String Theory: David Foster Wallace on Tennis
  • Published: 19 September 2016
  • ISBN: 9781598534801
  • Imprint: Library of America
  • Format: Hardback
  • Pages: 158
  • RRP: $37.00
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String Theory: David Foster Wallace on Tennis

A Library of America Special Publication

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An instant classic of American sportswriting--the tennis essays of David Foster Wallace, "the best mind of his generation" (A. O. Scott) and "the best tennis-writer of all time" (New York Times)

An instant classic of American sportswriting—the tennis essays of David Foster Wallace, “the best mind of his generation” (A. O. Scott) and “the best tennis-writer of all time” (New York Times)

Gathered for the first time in a deluxe collector's edition, here are David Foster Wallace's legendary writings on tennis, five tour-de-force pieces written with a competitor's insight and a fan's obsessive enthusiasm. Wallace brings his dazzling literary magic to the game he loved as he celebrates the other-worldly genius of Roger Federer; offers a wickedly witty disection of Tracy Austin's memoir; considers the artistry of Michael Joyce, a supremely disciplined athlete on the threshold of fame; resists the crush of commerce at the U.S. Open; and recalls his own career as a "near-great" junior player.

Whiting Award-winning writer John Jeremiah Sullivan provides an introduction.
  • Published: 19 September 2016
  • ISBN: 9781598534801
  • Imprint: Library of America
  • Format: Hardback
  • Pages: 158
  • RRP: $37.00
Categories:
Share…

About the author

David Foster Wallace

David Foster Wallace wrote the novels Infinite Jest and The Broom of the System, and the story collections Oblivion, Brief Interviews With Hideous Men and Girl With Curious Hair. His nonfiction includes Consider the Lobster, A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again, Everything and More and This Is Water. Wallace was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship, a Lannan Literary Award and a Whiting Writers' Award. He died in 2008.

'One of the most dazzling luminaries of contemporary American fiction.' Sunday Times

'One of the most influential novelists of his generation: capable of stunning articulacy, moral insight and industry.'Independent

'A dense, agonised, brilliant and moving body of work. It seems miraculous, even heroic, that Wallace achieved what he did.'Sam Leith, Literary Review

'One of those novelists who seem to push along the evolution of the form. You can recognize his prose style by a single sentence.' Benjamin Markovits, Observer

'A wonderfully exuberant comic writer and ironist, a writer of boundless imaginative gifts. His work will continue to be read long into the future.' Jason Cowley, New Statesman

portrait photo of David Foster Wallace

Also by David Foster Wallace

The Pale King
David Foster Wallace: The Last Interview Expanded with New Introduction
The David Foster Wallace Reader
Signifying Rappers
Daily Joy
Both Flesh And Not
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Praise for String Theory: David Foster Wallace on Tennis

"Wallace . . . in his too-short life . . . came to observe tennis more ingeniously than anyone else ever had." --Gerald Marzorati, New York Times Magazine, 2009
"David Foster Wallace's profile of Michael Joyce is one of the single best sports pieces ever written." --Bill Simmons, ESPN The Magazine, 2008