This paper focuses on David Foster Wallace collected essays about tennis which is called String Theory. The five essays approach and use the sport for different goals. In his typical manner, tennis becomes a starting point for quite different topics, be it Wallace's own life, his thoughts on a literary genre (in this case "top athletes' autobiographies"), masculine physicality, transcendence, or the industry behind sports events. While stylistically Wallace follows the method of "thick description," injecting elements of metafiction and humor, he ultimately takes tennis as a starting point for ontological questions in his search for some form of deeper insight or even truth that can be found on the sidelines of his respective topic.
His approach to writing essays and the function and possibilities of that literary form displays apparent similarities with the work of the protagonists of the so-called New Journalism. After a brief introduction to New Journalism as a mode of writing and some of its elements and key terms, the author will focus on Wallace's five tennis essays individually. In addition to connecting his M.O. to the tradition of New Journalism on the formal and content level, the author will provide a reading of each of Wallace's tennis essays with recourses to different theoretical approaches. In other words this paper will probe each essay for the question: about what is he really writing, how Wallace is doing it and why he chooses tennis of all things that functions as his way in.
In addition to his work as a writer of fiction (his bibliography includes three novels and three short story collections) David Foster Wallace has written a large number of essays, most of them for magazines and newspapers. His topics range from literature and film to mathematics, from music and subcultures to travel and the tourism industry, from politics to food, and have been issued in numerous collections before and after his self-inflicted death in 2008.
Table of Contents
1. Introduction
2. New Journalism
3. First Essay: “Derivative Sport in Tornado Alley”
3.1. Milieu, Mathematics, Material Body
3.2. Observations on Wallace`s Style
4. Second Essay: “How Tracy Austin Broke my Heart”
4.1. Importance of the Essay Title
4.2. Narrator Perspective and Involving Oneself to Involve the Reader
4.3. Zooming in on the Missing Element and Zooming out from Book Review to Genre Bashing
4.4. The Paradox of High-Level Athletic Aesthetics
4.5. Conclusion
5. Third Essay: "Tennis Player Michael Joyce's Professional Artistry as a Paradigm of Certain stuff about Choice, Freedom, Limitation, Joy, Grotesquerie, and Human Completeness."
5.1. Narrator Position and Style
5.2. Function of the Essay Title
5.3. Untangling the Entangled
5.4. Who is the Subject? Shifting Agencies; and Conclusion
6. Fourth Essay: "Democracy and Commerce at the U.S. Open"
6.1. Function of the Essay Title
6.2. Some Notes on Style
6.3. Capitalisation of the Game & Critique of Capitalism
7. Fifth Essay: “Both Flesh and Not”
7.1. Flesh and Light. Sublime Physicality
7.2. Chapter Conclusion
8. Conclusion
9. Epilogue
Objectives and Themes
This paper examines David Foster Wallace’s collected tennis essays from the volume String Theory (2016). It explores how Wallace uses tennis not merely as a sporting subject, but as a starting point for ontological inquiry, leveraging literary techniques characteristic of New Journalism to investigate deeper truths about human existence, agency, and the aesthetics of the body.
- The intersection of New Journalism techniques and Wallace's unique literary style.
- The function of "thick description" in documenting the complexities of the pro tennis circuit.
- The role of the narrator as an active, subjective participant in the narrative process.
- Tennis as a metaphorical surface for negotiating broader existential questions regarding commerce, democracy, and physical limitation.
Excerpt from the Book
3.2. Observations on Wallace`s Style
While Wallace's tennis style as he describes it certainly is unusual (factoring in slanted courts and heavy winds as elements of his game), his literary style is just as noteworthy. There are, as I already mentioned, parallels between his writing and his tennis playing. One is the focus on small and seemingly insignificant details, which however contribute to a Barthesian reality effect and conjure up a powerful and vivid image of the particular conditions:
Now, conditions in Central Illinois are from a mathematical perspective interesting and from a tennis perspective bad. The summer heat and wet-mitten humidity, the grotesquely fertile soil that sends grasses and broadleaves up through the courts' surface by main force, the midges that feed on sweat and the mosquitoes that spawn in the fields' furrows and in the conferva-choked ditches that box each field, night tennis next to impossible because the moths and crap-gnats drawn by the sodium lights form a little planet around each tall lamp and the whole lit court surface is aflutter with spastic little shadows. (4)
His focus on richness in detail sometimes drifts into an almost meditative state via his use of stream-of-consciousness to accentuate certain moments:
And meteorologists have nothing to tell people in Philo, who know perfectly well that the real story is that to the west, between us and the Rockies, there is basically nothing tall, and that weird zephyrs and stirs joined breezes and gusts and thermals and downdrafts and whatever out over Nebraska and Kansas and moved east like streams into rivers and jets and military fronts that gathered like avalanches and roared in reverse down pioneer oxtrails, toward our own personal unsheltered asses. (5-6)
Summary of Chapters
1. Introduction: Presents the scope of the paper, focusing on how Wallace utilizes tennis as a departure point for broader ontological and literary investigations.
