Nashville’s stormy spring is as dan­ger­ous as it is beautiful. 

You won’t catch me watch­ing the Indian Wells men’s final between Fed­erer and Isner. My boy Nadal was knocked out by Fed last night, 3 and 4, a rain-delayed match played in swirling, com­par­a­tively cold con­di­tions that recalled Fed’s five-set, two-day long, U.S. Open quar­ter­fi­nal vic­tory against Andre Agassi in 2000-whenever. Props to Fed, though; com­men­ta­tors got it wrong before both these matches: Nadal’s high-percentage spin and Agassi’s train­ing in windy Vegas were for naught. It was Fed who was not only more adapt­able but also more aggres­sive, his supreme foot­work on dis­play. Crazy wind’s always a fac­tor but gen­er­ally Fed moves so flu­idly to the ball it’s as if he’s not play­ing in the same wind as his oppo­nent, and his will­ing­ness to accept the tough con­di­tions refutes Mats Wilander’s asser­tion that he’s not a fighter, or men­tally tough. Of course he is. And when Nadal lifted his game in the first set to level things a 3–3, Fed was there to kick him back down the lad­der; when the Spaniard awoke at 2–5 in the sec­ond and he started to roll again, Fed­erer lay out a speed bump. Match. The great points were scin­til­lat­ing and the Swiss seems com­mit­ted to flat­ten­ing out his cross­court back­hand when­ever Nadal cheats to his own fore­hand side. Has Fed welded the chinks in his armor? With the Big Three play­ing at this level, the French Open could be truly extraordinary.

Still, the match of the tour­na­ment for me was Isner’s win against Djokovic. His gar­gan­tuan gifts aside, there’s no greater plea­sure in sport than to see a game plan per­fectly exe­cuted and unques­tion­ably Nadal could learn a lot about how to beat Djoker from this match. We’ll for­get Isner’s inim­itable, freak­ish serve, which is absurd in all sorts of ways (angle, pace, con­sis­tency, bombs deliv­ered by a guy with a great pitcher’s can­ni­ness and a kicker that, twice, jumped over Djoker’s head) and con­cen­trate, instead, on his unflinch­ing com­mit­ment to 1) an aggres­sive return of serve 2) a will­ing­ness to come into net when­ever he hurt Novak and 3) a will­ing­ness to crack fore­hands when­ever the oppor­tu­ni­ties pre­sented them­selves. In short, he played a per­fect match. And then Fed thumped him in straights. What a time to be a pro. What a greedy bunch are Fed and Nadal and, now, Djoker. Thirty-seven Grand Slam titles between the three of them, and there’s the Gen­tle Giant, try­ing to get his. My heart goes out to him.

My heart goes out to Maria Shara­pova, too, who must look across the net at Vic­to­ria Azarenka and see an oppo­nent who does almost every­thing bet­ter than her except maybe serve, and it’s been a long, long time since Maria has con­trolled a match against a top player with that shot. In the final, Az seemed to have all day to find open court, not that she needed it. With the pos­si­ble excep­tion of Kim Cli­jsters, no one in the women’s game redi­rects the ball bet­ter. I said it’s a great plea­sure to see a game plan per­fectly exe­cuted; a close sec­ond is to see great tal­ent fully real­ized and I couldn’t help but think about Az in Oz sev­eral years ago, a set up against Ser­ena hav­ing nearly blown her off the court in two, when sud­denly the pres­sure mounted, the heat went to her will and psy­che, and sud­denly she was stum­bling around like she’d been shoot­ing vodka on the changeovers and ulti­mately had to retire from dizzi­ness. I’ll make a bold pre­dic­tion: if Az stays healthy, I swear, she’ll win The Grand Slam this year. I don’t even think either of the Williams sis­ters could play with her at this level.

