| Title | : | Levels of the Game |
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | |
| ISBN | : | 0374515263 |
| ISBN-10 | : | 9780374515263 |
| Language | : | English |
| Format Type | : | Paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 160 |
| Publication | : | First published September 23, 1969 |
Levels of the Game Reviews
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So, having just read Álvaro Enrigue's
Sudden Death about an allegorical tennis match between the Italian painter Caravaggio and the Spanish poet Quevedo, it seemed logical to move immediately to a book about a real tennis match. This one is about a semi-final match in the 1968 U.S. Open between two amateurs at the time: Clark Graebner and Arthur Ashe. The aces, the overhead lobs, the cross-court backhands are served without fault by John McPhee.
Every point is accounted for. Interspersed is a running biography and character study of the two players. A larger picture of America emerges.
McPhee has an eye for detail. What I liked the best was when he looked at what the players were reading. Ashe: "Report of the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders," "Fundamentals of Marketing," "The Autobiography of Malcolm X," "Human Sexual Response," "Black Power," "Emily Post's Etiquette," "Contact Bridge for Beginners," "Ulysses," "The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich," "The Confessions of Nat Turner," "The Human Factor in Changing Africa," "Paper Lion," "Mata Hari," "Dynamic Speed Reading," "The Naked Ape," "The New York Times Guide to Personal Finance," "A Short History of Religions," "Elementary French," "Spanish in Three Months," "Aussie English," and "U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission Hearings--N.Y., N.Y. 1968." Graebner: "The Arrangement" ("just for trash"), "The Effective Executive" (because that is exactly what he would like to be), a biography of Richard Nixon, "The Rich and the Super-Rich," "Airport" ("for more trash"), and "The Pro Quarterback." Ashe wins that set. -
Un libro sperimentale scritto quasi 50, fa quindi ben prima delle logorroiche trattazioni di David Wallace, ben prima dell’ Open di Agassi; l’editore, dalla vista lunga, ha astutamente saputo cogliere un filone narrativo che oggi incontra favorevolmente e in maniera trasversale lettori che giocano a tennis ma anche no.
Sperimentale anche perché scrivere di sport, e intendo non i soliti noti pezzi di cronaca sportiva che compaiono sulle varie Gazzette di tutto il mondo, ma scrivere in maniera ambiziosa, protratta e con estremo garbo scandendo i tempi che sono propri di una partita di tennis: punti, game, set e match point, non è cosa ovvia.
Ancora meno lo è quando, come nella fattispecie della semifinale dell’ US Open del 1968, non esiste un supporto video che corrobori la narrazione, dandoci la certezza visiva di quel che effettivamente successe.
Immaginare , per dire, una nuvola che flutta cangiante e paffuta nel cielo sopra il Campo Centrale di Wimbledon è relativamente facile; è più faticoso , richiedendo uno sforzo immaginativo non scontato (ma che in fondo risulta lieve grazie alla nitidezza della scrittura di Mc Phee) quando ci si deve concentrare su movimenti di corpo, braccia e gambe in primis, sulla mimica facciale, componenti somatiche che rimandano alle intuizioni a volte geniali, a volte fallaci dei due giocatori, lampi di intelligenza e motore delle azioni di gioco.
In appendice un racconto delizioso sul giardiniere che con dedizione e amore quasi coniugale si occupa dei 780 mq del prato di Wimbledon, ne conosce ogni filo d’erba nome per nome.
Un libro per adepti di questo sport, no per tutti, non annoia direi mai, originale, consigliabile. -
If there's any question that I am completely in thrall to the miraculous literary powers of John McPhee, the fact that he inspired me to read a book about tennis and that I thoroughly enjoyed it should remove all doubt.
This isn't really a book about tennis as much as it is a battle of the wills between two completely different men who symbolize two very different Americas -- one rich, white and conservative (Clark Graebner) and the other striving, black and open to new ideas (Arthur Ashe). Like a skilled sportscaster, McPhee masterfully builds tension in his description of the volleys between the two men on the court. But he also provides a probing psychological portrait of each man and their complicated relationship to each other. The fact that this is accomplished in 160 pages without a single extraneous word is further proof of McPhee's literary prowess. Highly recommended. -
This was not a book I'd typically be interested in, but I heard about it, saw it was under 200 pages, and gave it a shot. This is a sports novel. The sport is tennis in the 1960s. The book covers a semifinal match in the first US Open between two men at the top of their game. The author takes you through the match and intermittently talks about each player's background, upbringing, beliefs, etc.
