Both Flesh and Not

by David Foster Wallace

  —Thomas Beller, San Francisco Chronicle

  1 There’s a great deal that’s bad about having a body. If this is not so obviously true that no one needs examples, we can just quickly mention pain, sores, odors, nausea, aging, gravity, sepsis, clumsiness, illness, limits—every last schism between our physical wills and our actual capacities. Can anyone doubt we need help being reconciled? Crave it? It’s your body that dies, after all. There are wonderful things about having a body, too, obviously—it’s just that these things are much harder to feel and appreciate in real time. Rather like certain kinds of rare, peak-type sensuous epiphanies (“I’m so glad I have eyes to see this sunrise!,” etc.), great athletes seem to catalyze our awareness of how glorious it is to touch and perceive, move through space, interact with matter. Granted, what great athletes can do with their bodies are things that the rest of us can only dream of. But these dreams are important—they make up for a lot.

  2 The U.S. media here are especially worried because no Americans of either sex survived into even the quarterfinals this year. (If you’re into obscure statistics, it’s the first time this has happened at Wimbledon since 1911.)

  3 Actually, this is not the only Federer-and-sick-child incident of Wimbledon’s second week. Three days prior to the men’s final, a Special One-on-One Interview with Mr. Roger Federer* takes place in a small, crowded International Tennis Federation office just off the third floor of the Press Center. Right afterward, as the ATP player-rep is ushering Federer out the back door for his next scheduled obligation, one of the ITF guys (who’s been talking loudly on the telephone through the whole Special Interview) now comes up and asks for a moment of Roger’s time. The man, who has the same slight, generically foreign accent as all ITF guys, says: “Listen, I hate doing this. I don’t do this, normally. It’s for my neighbor. His kid has a disease. They will do a fund-raiser, it’s planned, and I’m asking can you sign a shirt or something, you know—something.” He looks mortified. The ATP rep is glaring at him. Federer, though, just nods, shrugs: “No problem. I’ll bring it tomorrow.” Tomorrow’s the men’s semifinal. Evidently the ITF guy has meant one of Federer’s own shirts, maybe from the match, with Federer’s actual sweat on it. (Federer throws his used wristbands into the crowd after matches, and the people they land on seem pleased rather than grossed out.) The ITF guy, after thanking Federer three times very fast, shakes his head: “I hate doing this.” Federer, still halfway out the door: “It’s no problem.” And it isn’t. Like all pros, Federer changes his shirt a few times during matches, and he can just have somebody save one, and then he’ll sign it. It’s not like Federer’s being Gandhi here—he doesn’t stop and ask for details about the kid or his illness. He doesn’t pretend to care more than he does. The request is just one more small, mildly distracting obligation he has to deal with. But he does say yes, and he will remember—you can tell. And it won’t distract him; he won’t permit it. He’s good at this kind of stuff, too.

  * (Only considerations of space and basic believability prevent a full description of the hassles involved in securing such a One-on-One. In brief, it’s rather like the old story of someone climbing an enormous mountain to talk to the man seated lotus on top, except in this case the mountain is composed entirely of sports-bureaucrats.)

  4 Top men’s serves often reach speeds of 125–135 m.p.h., true, but what all the radar signs and graphics neglect to tell you is that male power-baseliners’ groundstrokes themselves are often traveling at over 90 m.p.h., which is the speed of a big-league fastball. If you get down close enough to a pro court, you can hear an actual sound coming off the ball in flight, a kind of liquid hiss, from the combination of pace and spin. Close up and live, you’ll also understand better the “open stance” that’s become such an emblem of the power-baseline game. The term, after all, just means not turning one’s side all the way to the net before hitting a groundstroke, and one reason why so many power-baseliners hit from the open stance is that the ball now is coming too fast for them to get turned all the way.

  5 This is the large (and presumably six-year-old) structure where Wimbledon’s administration, players, and media all have their respective areas and HQs.

  6 (Some, like Nadal or Serena Williams, look more like cartoon superheroes than people.)