*

It has been a ter­ri­ble read­ing year for me so far—I’m talk­ing sheer numbers—this hav­ing noth­ing to do with the qual­ity of the books I’ve tack­led. Thor­oughly enjoyed Junot Diaz’s The Brief Won­drous Life of Oscar Wao and would have fol­lowed that exu­ber­ant Geek-Spanglish voice any­where. Re-read Wells Tower’s Every­thing Rav­aged, Every­thing Burned before hear­ing him read/speak at Van­der­bilt. The man can write a sen­tence and is a com­plete gen­tle­man in per­son. I’ve already men­tioned Alix Ohlin’s upcom­ing Signs and Won­ders, a won­der­ful story col­lec­tion by a writer who com­bines quick­sil­ver sto­ry­telling abil­ity, sheer nar­ra­tive dex­ter­ity, with an almost spooky emo­tional intel­li­gence. Am cur­rently slog­ging through Mann’s The Magic Moun­tain (there’s a movie?). Got no gripes with Mann, by the way. It’s amaz­ing how he antic­i­pates Thomas Friedman’s flat world, for instance:

“Tech­ni­cal progress [Set­tem­brini] said, grad­u­ally sub­ju­gated nature, by devel­op­ing roads and telegraphs, min­i­miz­ing cli­matic dif­fer­ences; and by the mean of com­mu­ni­ca­tion which it cre­ated proved itself the most reli­able agent in the task of draw­ing together the peo­ples of the earth, of mak­ing them acquainted with each other…”

But all my energy has been going into my novel, Play­world, and I’m fried by day’s end. Have made some real break­throughs after sev­eral months of blind alleys and dead ends. Some moments of deep despair. Writ­ing: You need seri­ous guns to do it. Also Stephen Colbert’s sense of humor. At the sug­ges­tion of Jedi-master (and stu­pen­dous nov­el­ist and short story writer) Steve Yarbrough, I did, how­ever, read Alice Munro’s much anthol­o­gized story “Car­ried Away” from Open Secrets. Dear Tol­stoy: Eat your heart out. Any fans of her work should read her Paris Review inter­view: she’s a pure writ­ing ani­mal. I have inside infor­ma­tion that her new col­lec­tion, due out this spring or sum­mer, is remarkable.

 

Two-thousand and eleven gives us this neatly pack­aged dead week, the last of the year, a Sun­day to Sun­day, Christ­mas to New Year’s Day, dur­ing which time it seems next to noth­ing gets done while the things you never seemed able to do are finally accom­plished: draw­ers are lined, the garage is orga­nized but still the tide’s nei­ther out nor com­ing in and the fam­ily wakes later than usual. We build a fire in the morn­ing. We read. The kids play with their new toys, qui­etly, in cor­ners, or join us under com­forters on the couch, their feet freez­ing. Sched­ules are oblit­er­ated. I call friends I haven’t spo­ken to in ages. On the radio, tele­vi­sion, and inter­net, everyone’s tal­ly­ing: Best Books, Best Movies, Biggest Gaffes, Top Sto­ries. The rabbit’s loose some­where in the house. The Christ­mas tree is so dry it might spon­ta­neously com­bust. Our dog, Henry, who we had to put down after 15 years of com­pan­ion­ship, haunts our home. In the morn­ings, all of us some­times wake to the sound of his high, dusty bark. We’ve reported this to each other indi­vid­u­ally, cor­rob­o­rated it. My wife spec­u­lates it’s because we haven’t buried him yet. We’ve put that off too.

Look­ing back, it was, more than any­thing else, a great read­ing year and, for what it’s worth, I thought I’d share my list, an adden­dum to the Year in Read­ing piece I wrote for The Mil­lions (check out that series when you have the chance). I’ll begin with what will prob­a­bly be the last book I’ll have fin­ished this year, unless I’m some­how for­tu­nate enough to get Alan Heathcock’s much-acclaimed Volt under my belt. That was James Salter’s Light Years, which I can’t rec­om­mend highly enough. It aston­ished and moved me more than any book has in quite some time and is inar­guably a mas­ter­piece. If you haven’t dis­cov­ered Salter, put Light Years or A Sport and a Pas­time at the very top of your list for 2012. You won’t be disappointed.