2. New Journalism: Provides a theoretical framework by defining the history and key stylistic elements of New Journalism, such as subjective narration and the use of literary techniques in factual reporting.
3. First Essay: “Derivative Sport in Tornado Alley”: Analyzes Wallace’s autobiographical reflections on his youth as a "near-great" tennis player and the influence of his geographical milieu on his perception.
4. Second Essay: “How Tracy Austin Broke my Heart”: Discusses Wallace's critical engagement with the genre of ghostwritten athlete biographies and his search for an aesthetic dimension in sports.
5. Third Essay: "Tennis Player Michael Joyce's Professional Artistry as a Paradigm of Certain stuff about Choice, Freedom, Limitation, Joy, Grotesquerie, and Human Completeness.": Explores Wallace’s use of "thick description" to document the intricate realities of the professional tennis circuit through the career of Michael Joyce.
6. Fourth Essay: "Democracy and Commerce at the U.S. Open": Examines Wallace’s critique of the excessive commercialization and commodification of the U.S. Open tennis tournament.
7. Fifth Essay: “Both Flesh and Not”: Investigates Wallace's meditation on the sublime physicality and metaphysical significance of Roger Federer as a "transcendent" athlete.
8. Conclusion: Synthesizes the analysis, reiterating how Wallace avoids closure to frame the profound complexities of his subjects.
9. Epilogue: Reflects on the lasting legacy of Wallace’s work in the context of recent historical tennis events.
Keywords
David Foster Wallace, Tennis, New Journalism, Thick Description, Ontological, Existentialism, Roger Federer, Michael Joyce, Tracy Austin, Commercialization, Aesthetics, Metafiction, Narrator Perspective, Sport writing, Sublime
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the core focus of this academic paper?
The paper examines how David Foster Wallace uses tennis as a lens to explore deeper ontological and existential themes, rather than treating the sport merely as a factual subject.
What primary literary tradition is discussed in relation to Wallace?
The work is analyzed within the context of New Journalism, specifically looking at how Wallace adopts its subjective narrator perspective while expanding it through metafictional and philosophical experiments.
What is the author's primary research goal?
The objective is to decode Wallace's "method of operation" (M.O.) in his tennis essays to understand what he is truly writing about and why tennis serves as his specific gateway for addressing human complexity.
Which scientific or theoretical methods are applied?
The paper utilizes concepts like the "Barthesian reality effect," "thick description" (from ethnography), and Bruno Latour’s "Actor-Network-Theory" (ANT) to explain how Wallace maps the complexities of tennis.
What is covered in the main section of the paper?
The main part of the paper provides an individual reading of Wallace's five tennis essays, analyzing each piece's title, narrative structure, and thematic engagement with the sport.
What are the characterizing keywords of this work?
The work is characterized by terms such as Ontological, New Journalism, Thick Description, Sublimity, Metafiction, and Commerce.
How does Wallace’s treatment of the body differ between the essays?
Wallace shifts from viewing the body as a personal, material vessel in his earlier essays (like the Midwest tennis piece) to viewing it as a transcendent or "light-filled" entity in his later analysis of Roger Federer.
Why does the author emphasize the titles of the essays?
The author argues that Wallace’s titles act as crucial paratextual elements, intentionally creating an oscillation between colloquial humor and deep philosophical profundity to set the tone for the entire piece.
How does Wallace critique the commercialization of tennis?
Wallace employs a strategy of "framing capitalism by talking capitalism," highlighting the absurdity and ubiquity of tournament advertisements and the commodification of the spectator experience.
Why is the "open-endedness" of Wallace's conclusions significant?
The paper suggests that Wallace resists conventional closure to better frame the "possibilities of meaning," reflecting his belief that the purpose of writing is not to solve complexities but to illuminate them.
- Quote paper
- Christoph Schrank (Author), 2017, Ontological Tennis. A Close Reading of David Foster Wallace's Tennis Essays, Munich, GRIN Verlag, https://www.hausarbeiten.de/document/369564