  7 When asked, during the aforementioned Special One-on-One Interview, for examples of other athletes whose performances might seem beautiful to him, Federer mentions Jordan first, then Kobe Bryant, then “a soccer player like—guys who play very relaxed, like a Zinédine Zidane or something: he does great effort, but he seems like he doesn’t need to try hard to get the results.”

  Federer’s response to the subsequent question, which is what-all he makes of it when pundits and other players describe his own game as “beautiful,” is interesting mainly because the response is pleasant, intelligent, and cooperative—as is Federer himself—without ever really saying anything (because, in fairness, what could one say about others’ descriptions of him as beautiful? What would you say? It’s ultimately a stupid question):

  “It’s always what people see first—for them, that’s what you are ‘best at.’ When you used to watch John McEnroe, you know, the first time, what would you see? You would see a guy with incredible talent, because the way he played, nobody played like this. The way he played the ball, it was just all about feel. And then you go over to Boris Becker, and right away you saw a powerful player, you know?* When you see me play, you see a ‘beautiful’ player—and maybe after that you maybe see that he’s fast, maybe you see that he’s got a good forehand, maybe then you see that he has a good serve. First, you know, you have a base, and to me, I think it’s great, you know, and I’m very lucky to be called basically ‘beautiful,’ you know, for style of play. Other ones have the ‘grinder’ [quality] first, [some] other ones are the ‘power player,’ [still] other ones are ‘the quick guy.’ With me it’s, like, ‘the beautiful player,’ and that’s really cool.”

  * (N.B. Federer’s big conversational tics are “maybe” and “you know.” Ultimately, these tics are helpful because they serve as reminders of how appallingly young he really is. If you’re interested, the world’s best tennis player is wearing white warm-up pants and a long-sleeved white microfiber shirt, possibly Nike. No sport coat, though. His handshake is only moderately firm, though the hand itself is like a carpentry rasp (for obvious reasons, tennis players tend to be very callusy). He’s a bit bigger than TV makes him seem—broader-shouldered, deeper in the chest. He’s next to a table that’s covered with visors and headbands, which he’s been autographing with a Sharpie. He sits with his legs crossed and smiles pleasantly and seems very relaxed; he never fidgets with the Sharpie. One’s overall impression is that Roger Federer is either a very nice guy or a guy who’s very good at dealing with the media—or [most likely] both.)

  8 Special One-on-One support from the man himself for this claim: “It’s interesting, because this week, actually, Ancic [comma Mario, the towering Top-Ten Croatian whom Federer beat in Wednesday’s quarterfinal] played on Centre Court against my friend, you know, the Swiss player Wawrinka [comma Stanislas, Federer’s Davis Cup teammate], and I went to see it out where, you know, my girlfriend Mirka [Vavrinec, a former Top 100 female player, knocked out by injury, who now basically functions as Federer’s Alice B. Toklas] usually sits, and I went to see—for the first time since I have come here to Wimbledon, I went to see a match on Centre Court, and I was also surprised, actually, how fast, you know, the serve is and how fast you have to react to be able to get the ball back, especially when a guy like Mario [Ancic, who’s known for his vicious serve] serves, you know? But then once you’re on the court yourself, it’s totally different, you know, because all you see is the ball, really, and you don’t see the speed of the ball.…”

  9 We’re doing the math here with the ball traveling as the crow flies, for simplicity. Please do not write in with corrections. If you want to factor in the serve’s bounce and s
o compute the total distance traveled by the ball as the sum of an oblique triangle’s* two shorter legs, then by all means go ahead—you’ll end up with between two and five additional hundredths of a second, which is not significant.

  * (The slower a tennis court’s surface, the closer to a right triangle you’re going to have. On fast grass, the bounce’s angle is always oblique.)

  10 Conditioning is also important, but this is mainly because the first thing that physical fatigue attacks is the kinesthetic sense. (Other antagonists are fear, self-consciousness, and extreme upset—which is why fragile psyches are rare in pro tennis.)

  11 The best lay analogy is probably to the way an experienced driver can make all of good driving’s myriad little decisions and adjustments without having to pay real attention to them.

