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String Theory
The Sports Plus take
David Foster Wallace on tennis, in five essays.
David Foster Wallace was a regionally ranked junior player before he became a novelist, and these five essays show both sides. The best known is his portrait of Roger Federer at Wimbledon. Others take on Tracy Austin's memoir, the grind of a rising pro named Michael Joyce, the U.S. Open, and his own junior career. The prose is dense and funny, and it rewards slow reading.
Shelf
How it reads
Deep dive
Best for
- Tennis players and fans
- Readers who love great sportswriting
- Roger Federer fans
About this book
- Author
- David Foster Wallace
- Publisher
- Library of America
- Published
- May 10, 2016
- Format
- Hardcover
- Pages
- 158
- ISBN-10
- 1598534807
- ISBN-13
- 978-1598534801
Book description
The tennis essays of David Foster Wallace, gathered for the first time in one volume, with an introduction by John Jeremiah Sullivan.
Here are David Foster Wallace's legendary writings on tennis, five pieces written with a competitor's insight and a fan's obsessive enthusiasm. Wallace brings his literary gifts to the game he loved as he celebrates the other-worldly genius of Roger Federer; offers a witty dissection of Tracy Austin's memoir; considers the artistry of Michael Joyce, a supremely disciplined athlete on the threshold of fame; resists the crush of commerce at the U.S. Open; and recalls his own career as a "near-great" junior player.
Whiting Award-winning writer John Jeremiah Sullivan provides an introduction.
About the author
David Foster Wallace (1962-2008) grew up in Champaign-Urbana, Illinois, where as a teenager he was a regionally ranked junior tennis player. His books include Infinite Jest, A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again and Consider the Lobster. John Jeremiah Sullivan, who wrote the introduction, is a staff writer for The New York Times Magazine and the author of Pulphead.
