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2006 Season
 Will Blythe is the former literary editor of Esquire . A frequent contributor to the New York Times Book Review , he has written for The New Yorker, Rolling Stone, Sports Illustrated, Elle, and the Oxford American, and is the editor of the acclaimed book, Why I Write. His work has been anthologized in The Best American Short Stories and The Best American Sportswriting. He grew up in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, and now lives in New York City.
To Hate Like This Is to Be Happy Forever: A Thoroughly Obsessive, Intermittently Uplifting, and Occasionally Unbiased Account of the Duke-North Carolina Basketball Rivalry (2006)
Why I Write: Thoughts on the Craft of Fiction (1999)
Lust, Violence, Sin, Magic: Sixty Years of Esquire Fiction with Rust Hills and Erika Mansourian (1994)
Chapter One
The Object of My Affliction
My Little Duke Problem
"A man who lives, not by what he loves
but what he hates, is a sick man."
-- Archibald Macleish
I am a sick, sick man. Not only am I consumed by hatred, I am delighted by it. I have done some checking into the matter and have discovered that the world's great religions and wisdom traditions tend to frown upon this.
Therefore, dear reader, I need your prayers. But even more than I do, the University of North Carolina's basketball team, the object of my obsession, needs them. Here is the depth of my sickness. It is several years back on a beautiful afternoon during basketball season. The cable is out. (Note to self: Kill Time Warner.) I am alone in my apartment in New York City, frantically hitting the refresh button on my computer screen, getting the updates of Carolina's shockingly bad performance against its archrival, Duke. So far, the Heels have shot 18 three-pointers and hit exactly five.
Continued...
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