  12 (… assuming, that is, that the sign’s “with heavy topspin” is modifying “dominate” rather than “powerful hitters,” which actually it might or might not—British grammar is a bit dodgy)

  13 (which neither Connors nor McEnroe could switch to with much success—their games were fixed around pre-modern rackets)

  14 Formwise, with his whippy forehand, lethal one-hander, and merciless treatment of short balls, Lendl somewhat anticipated Federer. But the Czech was also stiff, cold, and brutal; his game was awesome but not beautiful. (My college doubles partner used to describe watching Lendl as like getting to see Triumph of the Will in 3-D.)

  15 See, for one example, the continued effectiveness of some serve-and-volley (mainly in the adapted, heavily ace- and quickness-dependent form of a Sampras or Rafter) on fast courts through the 1990s.

  16 It’s also illustrative that 2002 was Wimbledon’s last pre-Federer final.

  17 In the ’06 final’s third set, at three games all and 30-15, Nadal kicks his second serve high to Federer’s backhand. Nadal’s clearly been coached to go high and heavy to Federer’s backhand, and that’s what he does, point after point. Federer slices the return back to Nadal’s center and two feet short—not short enough to let the Spaniard hit a winner, but short enough to draw him slightly into the court, whence Nadal winds up and puts all his forehand’s strength into a hard heavy shot to (again) Federer’s backhand. The pace he’s put on the ball means that Nadal is still backpedaling to his baseline as Federer leaves his feet and cranks a very hard topspin backhand down the line to Nadal’s deuce side, which Nadal—out of position but world-class fast—reaches and manages to one-hand back deep to (again) Federer’s backhand side, but this ball’s floaty and slow, and Federer has time to step around and hit an inside-out forehand, a forehand as hard as anyone’s hit all tournament, with just enough topspin to bring it down in Nadal’s ad corner, and the Spaniard gets there but can’t return it. Big ovation. Again, what looks like an overwhelming baseline winner was actually set up by that first clever semi-short slice and Nadal’s own predictability about where and how hard he’ll hit every ball. Federer surely whaled that last forehand, though. People are looking at each other and applauding. The thing with Federer is that he’s Mozart and Metallica at the same time, and the harmony’s somehow exquisite.

  By the way, it’s right around here, or the next game, watching, that three separate inner-type things come together and mesh. One is a feeling of deep personal privilege at being alive to get to see this; another is the thought that William Caines is probably somewhere here in the Centre Court crowd, too, watching, maybe with his mum. The third thing is a sudden memory of the earnest way the press bus driver promised just this experience. Because there is one. It’s hard to describe—it’s like a thought that’s also a feeling. One wouldn’t want to make too much of it, or to pretend that it’s any sort of equitable balance; that would be grotesque. But the truth is that whatever deity, entity, energy, or random genetic flux produces sick children also produced Roger Federer, and just look at him down there. Look at that.

  1 Hereafter abbreviated “C.Y.”

  2 These words are capitalized because they understand themselves as capitalized. Trust me on this.

  3 On these, too: they are to Programs what azan are to mosques.

  4 Only considerations of space and legal liability restrain me from sharing with you in detail the persistent legend, at one nameless institution, of the embalmed cadaver cadged from the medical school by two deeply troubled young M.F.A. candidates, enrolled in a workshop as their proxy, smuggled pre-bell into the seminar room each week, and propped in its assigned seat, there to clutch a pencil in its white fist and stare straight ahead with an expression of somewhat rigid good cheer. The name of the legend is “The Cadaver That Got a B.”

  5 Take your pick of Tolstoy, Schopenhauer, or Richards and insert “feeling,” “freedom from phenomena,” or “relevant mental condition,” respectively, in the space provided.

  1 … which succumbs to the hazard of most parody and gets the point of Leibniz’s best-of-all-possible-worlds stuff totally wrong.

  2 The word Wittgenstein uses as an example of family resemblance is “game”: i.e., what do soccer, Monopoly, and solitaire, for all their differences, have in common by virtue of which they all correctly take the same four-letter predicate? [Philosophical Grammar, pp. 75, 118]

  3 Hereafter abbreviated WM

  4 viz. Amy Hempel, minimalist ordinaire, in the Review ’s 22 May 1988 encyclical.

