Reliving a Masterpiece: David Foster Wallace, Michael Joyce, and the Psychology of Tennis

Pablo Torre Finds Out

Pablo Torre, Le Batard & Friends

Sports

4.8 • 1.6K Ratings

🗓️ 3 September 2024

⏱️ 54 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Thirty years ago, David Foster Wallace reported “The String Theory,” an essay about a pro tennis player named Michael Joyce. No, Joyce wasn’t as good as his fellow Americans (Andre Agassi, Pete Sampras, Michael Chang). But what Joyce taught Wallace — the best writer of his generation, and a former junior player himself — turned into the greatest tennis essay of all time. Today, in the middle of the U.S. Open, Pablo sits down with Michael Joyce — who’s since become a coach to players like Maria Sharapova — and they dissect the genius and the eccentricities of David Foster Wallace, who died in 2008. And we learn about the psychologies of two grotesque glories: writing and tennis. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to Pablo Torrey finds out. I am Pablo Torrey and today we're going to find out what this sound is.
0:06.0	Wimbledon is where I read it and I remember reading and I was like, what the fuck is this?
0:11.0	Right after this ad.
0:13.0	You're listening to Draft Kings Network. Michael Joyce, do you know why I summoned you into this room today?
0:33.8	A little bit, David Foster Wallace.
0:35.8	Yeah, yeah, I've never done an episode like this where I'm like, let me talk to
0:40.3	the subject of one of the greatest essays that has ever been written and I was just curious at the start like how often does this happen where someone wants to talk to you about David Foster Wallace?
0:52.0	You'd be surprised a lot.
0:53.8	Okay, so that actually does make sense to me.
1:01.4	It does make sense that I would be far from the only person who has
1:04.5	wanted to find out the story behind a masterpiece of writing. A masterpiece, by the
1:11.2	way, that you don't need to have read in order to appreciate this episode.
1:16.4	Although I do think that you need to meet our pair of disparate,
1:19.9	and as you will see, cosmically connected characters.
1:25.6	Because the subject of this piece,
1:27.3	who is in studio with me today,
1:29.1	is Michael Choice, a pro tennis player in the 90s whose relative anonymity is what drew the
1:35.8	curiosity of the piece's author. The famously eccentric David Foster Wallace, an elusive genius and cripplingly self-conscious critic, and a guy
1:48.7	that the New York Times once posthumously called the best mind of his generation.
1:56.4	Wallace spent large portions of his life,
1:59.2	scrutinizing and playing, one sport in particular as he discussed with Charlie Rose in
2:07.4	1997. Do you still play tennis? I do play tennis. I no longer play competitively.
	...

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