Candide
Hall of Fame
For some reason tennis seems to fascinate and attract the literary mind the way few sports do. I thought I'd float the idea of a thread dedicated to odd literary tennis titbits and see if anyone else had noticed this and collected any gems. I'll kick off. Below is a letter from J. M. Coetzee to Paul Auster on the subject of the meaning and significance of sport.
March 15, 2009
Dear Paul,
You write of the young male child’s fixation on sporting heroes, and go on to distinguish this from a mature attitude that seeks the aesthetic in the sporting spectacle.
Like you, I think that watching sport on television is mostly a waste of time. But there are moments that are not a waste of time, as would, for example, crop up now and again in the glory days of Roger Federer. In the light of what you say, I scrutinize such moments, revisiting them in memory—Federer playing a crosscourt backhand volley, for instance. Is it truly, or only, the aesthetic, I ask myself, that brings such moments alive for me?
It seems to me that two thoughts go through my mind as I watch: (1) If only I had spent my adolescence practicing my backhand instead of … then I, too, could have played shots like that and made people all over the world gasp with wonder. Followed by: (2) Even if I had spent the whole of my adolescence practicing my backhand, I would not be able to play that shot, not in the stress of competition, not at will. And therefore: (3) I have just seen something that is at the same time both human and more than human; I have just seen something like the human ideal made visible.
What I would want to note in this set of responses is the way in which envy first raises its head and is then extinguished. One starts by envying Federer, one moves from there to admiring him, and one ends up neither envying nor admiring him but exalted at the revelation of what a human being—a being like oneself—can do.
Which, I find, is very much like my response to masterworks of art on which I have spent a lot of time (reflection, analysis), to the point where I have a good idea of what went into their making: I can see how it was done, but I could never have done it myself, it is beyond me; yet it was done by a man (now and again a woman) like me; what an honor to belong to the species that he (occasionally she) exemplifies!
And at that point, I can no longer distinguish the ethical from the aesthetic.…
All good wishes,
John
March 15, 2009
Dear Paul,
You write of the young male child’s fixation on sporting heroes, and go on to distinguish this from a mature attitude that seeks the aesthetic in the sporting spectacle.
Like you, I think that watching sport on television is mostly a waste of time. But there are moments that are not a waste of time, as would, for example, crop up now and again in the glory days of Roger Federer. In the light of what you say, I scrutinize such moments, revisiting them in memory—Federer playing a crosscourt backhand volley, for instance. Is it truly, or only, the aesthetic, I ask myself, that brings such moments alive for me?
It seems to me that two thoughts go through my mind as I watch: (1) If only I had spent my adolescence practicing my backhand instead of … then I, too, could have played shots like that and made people all over the world gasp with wonder. Followed by: (2) Even if I had spent the whole of my adolescence practicing my backhand, I would not be able to play that shot, not in the stress of competition, not at will. And therefore: (3) I have just seen something that is at the same time both human and more than human; I have just seen something like the human ideal made visible.
What I would want to note in this set of responses is the way in which envy first raises its head and is then extinguished. One starts by envying Federer, one moves from there to admiring him, and one ends up neither envying nor admiring him but exalted at the revelation of what a human being—a being like oneself—can do.
Which, I find, is very much like my response to masterworks of art on which I have spent a lot of time (reflection, analysis), to the point where I have a good idea of what went into their making: I can see how it was done, but I could never have done it myself, it is beyond me; yet it was done by a man (now and again a woman) like me; what an honor to belong to the species that he (occasionally she) exemplifies!
And at that point, I can no longer distinguish the ethical from the aesthetic.…
All good wishes,
John
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