  5 Q.v. “Who’s on First?”

  6 Q.v. Audi’s ’89 slogan for print adverts: “IT SETS THE STANDARD BY IGNORING IT.”

  7 A distinction of Frege, a Wittgenstein-era titan: to mention a word or phrase is to speak about it, w/ at least implicit quotation marks: e.g., “Kate” is a four-letter name; to use a word or phrase is to mention its referent: e.g., Kate is by default the main character of Wittgenstein’s Mistress.

  8 Unless you can empty your head of connotation and translate the word literally from the Attic Greek—then it probably has a Marksonian poignancy no other term would have…

  9 The ep. is “What an extraordinary change takes place… when for the first time the fact that everything depends upon how a thing is thought first enters the consciousness, when, in consequence, thought in its absoluteness replaces an apparent reality.”… from “The Task of Becoming Subjective” in the Postscript—maybe worth noting that the form of “change” in the Danish is accusative rather than nominative & that what Markson renders as “extraordinary” appears in some other translations as “terrible” or “of thoroughgoing fear.”

  10 … maybe Beckett in Molloy…

  11 He pretty obviously never could have had a daughter, either. But he did have intellectual “heirs,” and Wittgenstein’s Daughter would have Kate seem like one—too simple, linear, for so complex a character or her relations to masters. Plus “daughter,” unlike “mistress,” fails to convey the exquisite loneliness of being the linguistic beloved of a man who could not, in emotional practice, confer identity on a woman via his love.

  12 … though she never says what’s true: that it was at first for a particular person, her husband, then only eventually for just anyone at all…

  13 (data transferred to herself, or her self-consciousness, or to whoever may come down the pike, or to both herself and someone else, or to neither, or maybe all that’s supposed to be left here is the sand of text, awaiting tides)

  14 Hereafter abbreviated Tractatus, and the equally famous 1953 Philosophical Investigations just the Investigations, as it’s known in the industry, or PI.

  15 E.g., “What is the use of studying philosophy,” Wittgenstein wrote to a U.S. student while working on the Investigations in 1946, “if all that it does for you is to enable you to talk with some plausibility about some abstruse questions of logic, etc. and if it does not improve your thinking about the important questions of everyday life?”

  16 Scholars tend to schizofy Wittgenstein, counterposing the “early” W of the Tractatus and the “late” W of the Investigations, The Blue and Brown Books, and Philosophical Grammar.

  17 See the Tra
ctatus; emphasis supplied.

  18 this connection-urge more fundamental and scary than the humanistic syrup of Howard’s End’s “Only connect”: the latter refers to relations between persons, the former to the possibility of any extracranial universe at all…

  19 plus continual reference to bunches of tennis balls bouncing all over the place made me realize tennis balls are about the best macroscopic symbol there is for the flux of atomistic fact…

  20 pp. 88 & 89

  21 Tractatus 1.2

  22 Since I can’t find any more graceful place to stick it in, let me invite you, with this line as exemplar, to see another cool formal horizon-expansion Mr. Markson effects in WM—the mode of presentation is less “stream of consciousness” than “stream of conscious utterance ”; Markson’s technique here shares the associative qualities of Joycean S.O.C. but differs in being “directed”: at what or whom it’s directed becomes the novel’s implicit, or anti-, plot, & accounts for a “narrative movement” that’s less linear or even circular than spiral.

  23 p. 62

  24 See William Barrett, “Wittgenstein the Pilgrim,” in The Illusion of Technique, Doubleday ’78.

  25 Dr. James D. Wallace, unpublished response to his son’s cries for help with Wittgenstein’s Mistress and Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus.

  26 Also true that Kate identifies closely with Penelope, Clytemnestra, Eve, Agamemnon, & particularly Cassandra, the mad prophetess who warned about armed men inside empty gifts. But I’m thinking Cassandra’s importance is more a function of Kate’s self-consciousness about her own identification with Helen and feminine culpability, about which more below.

  27 (the same period of time Kate spent traversing the ancient & modern empty worlds, flopping in museums and “looking” for people)