Review by New York Times Review
NEAR THE END of "Love Game: A History of Tennis, From Victorian Pastime to Global Phenomenon," Elizabeth Wilson expresses the hope that tennis might once again become "airier and less musclebound" and "recover its true self as that mixture of chess and dance, of intellectual geometry and aesthetic joy." It's clear that she's wishing for some reincarnation of Roger Federer - perhaps Roger Federer reincarnating an earlier self - to supplant the most recent dominant styles: the muscular bullying of Rafael Nadal and the Gumby-bodied determinism of Novak Djokovic. That notion of Federer's otherworldly perfection also makes an appearance in Gerald Marzorati's "Late to the Ball," his account of taking up tennis in late middle age: "Brian then tapped another key and up came a super-slow-motion video of a young Federer .... 'He's starting pretty much where you are,' Brian observed, and we both cracked up." And Federer is the ne plus ultra for William Skidelsky in his memoir, "Federer and Me: A Story of Obsession," rallying to the same theme that Wilson does: "Roger Federer made tennis beautiful again." For all contemporary tennis fans, the Platonic ideal of Federer hovers over the game, and for contemporary writers who choose tennis as their subject, the top-seeded David Foster Wallace awaits in their bracket. As different as these three books are, they all genuflect to both Federer and Wallace, and they all to varying degrees try to do what Wallace did: By applying a wide-ranging and incisive intelligence to what is really only a game, they hope to make their work significant, universal - not "just" about sports. Unfortunately, these books have the bad luck to be competing with Wallace's own STRING THEORY (Library of America, $19.95), a just-released collection of five nonfiction pieces he wrote for various publications, including Tennis magazine, where I edited him (not much). Skidelsky, a onetime literary editor of The Observer and The New Statesman in London, loses in the qualifiers. His book has none of the energy or eccentricity of previous literary sports obsessionists,like Frederick Exley ("A Fan's Notes"). His "obsession" takes hold after reading Wallace's famous 2006 Federer piece, originally published in The New York Times's short-lived Play magazine - "Every line of Wallace's analysis intrigued me" - but the term "obsession" is degraded when he qualifies it thus: "My future - or a part of it - had been determined. I knew that I wanted to follow this man, take what opportunities I could to luxuriate in the silky wondrousness of his play" (italics mine). For much of the book, that means watching Federer on the telly. Skidelsky is at his most cogent in his clearsighted and convincing explication of the changes that have obtained in the post-wood-racket era, concluding with this lovely description of Federer's style: "In the way he turns his head right round and carefully, almost tenderly, looks at the ball, there is, too, a lingering trace of an earlier age's side-on stillness." More often, though, he skids through the text as off-balance as a novice on a worn second-week Wimbledon baseline. In the memoir sections, Skidelsky languidly lays out his desultory youth (county-level tennis player, Doc Martens-wearing rocker) and upper-crust education (Eton, Oxford) through an early - adulthood bout with depression and a difficult time with his girlfriend. While his suffering was undoubtedly real, his account of it is as flat as his point-by-point re-creations of various matches. An attempt to blend high (a discussion of Kant's idea of the "sublime") and low (an embarrassingly vulgar riff on a vending machine in a German bathroom) merely adds to the muddle. Only in the chapter where he offhandedly describes the all-encompassing Federer fanaticism of his friend Mike, who tries to time his child's conception to produce a delivery on Federer's birthday, and of Marcia, a former political prisoner in Brazil who now travels the world to follow Federer, do we find characters worthy of booklength attention. Despite its subtitled assertion as "A History," readers should not approach "Love Game" with the expectation of comprehensive court coverage. More an attempt to wed social history and the game than a blow-by-blow account of the game's development and characters, the book weaves a wandering, eccentric path through the century and a half since modern tennis's founding as a boxed game called Sphairistike. Early on, Wilson nicely details how tennis's unusual scoring system "contains more possibility of changes of fortune than almost any other sport" and "requires an additional skill from the player, because in tennis not all points are equal." Further on, Wilson, a novelist and cultural historian, chooses to examine the game largely by looking at the players as celebrities. She poetically expresses the difficulty of assessing the skill of early-20th-century athletes - "Old films ... capture but pale ghosts across gray turf" - but one wishes for more on the playing style of, say, Fred Perry, who gets a chapter devoted mostly to his politics, his personality and his fascination with Hollywood. The focus on social issues does bring welcome mentions of forgotten figures victimized by segregation. Ora Washington was the seven-time champion of the American Tennis Association, the organization for