Here goes:

Black Swan Green by David Mitchell (I read this twice)

The Adven­tures of Augie March by Saul Bellow

The Let­ters of Saul Bel­low edited by Ben­jamin Taylor

The Ore­gon Exper­i­ment by Keith Scribner

The Fatal Shore by Robert Hughes

The Sto­ries of John Cheever

The Jour­nals of John Cheever

Tiger, Tiger by Mar­gaux Fragoso

Dis­grace by J.M. Coetzee

On Being Blue by William Gass (a re-reading)

Out Steal­ing Horses by Per Pettersen

Blood Merid­ian by Cor­mac McCarthy

Dusk and Other Sto­ries by James Salter

The Cur­few by Jesse Ball

Mad as Hell: The Cri­sis of the 1970s and the Rise of the Pop­ulist Right by Dominic Sandbrook

What the Heck Are You Up To, Mr. Pres­i­dent? by Kevin Mattson

Live from New York: A His­tory of Sat­ur­day Night Live by Tom Shales and James Andrew Miller

End Zone by Don DeLillo (a re-reading)

Thir­teen Ways of Look­ing at the Novel by Jane Smiley

Project X by Jim Shepard

Like You’d Under­stand, Any­way by Jim Shepard

The Vir­gin Sui­cides by Jef­frey Eugenides

First Love by Ivan Tur­genev (I don’t know, fifth or sixth time read­ing it)

Train Dreams by Denis Johnson

Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn (it’s com­ing out this year and I blurbed it—a total ball)

A Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger

Jacques Brel is Alive and Well and Liv­ing in Paris by Eric Blau

A Sep­a­rate Peace by John Knowles (a re-reading)

The Sense of an End­ing by Julian Barnes

Lolita by Vlad­mir Nabokov (maybe sixth time I’ve read it)

One res­o­lu­tion for 2012: Read more.

Finally, in Ladies and Gen­tle­men news, the col­lec­tion was named a top book of the year by The San Fran­cisco Chron­i­cle and The Book Lady.

Enjoy these last days of 2011.

 

Par­nas­sus, Nashville’s new inde­pen­dent book­store, offi­cially opened yes­ter­day to much fan­fare. It’s not sur­pris­ing, given the incred­i­ble amount of advance pub­lic­ity locally and nation­ally: a front page story in The New York Times and Publisher’s Weekly; in the Novem­ber issue of Gar­den & Gun; in Chapter16.org; the Chris­t­ian Sci­ence Mon­i­tor and NPR. This is due, par­tially, to the for­mi­da­ble star power of owner/novelist, Ann Patch­ett, who thumbed her nose at the Neil Van Uum’s of the world who would claim that the end of the inde­pen­dent book­store is nigh by step­ping up to fill the void after Davis Kidd’s clos­ing last year. The civic shock and mourn­ing that fol­lowed the loss of that store cou­pled with nearly a year with­out a place in the Athens of the South to buy a book is also part of the over­whelm­ing good­will accom­pa­ny­ing Parnassus’s arrival. But I think there’s some­thing else afoot, some­thing related to the Occupy Wall Street and loca­vore move­ments. Not directly, of course, but part of the zeit­geist as we wade through the Great Reces­sion and slowly arrive, it seems to me, at a real­iza­tion that we, the 99%, can have the world we want if we invest in it. I’ll call this The Great Reclamation.

Recla­ma­tion, by def­i­n­i­tion, is the tak­ing back of a waste­land for cul­ti­va­tion and all around us, it seems, the earth is scorched. Our country’s finances are a waste­land and so is our gov­ern­ment. The Super Com­mit­tee can’t seem to do its job, can’t arrive at a com­pro­mise, although you and I do it every day at home or at work. This com­mit­tee exists because Con­gress couldn’t do its job. The pun­ters punt to pun­ters, Democ­rats to Repub­li­cans and back, for over three decades, with a nifty assist from our friends on Wall St. And so here we are.

 

The earth’s on its way to being a waste­land. Con­sider, for instance, Antarc­tica and what it tells us about the state of the planet and how cli­mate change shad­ows the rise in car­bon emis­sions since the Indus­trial Rev­o­lu­tion or that last year was, once again, the hottest year on record. (But let’s say you don’t buy any of this sci­en­tific mumbo-jumbo, this high­fa­lutin hokum dreamed up by tree hug­gers and lib­er­als, by commie/progressive tax-and-spenders, even though you’ll take it as law when you, say, fly a plane or drive your car or take your Plavix or have triple-bypass surgery. My counter-argument is some­thing like French philoso­pher Blaise Pascal’s gam­bit. Remem­ber that from Intro Phi­los­o­phy? Bet­ter, he argued, to con­vert to Chris­tian­ity, even if you don’t believe, rather than risk spend­ing eter­nity in hell. Bet­ter to live sus­tain­ably, I say, to put your mus­cle behind a Green World, than wait for defin­i­tive proof of man­made causes of cli­mate change, since the pos­si­ble alter­na­tive is no world at all.)

