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How Tracy Austin Broke My Heart
Summary:
David Foster Wallace pans Tracy Austin’s memoir and ponders the attraction for and shortcomings of sports memoirs in general.
Analysis:
In 1994, David Foster Wallace wrote a personal essay / book review on the memoir of tennis star Tracy Austin. Wallace was approximately the same age as Austin and had also played junior tennis (albeit at a much lower level), so he was particularly eager to read Beyond Center Court: My Story.
Immediately following his opening remarks, Wallace excerpts a series of quotes from the book that, in his view, are illustrative of a “breathtakingly insipid autobiography” (142). He observes that the memoir is riddled with vapid observations and commentary, and that it fails to engage readers on several fronts. He argues that Austin failed to capture the trajectory of the life that was “almost classically tragic,” (148) citing her meteoric rise to the U.S. Open Champ and her No. 1 ranking at age 17, and the precipitous drop she experienced following a series of injuries. Wallace laments, “It could have been about the seductive immortality of competitive success” (150).
To add insult to injury, Wallace contends that the high points of the memoir are a direct result of Austin’s stupidity. He documents how she unwittingly admitted violating tour rules, was naïve to the notion that other players could “tank” in competition, and that some athletes were using drugs and alcohol. At 14, she accepted gifts from an older man who won money on matches that he’d set up. Austin claimed, that “It was all in good fun” (146-147).
Wallace’s indictment of the book is perhaps most blistering when he observes, “The book is inanimate because it communicates no real feeling and so gives us no sense of a conscious person” (151). Seeking to glean some kind of positive insight from the experience, Wallace sets out to use the opportunity as a means to help “understand both the seduction and disappointment that seem to be built into the mass market memoir” (142) Fittingly, he relates multiple theories on why top athletes are so compelling (e.g. competitive superiority, hard data, beauty). He states, “They enable abstractions like power and grace and control to become not only incarnate but televisable” (143).
Wallace opines that readers want to gain keener insight into the lives of athletes “to let us penetrate the indefinable mystery of what makes some persons geniuses” (144). He wonders why he’s always so disappointed to learn that great athletes seem to be inarticulate and correlates the robotic banality of memoirs with post-game TV interviews (152)
In the end, he makes philosophical distinctions between those in the game and those on the sidelines. “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 gift we are denied" (155).
In reading his scathing review, one can't help but wonder if Wallace wasn't, on some level, bitter over his own failures in the sport of tennis. His treatment seems to transcend the roll of objective observer and takes on a decidedly personal tone. That being said, there are several connections to be made between this essay and Infinite Jest. The most obvious correlation is the sport of tennis itself. In the novel, the tennis-playing Hal Incandenza is the main character in one of the dominant story lines. Wallace describes Austin as a tennis prodigy, an unstoppable force in "braces and pigtails" (144), and these characteristics are reminiscent of a young girl whom Dr. Charles Tavis made cry at an intake interview. In her memoir, Austin explains how her family tried to be frugal "by drinking powdered milk," (146) a major source of paranoia for Jim Troeltsch. And Wallace's rendering of Austin as utterly devoid of emotion speaks to a major theme in the novel.
Works Cited:
Wallace, David Foster. Consider the Lobster. New York. Back Bay Books, 2007. Print.
Wallace, David Foster. Infinite Jest. New York: Back Bay Books, 1996. Print.
David Foster Wallace pans Tracy Austin’s memoir and ponders the attraction for and shortcomings of sports memoirs in general.
Analysis:
In 1994, David Foster Wallace wrote a personal essay / book review on the memoir of tennis star Tracy Austin. Wallace was approximately the same age as Austin and had also played junior tennis (albeit at a much lower level), so he was particularly eager to read Beyond Center Court: My Story.
Immediately following his opening remarks, Wallace excerpts a series of quotes from the book that, in his view, are illustrative of a “breathtakingly insipid autobiography” (142). He observes that the memoir is riddled with vapid observations and commentary, and that it fails to engage readers on several fronts. He argues that Austin failed to capture the trajectory of the life that was “almost classically tragic,” (148) citing her meteoric rise to the U.S. Open Champ and her No. 1 ranking at age 17, and the precipitous drop she experienced following a series of injuries. Wallace laments, “It could have been about the seductive immortality of competitive success” (150).
To add insult to injury, Wallace contends that the high points of the memoir are a direct result of Austin’s stupidity. He documents how she unwittingly admitted violating tour rules, was naïve to the notion that other players could “tank” in competition, and that some athletes were using drugs and alcohol. At 14, she accepted gifts from an older man who won money on matches that he’d set up. Austin claimed, that “It was all in good fun” (146-147).
Wallace’s indictment of the book is perhaps most blistering when he observes, “The book is inanimate because it communicates no real feeling and so gives us no sense of a conscious person” (151). Seeking to glean some kind of positive insight from the experience, Wallace sets out to use the opportunity as a means to help “understand both the seduction and disappointment that seem to be built into the mass market memoir” (142) Fittingly, he relates multiple theories on why top athletes are so compelling (e.g. competitive superiority, hard data, beauty). He states, “They enable abstractions like power and grace and control to become not only incarnate but televisable” (143).
Wallace opines that readers want to gain keener insight into the lives of athletes “to let us penetrate the indefinable mystery of what makes some persons geniuses” (144). He wonders why he’s always so disappointed to learn that great athletes seem to be inarticulate and correlates the robotic banality of memoirs with post-game TV interviews (152)
In the end, he makes philosophical distinctions between those in the game and those on the sidelines. “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 gift we are denied" (155).
In reading his scathing review, one can't help but wonder if Wallace wasn't, on some level, bitter over his own failures in the sport of tennis. His treatment seems to transcend the roll of objective observer and takes on a decidedly personal tone. That being said, there are several connections to be made between this essay and Infinite Jest. The most obvious correlation is the sport of tennis itself. In the novel, the tennis-playing Hal Incandenza is the main character in one of the dominant story lines. Wallace describes Austin as a tennis prodigy, an unstoppable force in "braces and pigtails" (144), and these characteristics are reminiscent of a young girl whom Dr. Charles Tavis made cry at an intake interview. In her memoir, Austin explains how her family tried to be frugal "by drinking powdered milk," (146) a major source of paranoia for Jim Troeltsch. And Wallace's rendering of Austin as utterly devoid of emotion speaks to a major theme in the novel.
Works Cited:
Wallace, David Foster. Consider the Lobster. New York. Back Bay Books, 2007. Print.
Wallace, David Foster. Infinite Jest. New York: Back Bay Books, 1996. Print.
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