A review of
The Krzyzewskiville Tales
by Aaron Dinin
Although the title may serve the purpose, Aaron Dinin’s The Krzyzewskiville Tales should sport a warning urging misguided Tarheel supporters to stay away. Echoing ESPNU’s “Never Graduate” slogan, and steeped in the unrelenting devotion only college students can display for their school’s team, twenty-two-year-old Dinin’s debut embraces two traditions: the storytelling of The Canterbury Tales and Duke University’s annual “tenting” ritual. For an explanation of the latter, here’s a quote from the barely ironic twenty-page glossary, “Crazie Talk”:
Tenting adj [tent n as in sense IC + -ing suff as in AHD 4 sense 2] describing a process involving the participation in Krzyzewskiville in order to be admitted into Cameron for basketball games. 2003, March 24, Chronicle: “A six- or seven-week long tenting season might have been a little too long this year.”
(For the uninitiated: K-ville is a “town” of tents outside Cameron Indoor Stadium populated by hard-core Blue Devil fans during the basketball season.)
To read the rest of this piece, please purchase this issue of the Believer online or at your local bookseller.
—Chad W. Post