In The Great Recla­ma­tion, you vote with your vote and your pock­et­book. Apply its logic to any­thing. Here’s an exam­ple: If you need a book, you call Par­nas­sus and order it by phone and pick it up the next time you’re in Green Hills because you believe it’s impor­tant that nation­ally rec­og­nized authors have a place to share their work in Nashville. Because when you book shop, you’d rather talk to an informed human being who lives and breathes lit­er­a­ture or mys­tery or non­fic­tion than be offered rec­om­men­da­tions based on sta­tis­ti­cal analy­ses of your buy­ing habits. Because, really, who the fuck needs a book RIGHT NOW any more than you need your whole library with you every­where you go. Because you chose the red pill instead of the blue pill. Because on a plane you can keep read­ing a tree book dur­ing take­off and land­ing and on the beach can drop it in the sand with­out major dam­age. Because you like page num­bers and not per­cents. Because con­trary to what some might say, the envi­ron­men­tal impact of e-readers is more dele­te­ri­ous than tree books. Because when you read the notes in the mar­gins of your book, the scrib­blings you penned a decade or two ago, you get a sense of the ways you’ve changed and grown and remain the same. Because serendip­ity is part of life’s magic and is more likely to occur when you go some­where with­out a clue as to what you’re look­ing for and it finds you and feels as if it were fated. Because time, in this over­sched­uled hyper-active world, is to be wasted and to do so is a recla­ma­tion thereof and a rebel­lion against thought­less, tyran­ni­cal efficiency.

Because.

*

In Ladies and Gen­tle­men news, I appeared on the Bookra­geous pod­cast Episode 29. Our topic: short sto­ries. The con­ver­sa­tion was a hell of a lot of fun and fea­tures this month’s Gar­den & Gun pinup girl, Rich­mond, VA’s Rebecca Schin­sky, also known as The Book Lady. Mean­while, watch for my posts on the ATP finals. As I write this, Tsonga and Fed are warm­ing up for their match. E-readers I can take or leave but not my DVR.

 

If the 2011 U.S. Open tells the seri­ous fan any­thing, it’s that men’s ten­nis is now a three-way con­ver­sa­tion between Djokovic, Nadal, and Fed­erer. In the semis, Fed’s slash­ing, quick­sil­ver offense, his amped-up serve, musketeer’s move­ment, and better-than-ever back­hand once again brought Novak to the brink, and the best arti­cle I’ve read about Roger’s sec­ond annual fail­ure to close him out comes from The New Yorker’s Nick Paum­garten. I’ve never been quite as wowed by Fed as Nick, or DFW—God rest his Kurt Cobain Soul—but he was, for a time, the sport’s Tiger Woods, a player who made win­ning seem ancil­lary to how he played (see DFW’s clas­sic piece on Fed), a fore­gone con­clu­sion given his genius which shifted the viewer’s focus not to whether or not he’d win but to how he’d do it, what magic he’d pro­duce, as if he were some ten­nis demiurge’s avatar, Odin’s Thor, etc. Inter­est­ingly, like Tiger, Fed never had a great rival till Nadal and Djokovic began to peak, and his “decline”—really, it should be described as the end of his dominance—has every­thing to do with their rise and less with his dimin­ish­ing speed, com­pet­i­tive­ness, what­ever. In fact, I don’t think he’s even dimin­ished. At risk of telegraph­ing the direc­tion of this post, he seemed more WITH Djokovic in his semi­fi­nal than Rafa ever did yesterday—first two lengths ahead, then neck and neck, to, well, a Hail-Mary fore­hand fol­lowed by a bril­liant blocked-back backhand—but that, as Chekhov says, is a song from another opera. In the bot­tom half of the draw, I don’t know what to say about Mur­ray except that he’s proved him­self a men­tal light­weight and his game, when com­pared to the big three, seems light­weight as well. He has the speed, touch, and power to bang with them all, but mid-match he just goes away or, against Rafa, never really brought it to start with. He seems in a per­pet­ual funk about the fact that beat­ing these guys isn’t easy, the Achilles’ heel of many supremely tal­ented ath­letes who never reach their poten­tial (see Vince Young). He’s always com­plain­ing to his camp or trot­ting out his usual bun­dle of tics: punch­ing his strings, grab­bing his knee cap, hit­ting his shoe. In the semi­fi­nal, his newest and most con­spic­u­ous addi­tion to this list was yank­ing at his short’s pocket, which kept spring­ing from his Addi­das like bunched box­ers from an unzipped fly, this cloth­ing mal­func­tion yet more evi­dence, he seemed to be indi­cat­ing to his mom, his hot girl­friend, his coach, of some grand con­spir­acy to pre­vent him from ever win­ning a major. To quote a favorite comic, There’s a lot of quit in that boy.

