{"product_id":"9780735245778","title":"The Intangibles","description":"\u003cb\u003eThe long-awaited first book by the award-winning \u003ci\u003eNew Yorker\u003c\/i\u003e staff writer—a memoir that uses his lifelong obsession with the game of hockey as a prism into a sharp, witty, and entertaining exploration of masculinity.\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eFor two decades, Nick Paumgarten has been one of the \u003ci\u003eNew Yorker\u003c\/i\u003e’s most cherished and popular staff writers. He can take a subject as ordinary as the elevator, as opaque as high-frequency trading, or as iconic as the Grateful Dead, and make it shimmer with story, characters, humour, and consequence. What Nick Paumgarten has never done—until now—is write a book.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eThe Intangibles\u003c\/i\u003e 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—as a “beer league” player, a parent, a son, a coach, a fan, a middle-aged white guy in New York, a person of privilege, an imperfect man among other imperfect men—provides a sneaky-exotic window into a cultish world that hides in plain sight.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eThe Intangibles\u003c\/i\u003e is a timely, sharp, and witty exploration of masculinity, of boys and men, sons and fathers—the toxic and non-toxic kinds. It is also a deep, questioning look at, and finally a celebration of, a particular world of male friendship, in which sport—or dreams of sport—becomes the lingua franca for a group of men, with all their faults and hopes.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003ePaumgarten’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, orthopedics, and the responsibilities of grown-up life.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eFor all its entertainment and humour, however, \u003ci\u003eThe Intangibles\u003c\/i\u003e also reveals a shadow male world that is both shocking and commonplace. It happens to be an atmosphere that many American boys and men still breathe—in schools, offices, locker rooms, bars, and backyards—and that women have had to contend with. Paumgarten never felt entirely comfortable around bro culture, but it’s always been there, in myriad forms, from the subtle to the extreme.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn \u003ci\u003eThe Intangibles\u003c\/i\u003e—the name of Paumgarten’s most memorable beer league team—we meet an array of hockey-crazy men, the author included, trying to make their way through the world with the baggage that’s been laid on them by the men came before them—fathers, grandfathers, coaches, sports heroes—and the growing knowledge that they have laid their own baggage on their sons. Striped through these mines of granite and ore, shining like precious metals, are surprising veins of vulnerability, reflection, and reckoning.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThough he rarely plays anymore, Paumgarten still cherishes the game of hockey. In many respects, \u003ci\u003eThe Intangibles\u003c\/i\u003e 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.","brand":"Nick Paumgarten","offers":[{"title":"Penguin Canada |  Hardback  |  2026-11-10","offer_id":48995646013695,"sku":"9780735245778","price":39.0,"currency_code":"CAD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0329\/9075\/7001\/files\/BNCImageAPI_ec156ccd-bd4d-4816-8811-2ab2ccb7c2dd.jpg?v=1786484069","url":"https:\/\/riverbookshop.com\/products\/9780735245778","provider":"River Bookshop","version":"1.0","type":"link"}