John Edgar Wideman’s story Who invented the jump shot seems like a story about basketball from first glance. The story’s title represents the name of the conference that the main character takes part in. Despite the story being related to basketball, there is not much discussion about the topic of basketball or who actually invented the jump shot. Instead, the story follows the main character’s fictional journey across the minds of other people caught in the snowstorm.
My initial reaction to the piece was excitement, as I deeply appreciate when authors decide to introduce several characters and explore their thought processes in short stories. I find that Wideman’s piece is similar in tone to Tobias Wolff’s story Bullet in the brain. It seems that during his wandering across strangers’ minds, the main character could have explored the story of the main character from Wolff’s piece. However, although the stories share a similar style of narrative, they have different meanings.
The deeper meaning of Wideman’s story is hidden behind several layers of other stories located in one plot. In the beginning part of the story, the main character gives the reader his opinion about who invented the jump shot implying the absurdity of the conference’s purpose and its unnecessary character. The story emphasizes how most of the conference’s participants were “noncolored,” implying their domination and position to not determine who invented the jump shot but rather push their narrative and tell who invented it (Wideman, 2008, p. 728). The main point of Wideman’s story was to emphasize the racism in daily life and the humorous ways in which white people appropriated the basketball game and set it under their control.
Reference
Wideman, J. E. (2008). Who invented the jump shot. In J. C. Oates & C. R. Beha (Eds.), Contemporary American short fiction (pp. 728-748). HarperCollins.