(BTW, I stand with Mary Car­illo about these pow-wows: I’m tired of the inces­sant ille­gal coach­ing con­sul­ta­tions Mur­ray, Djoker, and Nadal engage in. Not only should the USTA enforce the rule but Fed is by a mile the grownup of the bunch in this regard. The match is a test, he’s been quoted as say­ing. On court, your coach can’t help you. Amen, Your Excellency.)

Now to the final: Gen­er­ally speak­ing, it was a bru­tally aca­d­e­mic affair, a Serbian-run clinic, really, in A. The Power of Court Posi­tion­ing and B. A Study Guide to Beat­ing Nadal. All of Djoker’s finals with Nadal have been that this year, but the thrills this match sup­plied arose, in part, from Rafa’s deter­mi­na­tion to fight this los­ing bat­tle start to fin­ish, and I defy any ten­nis fan to find a match in recent mem­ory played at this pace, at such a blur—Weirding-Way ten­nis for you Dune geeks—with so many hay­mak­ers thrown you’d think Stal­lone had scripted it, with bog­gling gets that were also mir­a­cle replies to arrow-shot approaches unlike any­thing I’ve ever seen; a con­test that was painful, at times, to watch, really excru­ci­at­ing to behold, because the phys­i­cal toll on both play­ers was evi­dent as third set came to its thun­der­ous con­clu­sion, so that this seemed less a ten­nis court then a col­i­seum, a to-the-death affair, and when Rafa took the third’s tiebreak there was an expres­sion of dis­be­lief on Nole’s face that hon­estly warmed this week­end hacker’s heart. (Let’s call it a draw, dude. If we play for any longer, my wife’s going to kill me. Plus my back’s in bad shape.) My inner Mother Teresa wants to upbraid the USTA for destroy­ing the very play­ers who line its pock­ets. My inner sadist would’ve liked to watch either Nole or Rafa emerge from bed this morn­ing. I’m pic­tur­ing the open­ing scene of North Dal­las Forty with­out the Quaaludes and pot.

Regard­ing A. and B. above, they go together, of course, but what Djokovic takes advan­tage of with sur­gi­cal pre­ci­sion is Nadal’s short ball, the self­same rally ball that is his bread and but­ter against mere mor­tals. Nole pushes Rafa back on the lefty-forehand to righty-backhand exchanges (Djoker’s two-hander being THE best shot in ten­nis right now) then steps in and goes up the line; and Rafa, who retrieves more of these than any human being should be able to, can­not, in spite of his daunt­ing speed, cover the open ter­ri­tory. Nole next goes up the line hard and flat, all his ten­ta­tive­ness ban­ished dur­ing Davis Cup last Novem­ber. Point. Game. Set. Match. And true, other play­ers (we’re at B. now) have occa­sion­ally blown Rafa off the court (Del Potro, Tsonga) but in these cases they were going for broke, play­ing out of their minds, you pick the cliché. Nole is fast enough, mea­sured enough, accu­rate enough, to make it rou­tine, some crazy com­bi­na­tion of antic­i­pa­tion and world-class speed that con­fer on him a hummingbird’s per­cep­tion, the points unfold­ing, to him at least, com­par­a­tively slowly. He’s just always there.

