String Theory

Wallace, David Foster. String Theory. New York: Library of America. 2016. Print.

First Sentences:

When I left my boxed township of Illinois farmland to attend my dad's alma mater in the lurid jutting Berkshires of western Massachusetts, I all of a sudden developed a jones for mathematics. 

Description:

I didn't know that David Foster Wallace, the brilliant, witty, troubled writer of essays (Consider the Lobster) and complex novels (Infinite Jest) was once a successful tennis player in his teen years. His limited talent curtailed that career but his interest in the sport lives today in his insightful essays on modern tennis and its players. These writings are gathered together in String Theory. Together, they offer Wallace's insightful, often snarky look at the sport, its history, and the players who make it, in Wallace's opinion, the most difficult and beautiful of all sport competition, particularly when watched in person.

TV tennis is to live tennis pretty much as video porn is to the felt reality of human love.

Wallace opening essay is on his own personal history with tennis, his rise to fame in his junior years (due to his love of playing in terrible conditions), and his ultimate realization that his skills would never carry him on to a professional career. His writing displays complete understanding of the game as an insider to junior level tennis in Midwest America.

"How Tracy Austin Broke My Heart" documents Wallace's bitter disappointment with the lackluster autobiography of Tracy Austin, one of the players he admires. He scathingly criticizes her ghost-written book (Beyond Center Court) for its bland writing and unforgivable lack of personal insights from Austin, such as her feelings about appearing on the cover of World Tennis at age four, on becoming the youngest woman to win a professional tournament at fourteen, the reasons behind her inner drive, and her thoughts about the unlucky events that ended her career while she was only in her early twenties. 

There's a cruel paradox involved. It may well be that we spectators, who are not divinely gifted as athletes, are the only ones able truly to see, articulate, and animate the experience of the give we are denied.And that those who receive and act out the gift of athletic genius must, perforce, be blind and dumb about it--and not because blindness and dumbness are the price of the gift, but because they are its essence.

So it is left to tennis outsider Wallace to write such an in-depth biographical essay and he chooses Michael Joyce as his subject. Joyce, the 79th best player in the world, is competing in the qualifying rounds of the Canadian Open. As a lower-ranked player, winning three matches in this "Qualies" tourney allows Joyce entrance into the major tournament with the opportunity to improve his ranking, gain the attention of sponsors, and of course win some bigger money. Wallace follows Joyce throughout this important tourney and records the player's thoughts about the present, future, and opponents. Wallace's penetrating writing and observation skills reveal the hopes and realities for this one player in his everyday struggles.

If you've played tennis a least a little, you probably think you have some idea of how hard a game it is to play really well. I submit to you that you really have no idea at all. I know I didn't. [Michael Joyce], at a full run, can hit a fast-moving tennis ball into a one-foot square area 78 feet away over a yard-high net, hard. He can do this something over 90% of the time. And this is the world's 79th-best player, one who has to play the Montreal Qualies.

Then comes "Federer Both Flesh and Not," Wallace's (and anyone else's) definitive essay on the greatest player of our generation, Roger Federer. For Wallace, everyone who has watched this man play has experienced a "Federer Moment" when Federer makes an impossible shot that changes the course of the rally/game/match. This is done so effortlessly that even though you have seen it you cannot believe what just happened:

.... jaws drop and eyes protrude and sounds are made that bring spouses in from other rooms to see if you're  OK ....The metaphysical explanation is that Roger Federer is one of those rare, preternatural athletes who appear to be exempt, at least in part, from certain physical laws.

String Theory is full of equal parts brilliant writing and passion for players, matches, and strategies. There also is plenty of commentary on related tennis issues from equipment and clothing, to strategy, player rituals, concession prices, ticket-takers, stadium design, and commentators. Even players' girlfriends get a mention:

Players [at the Qualies] ... have girlfriends in tow, sloppily beautiful European girls with sandals and patched jeans and leather backpacks, girlfriends who set up cloth lawn chairs and sun themselves next to their players' practice courts...Most have something indefinable about them that suggest extremely wealthy parents whom the girls are trying to piss off by hooking up with an obscure professional tennis player.

Who can resist this type of insightful, all-encompassing writing about all aspects of tennis? Certainly not me. I loved these essays and highly recommend them to anyone who loves the tennis, great writing, and highly intelligent (and often extremely funny) comments.

Happy reading. 


Fred

www.firstsentencereader.blogspot.com

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If this book interests you, be sure to check out:

McPhee, John. Levels of the Game

Detailed analysis of a 1968 U.S. Open tennis match at Forest Hills between Arthur Ashe and Clark Graebner, revealing their thoughts, ambitions, history, and personalities in this, the best tennis writing ever.