinidadian writer 1901–1989

V.S. Naipaul photo

V.S. Naipaul34

Trinidadian-British writer of Indo-Nepalese ancestry None

Derek Walcott photo

Derek Walcott17

Saint Lucian–Trinidadian poet and playwright None

Julio Cortázar photo

Julio Cortázar29

Argentinian writer None

Luciano De Crescenzo photo

Luciano De Crescenzo1

Italian writer None

Naguib Mahfouz photo

Naguib Mahfouz7

Egyptian writer None

Frank Herbert photo

Frank Herbert158

American writer None

Stefan Zweig photo

Stefan Zweig106

Austrian writer None

Alessandro Baricco photo

Alessandro Baricco9

Italian writer None

André Breton photo

André Breton70

French writer None

Similar authors

C. L. R. James photo

C. L. R. James21

Trinidadian writer 1901–1989

V.S. Naipaul photo

V.S. Naipaul34

Trinidadian-British writer of Indo-Nepalese ancestry None

Derek Walcott photo

Derek Walcott17

Saint Lucian–Trinidadian poet and playwright None

Julio Cortázar photo

Julio Cortázar29

Argentinian writer None

Luciano De Crescenzo photo

Luciano De Crescenzo1

Italian writer None