On Tennis: Five Essays

by David Foster Wallace

Overview

From the author of Infinite Jest and Consider the Lobster: a collection of five brilliant essays on tennis, from the author's own experience as a junior player to his celebrated profile of Roger Federer at the peak of his powers. 

A "long-time rabid fan of tennis," and a regionally ranked tennis player in his youth, David Foster Wallace wrote about the game like no one else. On Tennis presents David Foster Wallace's five essays on the sport, published between 1990 and 2006, and hailed as some of the greatest and most innovative sports writing of our time.

This lively and entertaining collection begins with Wallace's own experience as a prodigious tennis player ("Derivative Sport in Tornado Alley"). He also challenges the sports memoir genre ("How Tracy Austen Broke My Heart"), takes us to the US Open ("Democracy and Commerce at the U.S. Open"), and profiles of two of the world's greatest tennis players ("Tennis Player Michael Joyce's Professional Artistry as a Paradigm of Certain Stuff About Choice, Freedom, Limitation, Joy, Grotesquerie, and Human Completeness" and "Federer Both Flesh and Not").

With infectious enthusiasm and enormous heart, Wallace's writing shows us the beauty, complexity, and brilliance of the game he loved best.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780316284820
Publisher:	Little, Brown and Company
Publication date:	06/24/2014
Sold by:	Hachette Digital, Inc.
Format:	eBook
Sales rank:	319,438
File size:	938 KB

About the Author

David Foster Wallace was born in Ithaca, New York, in 1962 and raised in Illinois, where he was a regionally ranked junior tennis player. He received bachelor of arts degrees in philosophy and English from Amherst College and wrote what would become his first novel, The Broom of the System, as his senior English thesis. He received a masters of fine arts from University of Arizona in 1987 and briefly pursued graduate work in philosophy at Harvard University. His second novel, Infinite Jest, was published in 1996.

Wallace taught creative writing at Emerson College, Illinois State University, and Pomona College, and published the story collections Girl with Curious Hair, Brief Interviews with Hideous Men, Oblivion, the essay collections A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again, and Consider the Lobster. He was awarded the MacArthur Fellowship, a Lannan Literary Award, and a Whiting Writers' Award, and was appointed to the Usage Panel for The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language. He died in 2008. His last novel, The Pale King, was published in 2011.

Date of Birth:

February 21, 1962

Date of Death:

September 12, 2008

Place of Birth:

Ithaca, NY

Place of Death:

Claremont, CA

Education:

B.A. in English & Philosophy, Amherst College, 1985;MFA, University of Arizona, 1987

Editorial Reviews

Narrator Robert Petkoff GETS David Foster Wallace. Petkoff understands the author’s wit and pacing, and when to place sardonic emphasis. The late writer was a huge tennis fan, a near great junior player, and a marvelous essayist. "Derivative Sport in Tornado Alley" is laugh-out-loud funny in its description of playing on windy, rural Midwestern courts against well-trained city boys with perfect partings in their hair who melt down when shots repeatedly blow wide. "Federer Both Flesh and Not" displays Wallace’s awe at the beauty of the Federer game. In a trademark footnote, he states his deep personal privilege at being alive to see an epic grand slam final between Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal, reminding us of the loss of this literary force. Petkoff has the odd mispronunciation of the myriad foreign tennis players, but overall his performance is terrific. A.B. © AudioFile 2014, Portland, Maine

OCTOBER 2014 - AudioFile

Narrator Robert Petkoff GETS David Foster Wallace. Petkoff understands the author’s wit and pacing, and when to place sardonic emphasis. The late writer was a huge tennis fan, a near great junior player, and a marvelous essayist. "Derivative Sport in Tornado Alley" is laugh-out-loud funny in its description of playing on windy, rural Midwestern courts against well-trained city boys with perfect partings in their hair who melt down when shots repeatedly blow wide. "Federer Both Flesh and Not" displays Wallace’s awe at the beauty of the Federer game. In a trademark footnote, he states his deep personal privilege at being alive to see an epic grand slam final between Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal, reminding us of the loss of this literary force. Petkoff has the odd mispronunciation of the myriad foreign tennis players, but overall his performance is terrific. A.B. © AudioFile 2014, Portland, Maine

OCTOBER 2014 - AudioFile