As I started it, I honestly got a bit bored when the author would take us back and discuss the athletes' backgrounds. It seemed to happen too often and could last any number of pages and would flip from one player to the other rapidly. I put the book down for a while because I just was not feeling the style of writing. Picking it back up, I read the last 110 pages in a couple hours and noticed I got into the flow of the writing. I also realized this is essentially the script for a sports documentary. The parts covering their upbringings read like a reporter would read it and included quotes from family and friends. I was then able to visualize a documentary in my head instead of a story and....It clicked. I really ended up liking it overall. The two players were just opposites, coming from completely different worlds and meeting there on that day because they both rose to a level of excellence in tennis at that point in their lives. The writing describing the tennis match play by play was extremely high quality. It is hard to describe a tennis match, but McPhee did it very well! Having said that, if you don't know scoring in tennis and don't know what a forehand, a volley, a lob, or spin is, it might be hard to follow the match action in this. This is a 3 for me. Enjoyable, but...it's a sports documentary in print. I just really do not like sports documentaries. This gets a 3, because I still enjoyed it overall despite the subject. -
There is a passage in Levels of the Game, a short book about tennis by John McPhee, where the narrative pulls back and begins to consider the family of the tennis player Arthur Ashe. Names cascade, one after the other, starting from back in 1735 when a ship full of slaves sailed from Liverpool to Virginia, and ending in the present day:
‘…On the Blackwell plantation, where Hammett had lived, the plantation house—white frame, with columns—still stands, vacant and mouldering. The slave cabin is there, too, its roof half peeled away. Hammett’s daughter Sadie married Willie Johnson, and their daughter Amelia married Pinkney Avery Ashe…and Amelia had a son named Arthur, who, in 1938, married Mattie Cunningham, of Richmond. Their son Arthur Junior was born in 1943…’
The details here have been taken from an immense family tree, painted on a huge piece of canvas at the home of one of Ashe’s relatives. There are over fifteen hundred leaves on that tree. Only Ashe has his leaf trimmed in gold. This is not all:
‘The family has a crest, in crimson, black, and gold. A central chevron in this escutcheon bears a black chain with a broken link, symbolizing the broken bonds of slavery. Below the broken chain is a black well. And in the upper corners, where the crest of a Norman family might have fleurs-de-lis, this one has tobacco leaves, in trifoliate clusters.’
Ashe was one of the greatest American tennis players. He was a black man who forged a career in a sport dominated by white faces. He is one of the two subjects of Levels of the Game by John McPhee, which is really a sort of long essay. It documents a tennis match at the 1968 US Open between Ashe and Clark Graebner. They made for an ideal contrast because Graebner was everything that Ashe was not: white, conventional, republican. The passage I have quoted above is immediately followed by the following line, before any break in the paragraph: 'Graebner has no idea whatever when his forebears first came to this country.’
The book alternates between a point-by-point description of the match and a dive into the lives of both players. The reportage is startling in the amount of detail it captures, to the degree that I began to wonder how McPhee had actually managed to write it at all. I read somewhere that he had access to a recording of the match, though exactly how he watched it again is unclear — this is long before the era of home video recording. At times the writing has all the quality of slow-motion, long before live action replays became an expected part of watching any sport. But beyond these practicalities, there’s a sense here of authority in McPhee’s writing, and of implied trust between the writer, their subject, and the audience.
He addresses us like a professor, and his grand statements are taken to be the work of careful consideration. He quotes both players extensively throughout, but doesn’t care to mention the context in which they spoke. At times he delves into their thoughts, their fears, their hopes. None of that is cited, of course; how could it be? I suppose we oughtn’t to care. There’s a feeling throughout of being invited to experience a certain kind of privilege. Are there room for questions? Sure, but if McPhee tells us that Ashe or Graebner strikes a ball just so, then they did. We have no recourse to say: I thought he hit it differently, or, that wasn’t what he was thinking at all. Were this written about a tennis match that happened yesterday, that’s what we would expect. But now nobody will ever see this match except through McPhee’s language.
A simple description of the match won’t suffice. We need to know about the players themselves: ‘A person’s tennis game begins with his nature and background and comes out through his motor mechanisms into shot patterns and characteristics of play. If he is deliberate, he is a deliberate tennis player; and if he is flamboyant, his game probably is, too.’ This is entirely true. Tennis is an unusual sport in the degree to which it becomes a battle between the abilities, physical and otherwise, of two individuals. No outside interference is permitted. The person you are shapes the things you will do on the court.
Ashe is mannered, careful, polite. He is well-read and quietly radical. He plays difficult, risky tennis — he takes clever shots. He has a full arsenal at his disposal: slices, dinks, lobs, volleys. Graebner, with his huge serve, is altogether more conventional. He relies heavily on serve-and-volley to get him through. But Graebner’s was the game of the time, especially on fast grass courts with heavy wooden racquets. According to McPhee, the longest rally in an average set is six shots. But most points between Ashe and Graebner are over in two or three swings of a racquet. By comparison, rallies in a modern match in men’s tennis will start at about six shots and go for up to fifteen or twenty strokes. (I’ve seen rallies go past forty.)
