How Tracy Austin Broke My Heart (1994) [pdf]

> Because I am a long-time rabid fan of tennis in general and Tracy Austin in particular, I've rarely looked forward to reading a sports memoir the way I looked forward to Ms. Austin's Beyond Center Court: My Story, ghosted by Christine Brennan and published by Morrow. This is a type of mass-market book—the sports-star-"with"-somebody autobiography—that I seem to have bought and read an awful lot of, with all sorts of ups and downs and ambivalence and embarrassment, usually putting these books under something more highbrow when I get to the register. I think Austin's memoir has maybe finally broken my jones for the genre, though.

On further reading, wow, that's pretty savage. Sure seems disproportionate to me. For example, I wonder if you can be as outraged as DFW that:

> The author's primary allegiance seems to be to her family and friends.

as opposed to that allegiance being to the reader, whom she owes because, it seems, of the reader's interest in her:

> Obviously, a good commercial memoir's first loyalty has got to be to the reader, the person who's spending money and time to access the consciousness of someone he wishes to know and will never meet.

In fact, as someone who has at times enjoyed DFW immensely, it's hard to imagine a writer who writes more for himself than DFW, so the complaint comes across as a bit off-base to me.

I don't think this is entirely true. He understands his job, as he'll admit in the middle of some essays.

Consider one of his more famous essays, "Consider the Lobster":

At one point:

> I should add that it appears to me unlikely that many readers of Gourmet wish to think about it, either, or to be queried about the morality of their eating habits in the pages of a culinary monthly. Since, however, the assigned subject of this article is what it was like to attend the 2003 MLF, and thus to spend several days in the midst of a great mass of Americans all eating lobster, and thus to be more or less impelled to think hard about lobster and the experience of buying and eating lobster, it turns out that there is no honest way to avoid certain moral questions.

And later on:

> For those Gourmet readers who enjoy well-prepared and -presented meals involving beef, veal, lamb, pork,chicken, lobster, etc.: Do you think much about the (possible)moral status and (probable) suffering of the animals involved?

He's very specifically targeting the reader.

I think the common charge against Wallace is that he is very smart, which is fine, but he is so _obviously_ intelligent; so neurotically intelligent that he couldn't leave any stones unturned or examined. And that's inexcusable, since obviously anyone who writes as such must be fully up their own ass. His struggles with mental health and self-worth push back on that analysis.

Most importantly, I think, is that his job is to be those things. Anyone hiring Wallace _is_ paying for that work. He is entirely himself and delivers on that product. His disappointment in this autobiography is that it fails to deliver.

I was reminded of this essay when listening to Lewis Hamilton's interview for the ‘Beyond the Grid’ podcast. I vaguely dreaded this very prospect in advance, but Hamilton really shamelessly overshot my expectations, it's almost a Hollywood-esque story of perseverance by the whole family. Guess I'll stick with watching the man's pole laps, they're way more satisfying.

This, I think, is the point. I could not dream of accusing Wallace of not understanding his job. However, what he wrote was still for him; it was his vision of himself and the world around him, and if someone were to complain that it did not live up to their vision of him, then he—while doubtlessly adding that criticism to his inner monologue—would surely not have thought he should adjust his writing one whit because of it.

Here, though, he seems to be complaining that Austin isn't who Wallace expected her to be, not that she's not authentically herself. He seems to be complaining that she's shallow, while fully acknowledging that he's partaking of a genre that he knows does not demand or reward deep soul searching.