"Path Lit by Lightning: The Life of Jim Thorpe" by David Maraniss

For me, several of Maraniss’s sentences perfectly encapsulate the magnificent, troubled, and sad life of Jim Thorpe: “The arc of his life after his prime athletic years was less a series of jagged ups and downs than an unceasing exertion against the tide.” (p. 493) It would be a gross understatement to say that Thorpe’s life was itinerant-he lived in over 20 U.S. states and travelled through many more. He always went against the tide that first raised him to prominence (the media, Carlisle Indian Industrial School, Pop Warner, the mythmaking, his athleticism, the Olympics, and kindness) only to become his most unrelenting obstacle (Carlisle Indian Industrial School, Pop Warner, the Olympics, i.e., Avery Brundage, his own stubbornness, and his magnanimity). Most figures in history have a linear career trajectory, but in Thorpe’s case, he went all over the place. I applaud Maraniss for his painstaking research in putting this book together. The sheer effort to visit each location that somehow formed a part of the Thorpe mythology amazes me. Maraniss admits that due to Covid travel restrictions, he was unable to go to Sweden to research that angle of Thorpe’s Olympic legacy. That is one regret I have here: I wish we could have had more input from the Swedes or even Swedish historians. Sweden’s Hugo Wieslander, who was awarded the gold medal that was stripped from Thorpe, always insisted that he (Thorpe) was the true winner and should have kept his medal. It would have been nice to have delved a bit more into what else Wieslander had to say. Whether it was intentional or not, the portrayal of Thorpe’s meanderings throughout the country looking for stable employment saddened me. The sheer hopelessness, sense of desperation, and the realization of how horribly he was treated by the US Olympic Committee, that Thorpe must have felt, really hit me. And yet, he persisted, or as he himself said, “A man has to keep hustling.”

Maraniss also notes that “Among his talents, he had a knack for remembering names and faces from the past. With his life, there were a lot of them.” This is certainly true. At times, Maraniss includes too much information, describing far too many individuals who had minor or incidental roles in Thorpe’s life. I understand that a great part of the research on Thorpe will be centered on what was written by sportswriters of his era, but I think the text by Grantland Rice would have been sufficient. Walter Lingo played a role in recruiting Thorpe for the Oorang Indians, but I think Maraniss goes too far in describing his work with kennels. It took me 70-75 pages before I could feel comfortable with this book. But this was only after I realized that this was not a “pure” biography of Jim Thorpe, but rather a study of elements that ruled and impeded his days: the U.S. government's efforts to force assimilation via Indian schools, the violence and then acceptance of American football, the mythologizing by sportswriters, the corruption of the Olympic Games, the erasure of Indianness in movies, racism, etc. “Path Lit by Lightning” was Jim Thorpe’s name, but this book concentrates more on the path than the lightning. If you are looking for a straight-up biography, this book is not for you. It is exceedingly detailed in its presentations of many of Jim’s encounters and ventures. When I came to the end of the book, although I had a better understanding of Mr. Thorpe, I felt like I learned much more about the early 20th-century milieu. At the end of the day, this is more of a cultural study than a biography.