As for the match set by set, it went like this:

1^st Set: The Wind. Rafa: “Why there this wind like this?” Nole, the Ego­less One in the Zone of Zones, tunes him.

2^nd Set: The Ridicu­lous 6^th Game. If Rafa goes up 3–0, he’s still fresh enough that it’s a momentum-swinger, and per­haps he starts let­ting it fly, but as hap­pened over the course of the whole match, Nole breaks back and Rafa’s ensu­ing break to 4–4, is basi­cally a Pyrric victory.

3^rd Set:

Into the annals of sports his­tory we go.

4^th Set:

Rafa, spent—it’s hard to believe I’m writ­ing this—simply goes away.

A few other things: There’s been a lot of hyper­bole about Nole’s return of serve and, well, sorry folks, the Agassi com­par­isons aren’t appro­pri­ate yet. Go watch, say, the 1995 Aus­tralian Open final when Pete was drop­ping bombs and Andre was send­ing back unre­turn­ables once a game. Go check out some film of Con­nors on YouTube. Rafa’s serve was, for most of this match, a point-starter. Gone was last year’s com­mit­ment to pop, to hit­ting the 130s, to pitch­ing. Rafa, in this matchup, isn’t a con­fi­dent fel­low. His serv­ing per­cent­ages bore this out, he said as much in the post-match inter­views, and he was reg­u­larly bro­ken back after break­ing, THE momen­tum killer in sin­gles. Rafa’s con­fi­dence gap was also demon­strated in his fail­ure to go up the line on his fore­hand side and almost never on the back­hand. (Roddick’s des­per­ate will­ing­ness to do this almost won him Wimby a cou­ple of years back.) In my opin­ion, only at 5–6 down in the third did Rafa let it fly for an extended period, and it pro­duced scin­til­lat­ing, jaw-dropping exchanges, Thrilla-in-Manilla stuff.

But make no mis­take. No mat­ter who you’re root­ing for, this is a Golden Age of Inter­na­tional Ten­nis. We have gone from The Reign of Fed to the Bat­tles of Fed/Rafa to the Rise of Nole. Is Peter Jack­son direct­ing this movie? I haven’t been this excited since The Empire Strikes Back came out and there was no such thing as iTunes Trail­ers. What, I’m won­der­ing, is next?

*

In Mr. Peanut news, I’ll be appear­ing with the great Jim Shep­pard Sun­day, Octo­ber 16, at The South­ern Fes­ti­val of Books in Nashville; in New York, on Octo­ber 19, at The Bet­ter Book Club—an event that cer­tainly promises to be dif­fer­ent. In Ladies and Gen­tle­men news, here’s an inter­view I did for The Story Prize blog.

 

Back in Nashville after nearly a month in New York (where I took the time to insult Bill Ryan yet again) and, after sev­eral days of unpack­ing and unbury­ing myself from mail, plus host­ing my father, who made the drive with me, I’m happy to report I’ve offi­cially com­menced work on my next novel. Its work­ing title is Play­world and that’s about all there is to say now, though if you want to see a video that hints to its con­tent, yes, that’s me in 1979 on NBC’s Hot Hero Sand­wich. I spent a huge chunk of today research­ing char­ac­ters’ names and chipped only a few cubes off the ice­berg, but the novel has existed in my mind in some form for nearly a decade and I’m stoked to begin.

Mean­while, an alert regard­ing sev­eral upcom­ing appear­ances I’ll be mak­ing in the next sev­eral weeks. In Nashville, I’ll be speak­ing at Vanderbilt’s Uni­ver­sity Club at 6 p.m., August 25 (see the hyper­link for details); as well, I’ll be giv­ing a reading/discussion about Mr. Peanut and Ladies and Gen­tle­men at Hills­boro Village’s Fido, also at 6 p.m., an event done in con­junc­tion with Bookman/Bookwoman book­store. Finally, I’ll be appear­ing with nov­el­ists Blake But­ler and Jesse Ball at the Decatur Book Fes­ti­val Labor Day week­end.

By the way, if you’re flu­ent in French, here’s a cool inter­view I did for the online pub­li­ca­tion Evene. Mr. Peanut will pub­lish in France this September.

Go Rafa.