Tennis Player Michael Joyce’s Professional Artistry as a Paradigm of Certain Stuff about Choice, Freedom, Discipline, Joy, Grotesquerie, and Human Completeness

OK, I’ve finished my summer reading (!)… And am halfway through another book… And have still not finished these posts about the essays in A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again: Essays and Arguments* by David Foster Wallace. But this is the second to last one, so I’m getting close!

Now to think back to so many months ago when I read this….

OK, yeah. That’s right. This one’s about when DFW kinda hung around with Michael Joyce at the Qualifiers for the Canadian Open tennis tournament. There’s kind of a lot of tennis stuff that I may or may not have heard of, but, in true DFW style, he makes it interesting. Bless him!

I remember mostly, though, that he was in Montreal. And of course that made me remember our epic vacation in 2010 (34 days!). We sure had fun. Canada is so cool. We’d been to Toronto before, in 2006, but of course, it’s in Ontario, which is mostly English-speaking. Quebec is more French-speaking, and that was really new to me. I know I always say how much I love going to South Beach, because it’s like being in Europe or something, because when you’re lying on the beach, almost nobody around you speaks English… But so then in Montreal, it wasn’t quite like that (no ocean, no sand, e.g.), but… Like every person we came in contact with professionally (bartender, bell-hop, bartender, concierge, bartender, hotel desk person, bartender, maintenance guy, bartender….) addressed us in both French and English. “Bonjour Hello.” “Quel étage? What floor?” You get the idea.

Then in Quebec City, it was even more French! There was this awesome pizza restaurant right across from our hotel (I think it’s a chain or at least a small, possibly local to QC, chain, but still… awesome). And we had our favorite bartender who was so sweet. And so like the third day there I’m talking to her (you know, my mile-a-minute blabber), and she says, “Oh, I’m sorry, my English is not very good.” Gee, Tree. Did I feel like a cad. Ugly American, right here. So I replied, “Your English is much better than my French!” (non-existent, basically, if you don’t count “French” that should be pardoned or “Une carte des vins, s’il vous plaît,” or “Une bouteille de vin rouge, s’il vous plaît.”¹ Yeah. So.

Anyway. This essay. Yes. So in true tree tradition, I’m spending time I should be talking about this essay, instead talking about myself. Narcissistic, much?

Just read the essay.

This is the seventh post in a series.

• A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again
• Derivative Sport in Tornado Alley
• E Unibus Pluram: Television and U.S. Fiction
• Getting Away from Already Being Pretty Much Away from It All
• Greatly Exaggerated
• David Lynch Keeps His Head
• Tennis Player Michael Joyce’s Professional Artistry as a Paradigm of Certain Stuff about Choice, Freedom, Discipline, Joy, Grotesquerie, and Human Completeness
• A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again… Again