It was a different game for other reasons. Both Graebner and Ashe were amateurs; they had full-time jobs outside of the tennis life. It seems almost cute today that these men should take the subway home after their matches, and no doubt pay for their own fares. Today’s top players make millions from prize money and endorsements, although hundreds of professionals still struggle to eke a living at the lower stages of the tour.
In 1997 they opened a vast stadium named after Arthur Ashe in New York, which became the centrepiece of the US Open as it stands today. Played on a hard court rather than grass, it is today the largest tennis venue in the world. It is so grand that you might easily forget the unintentional pun in the name: Ashe Stadium, built on top of what was once New York’s largest dump of incinerated ash. The seats are clustered so tight and small and high around the court that the effect is vertiginous and slightly nauseating, even when glimpsed on TV. A couple of weeks from today the US Open will start up again and it’ll become a hot, humid cavern for a brawl, packed every night to the rafters with screaming fans.
It’s odd somehow that they still manage to do it. I’m a fan, but even to me tennis still seems like an odd, anachronistic sport; a sport for people who don’t really like other sports. When there isn’t a Grand Slam on, it’s difficult to watch, and when there is a Grand Slam there’s inevitably too many matches spread across too few channels, squeezed into too few hours of the day. It is supremely impractical, elitist, difficult. It also has a strangely internationalist flavour. Devout fans of particular flavours might drape themselves in a flag, but for the most part you don’t go to a tennis match to support your home country. (That the Davis Cup, once the great international World Cup of tennis, is now teetering on the verge of irrelevance, is surely the exception that proves the rule.)
Today’s big name players reside in Monte Carlo and travel the world for ten or eleven months of the year. Their home country is relegated to the status of the little flag alongside their name on the scoreboard. They play for themselves; the extent to which that self represents that flag is entirely up to them. And yet that only serves to make the achievements of its early masters more impressive in retrospect. That Ashe in particular did all that he did in an era where tennis stars had no expectation of the level of reward and popularity they enjoy today, and when he in particular faced such outright racism while rising through the ranks, seems nothing short of miraculous. But again, such is the nature of tennis that while Graebner and Ashe could share a stage as Davis Cup teammates, they represented entirely different ways of life. That American flag next to their names meant nothing at all when they faced each other across the net. -
There is a
The Master of Go feel to this book. Two players squaring off, their backgrounds, how that decides what they are, the political and social undercurrents of that time, etc. While Kawabata's protagonists represented different ages and the different ways of playing the game, McPhee's are of the same age but from as different backgrounds as they can be from.
A white male, born to privilege and deep pockets, an only son, and his eye right on the money and the American dream which he knows is within his grasp thanks to his 'social contacts' as he himself says. And a conservative Republican.
Pitted against a black upstart who struggles to come through the ranks, funded by other black philanthropists and a supportive father. More than just a game of tennis, it is a massive reflection of the times. The way Dr. Johnson asks his wards to not call any balls that are out by less than 6 inches (reminds one of the incident in Agassi's
Open), to not swear or throw rackets on the ground and how that shapes up Ashe as he becomes the player is. And a liberal, Democrat - "It was hard to be religious growing up, could never relate to a Jesus with blond hair and white skin. You knew he wasn't your God."
At 150 pages it takes barely 2 days to finish this book. But it is a one-of-its-kind experience - similar to what Master of Go was. -
Impeccably detailed, this is a great book to get started with John McPhee even if (or maybe "especially if") you don't know or care much about tennis. As the title suggests, this book goes several levels deeper than the ostensibly titular match, stopping along the way to comment on race, class, athleticism, parenting, civil rights, you name it. As with other John McPhee books, there is very little glitz 'n glam in the style of Tom Wolfe or Hunter S. Thompson, but instead careful insight and well-researched detail. The humility of McPhee's writing style can make the book a bore at times, but it is worth a read nonetheless.
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Holy shit, this book is good. It's obvious DFW loved it/McPhee. It reminded me, though I'd be hardpressed to put into words why, a bit of W.C. Heinz's The Professional. Mostly just because I so loved both? Heinz's book is a novel, whereas this is nonfic, but there's something about boxing and tennis that feels very similar, and both books drew me in in a way that can be tricky with sports narrative, but when it works I'm all in.
Bonus: the word "backswing" is used four times. (And "perfect" = 11x.) -
Levels of the Game by John McPhee is a masterpiece of narrative nonfiction. The book narrates a 1968 tennis semifinal point-by-point, while simultaneously profiling the two players, Arthur Ashe and Clark Graebner, and exploring America's politics, history, racism, class structure, and psychology with surgical precision. In following the course of a single tennis match, McPhee illustrates an entire nation.
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McPhee writes the most delightful books. He takes complex ideas or studies (tennis here) and explains them simply so that the reader can grasp it.