African-American players, in the 1920s and '30s, but was never allowed to compete against the best white champions. Wilson drop-shots mini-essays on broader intellectual topics like corporate dominance ("McDonaldization") into the mix, and occasionally hits the mark, as in a paragraph on punk culture: "When Nastase and Connors brought the spectators into the drama this was a distinctly punk tactic, whether they realized it or not." Caveat emptor for tennis fans, however: It's an indication of the content and tone of the book that the Baader-Meinhof Group receives two mentions while the late tennis writer, historian and commentator Bud Collins shamefully gets none. Gerald Marzorati was the editor of The New York Times Magazine from 2003 to 2010 and had worked on Wallace's Federer story. He proclaims Wallace "the greatest tennis writer America has ever produced." In "Late to the Ball," as his career at The Times is winding down, he takes up tennis and can't really explain why. His wife thinks, in his paraphrase, that he was "not willing, with the onset of 'young old age' at 60, to hover in the anteroom of the aged." He undertakes a rigorous program of improving his tennis and himself, introducing us along the way to an appealing cast: his regular coach, Kirill, who'd used his skill at the sport to earn a college scholarship and escape Russia; Alexandra, a deeply informed tennis blogger who is also a Jungian psychotherapist; and the champion age-group player and life coach Bob Li twin, who interrogates him about the frustrations of his "old story" as a tennis player: "'There are a few things I am hearing,' he began. 'One is, "I can't adapt." That's a bad story. We are going to have to work on that.'" Marzorati does work on it and he does get better. More profoundly, throughout the book, he movingly meditates - at one point bringing me to tears - on the bond one forms with somebody whom one both plays with and competes against, whom one faces across the net as if in a mirror. Reflective, wise and amiable, Marzorati is the kind of person and tennis player you'd be happy to share a game with and a beer afterward. In reading Marzorati's contemplative book, I was reminded, if you'll forgive my self-indulgence, of writing to a pre-"Infinite Jest" David Foster Wallace to ask him for a blurb for my literary anthology, which I'd titled, half-ironically, "Tennis and the Meaning of Life." He returned an unironic Zen koan of a blurb: "My only complaint is the title's redundant." JAY JENNINGS, senior editor at Oxford American magazine, is the author of "Carry the Rock: Race, Football and the Soul of an American City."
Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [June 5, 2016]
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Skidelsky, formerly literary editor of the Observer and the New Statesman, wants to be the chief Fed-head, the most loyal fan of Roger Federer, whom he considers to be the greatest tennis player of all time. In this slightly frantic memoir and love letter to Federer, the British writer says he first fell in love with tennis as a child, with his father later joining him to play doubles at a local club. Skidelsky manages to toss in a few personal details about his family, love life, bouts of depression at college, and therapy sessions, but mostly he writes confidently of Federer the man and myth: his peak years of 2004 to 2006; his rivalry with Rafael Nadal in 2008-2009; his 2009 Australian win; his 2011 comeback; and his 2014 Wimbledon resurgence. In one revealing section, the often hilarious Skidelsky tries to decipher the difference between being a super fan and being completely obsessed. With his careful attention to the evolving talent of Federer and the debates around surface, rackets, strategy matches, and celebrity, Skidelsky scores. Agent: David Godwin, David Godwin Assoc. (May) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
Journalist Skidelsky writes of his life and love for Swiss tennis player Roger Federer, winner of a record 17 Grand Slam titles. The author is at his best when describing Federer's skill and innovation, and fans of the player will likely not dispute the assertions of his grace on court. Interesting also is the discussion on why we talk of the beauty of his shots-if it's a concept that matters, or whether winning is the only factor of greatness. Skidelsky's writing on the 2008 Wimbledon final between Federer and -Rafael Nadal is likewise engaging (and bittersweet-Federer lost), and his experiences at matches will be of particular interest for fans who haven't seen -Federer play in person. However, curiously lacking are details on Federer's current rivalry with Novak Djokovic (two of 2015's Grand Slam finals were between them), and sections in which the author recounts his life outside of tennis (e.g., playing squash at Eton) lag at times. While Skidelsky offers examples of others who share his devotion to Federer (women who follow Federer around the world; a man who named his son Roger), his narrative doesn't succeed in examining why such a fandom exists. -VERDICT Despite some flaws, this passionate ode to Federer-who has been called the greatest tennis player of all time-will appeal to his legions of fans. [See "Editors' Spring Picks," LJ 2/15/16, p. 33.]-Amanda -Mastrull, Library Journal © Copyright 2016. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
