I can think of no poet laureate of motorsport. For all of the frenetic passion, the life-or-death prospects, the existential drama pitting frail human sensibility against amoral, insensate speed, there is really no great and serious body of literature about motor racing.

In the pre-automotive age, British steeplechasing had its Robert Smith Surtees, whose perceptive, humorous novels—Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour, for example, or Jorrock's Jaunts and Jollities—explored 19th-century England's obsession with horse racing and fox hunting. Ernest Hemingway, in his spiritual, trance-like volume, Death in the Afternoon, transformed Spanish bullfighting during the 1920s and '30s from vulgar blood sport into a hieratic ritual of mystic epiphany. But amidst the welter of sports news and race broadcasts and celebrity profiles of racing drivers that smog the media channels of our present age, there is no Milton or Molière, Dante or Homer to interpret what it means to go terrifyingly fast in a race car—and why.

Like random bolts of lightning on the distant horizon, however, there are occasional glimpses into the racing psyche that portend toward a literature of motorsport. Not that the writers of these accounts themselves had any such lofty purpose in mind, of course. Still, it can be instructive, entertaining, even inspiring to spend time with these unexpected flashes of invigorating prose about racers and racing—if only to discover the extent to which such a rich literary field is being left to fallow.

Stand on It

No one will mistake this 1973 "novel by Stroker Ace"—its fictional narrator—as a work of high art. But it can be persuasively argued that the actual co-authors Bill Neely and Bob Ottum have sent up the early days of organized stock car racing in a ribald, bawdy fashion worthy of Boccaccio or Chaucer.

Pay no attention to the 1983 cinematic farce Stroker Ace, starring Burt Reynolds and only loosely adapted from the book. Find, instead, an out-of-print copy and slum-for-pleasure in the company of Stroker's eccentric entourage. Miss Panther Valve and Miss Firepants, Queen of All Racing, are the pneumatic pit row beauties; Clyde "Chicken King" Torkle is the demented sponsor of Stroker's Rain Tree Farms Racing Team; Lugs Harvey does his best to impersonate Sancho Panza in the role of chief mechanic.

In picaresque fashion, the story meanders from Deep South dirt tracks to crummy New South motels, punctuated along the way by a race car in the swimming pool and beat-up rent-a-cars drag racing backwards.

Along the way, occasional insights pop up like Burma Shave signs beside the highway: "Hell, all drivers crash. They hit walls at two hundred miles an hour in cars with fiber glass bodies. They are hit by other cars at God-awful speeds and the impact sometimes packages them right up inside like they were gift wrapped for the doctor. They get upside down. They get sideways, skidding along, leaving a trail of elbow skin on the track. Engines explode and little pieces of that very same engine take off with the aim of flying right through you. Any good driver has got scars all over him and he is dappled with shiny spots that used to be burns.

"Stark naked, any good driver looks like a relief map of Cincinnati, for chrissakes."

Why, the poet should want to know, do competent, courageous, physically gifted people willingly endure all that?

Touch Wood!

More poignantly yet, why did people once endure all that before the advent of staggering prize and sponsorship monies—when, indeed, obsessed privateers squandered fortunes for the privilege of racing and wrecking their own cars?

One such was the indefatigable Irishman Duncan Hamilton, whose 1960 memoir Touch Wood! was reprinted in 1990. Were it not for the hypnotizing period photographs of European road racing in the Golden Age of the 1940s and '50s, it would seem that Hamilton had mistakenly stepped out of a role in Wind in the Willows. A natural raconteur and bon vivant, he managed to win the 24 Hours of Le Mans in 1953 for Jaguar with co-driver Tony Ralt.

That was not, however, before some priceless lessons learned along the road of hard knocks: "Towards the end of the 1947 season, I entered both the M.G. and the Bugatti in the Brighton speed trials.... Using a makeshift tow-bar, I attached the Bugatti to the lorry, in the back of which the M.G. rested.... At first all went well. I drove the lorry quite slowly, and very carefully, for I was mindful of my valuable cargo.

"Suddenly, going down the hill into Guildford I saw the splendid honeycomb radiator of a Bugatti in the outside rear view mirror. Presuming it was a competitor bound for Brighton I moved over and waved him on. He did not overtake me immediately but hung back as if not sure of himself.... Suddenly the Bugatti began to accelerate and drew level with me. I turned to look at the driver only to discover that the driving seat was empty. The awful truth dawned on me—it was my own car, gathering speed fast, and heading off the road towards two women who were standing with their backs to us. Fortunately, I reacted quickly. I banged the gear lever into third, simultaneously accelerating the lorry and applying right lock, so that the bumper of the lorry struck the side of the tail of the Bugatti causing it to veer left, and miss the two nattering women. It continued across in front of me, mounted the [sidewalk], and hit a tall concrete electric lamp standard which snapped in two, the upper half falling to the ground with a crash....

"...A general hubbub broke out among the people who had rushed to the scene of the accident. At first, everyone was mystified as to where the driver had gone. One man actually lay down on his stomach to make sure no one was under the car.... After sorting everything out we went on to Brighton where the M.G. recorded second fastest time in its class."

It wouldn't be cricket, after all, for the memoirist to take personal credit for goading an M.G. into second place at Brighton after saving the lives of two village women. It is the car—as the Bugatti incident so clearly illustrates—that has a mind of its own and does all the heavy lifting. The racer's duty is but to serve.

Moss & Jenkinson

This year represents the 50th-anniversary of the never-equalled victory by Stirling Moss and Mercedes-Benz at the 1955 Mille Miglia 1,000-mile road race in Italy. "Speed reading, lap 2" next week will commemorate the occasion with a look at the equally nonpareil first-hand account of Moss' dazzling feat by the late motorsports journalist Denis Jenkinson.

Moss & Jenkinson

This year represents the 50th-anniversary of the never-equalled victory by Stirling Moss and Mercedes-Benz at the 1955 Mille Miglia 1,000-mile road race in Italy. "Speed reading, lap 2" next week will commemorate the occasion with a look at the equally nonpareil first-hand account of Moss' dazzling feat by the late motorsports journalist Denis Jenkinson.