I really like this style of sportswriting, where a writer explains a single match/game/race and unwinds the biographies of the players involved and the story of the sport through occurrences in the match. Dan Okrent did it for baseball in 9 Innings, and McPhee does it here with tennis.
Also, I never really knew the story of Arthur Ashe (and this book was written in '69!) Fascinating. -
I loved this book. It's a brilliant double profile of two tennis players I knew nothing about (Arthur Ashe and Clark Graebner), as well as an engaging play-by-play of their match at Forest Hills in 1968. McPhee examines how their respective political beliefs (Ashe = liberal, Graebner = conservative) influenced their way of playing tennis. I became a huge fan of Ashe as a result of this book, and I can't wait to read his autobiography next.
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Fantastic writing
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certainly the greatest tennis book.
arguably the greatest sports book. -
I've heard non-fiction writers refer to John McPhee as a god. I thought it was hyperbole. It isn't. In a literal sense, Levels of the Game is a book about tennis. However, with each point, McPhee describes a whole world behind the racquet that is hitting the ball forward.
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Jessica says my reviews are too snooty; I assume this is because my reviews are comparative based - so many allusions to David Markson, or other books I've read.
But I challenge you to meaningfully review books in a non-comparative manner. I can talk about a book's pacing, and tone, and vocabulary, and meaning, and entertainment - but what are the scales for those? What qualitative and quantitative words would lend any meaning to my attempts to elucidate those factors for someone else? And even if my reviews were an attempt to remind myself later how I felt - I may have changed.
A comparative based review stays relative and is what can aide other people - if somebody wants to know where to start with a McPhee book, it's helpful to read a review that includes the line "It's no Pine Barrens" - this is how I look for review of new Board Games or if I'm purchasing new parts for my computer: what is the standard by which reviews of a certain type hold themselves too?
So with no further ado...my review of Levels of the Game
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You know that episode of Sports Night where Jeremy is having trouble trimming down the video highlights of a baseball game? He wants to show the epic struggle and tension of the match?
Levels is John McPhee's journalistic interpretation of the epic struggle and tension of an Arthur Ashe tennis match.
I only ever partially understood Jeremy's feelings; now I understand completely. -
Such an exquisite little book. McPhee writes with such a graceful simplicity and effortless wit. You can really feel his fascination with these men and with the game of tennis.
I feel bad writing such a short review for a book I so thoroughly enjoyed, but there's just nothing else to say. It's short and incredibly readable and damn near to perfect. -
On the rarefied ocassion I will pick up a newspaper, I have never once read the sports section. And that blindspot has prevented me from from reading about some great matchups, and celebreated cultural moments that have happened on the green fields and packed arenas. But all is not lost, great matches, provide great commentary and insights into our world.
“Levels of the Game” is absolutely a book about tennis, and in particular one fateful match between Arthur Ashe and Clark Graebner. But like so many great sports stories (“Friday Night Lights”, “Moneyball”) the book is bountiful in cultural examination. Between the volleys of the ball in the advancing match of the Davis Cup, is the deep story of two men representing American supremacy.
The immediacy of the match is never lost, but the story expanses beyond their physicalities and strategies. John mcphee’s narration is well-researched but artful in a way that packs metaphors such as the following:
“Graebner’s memory for lost points and adverse calls is nothing short of perfect, and months later he will still be talking about that extra serve that turned into an ace, for he can’t help thinking what an advantage he might have had if he had been able to crack Ashe open in the very first game, as he almost did anyway. Ashe, for his part, believes that it is a law of sport that everything that happens affects everything that happens thereafter..” (p.8).
The story boxes outward to include their coaches Dr. Graebner and Dr. John ““behind every tennis player is another tennis player (p.15”, the intimate unblinking eyes of Clark’s wife peering into him, the history of the racial obstacles Ashe has had to compete against white players, and all the pressures put on both men to win this match.
Sizing each other up, we get a book that books far beyond the play-by play moments. Ashe is described as “lucky”, as a backswing player who relies on big moments to seize momentum,and Graebner is described as a consistent, disciplined player, who understands the “tensile strength of the corporate ladder”; this gives an idea of just these men are built both physically and psychologically. Further we see how the 1960s cultural revolutions are affecting the two bed. Ashe’s bedroom is with scattered books on black resistance, including “The Autobiography of Malcom X”, and the insistent civil right leaders asking him to take a more visible role in the movement, which reflect an ambition toward his future legacy. Privilege and belief in self determination define Graebner’s worldview, as well as his expectations about his opponent. With Hemingway-like proficiency, McPhee chips out these two distinct worlds, and offers readers glimpse of how they will be defined.
Living up to its title, McPhee has crafted a book that deftly deals with an immediate tennis match and the underlying social realities. At this stage of the game, every serve reflects not only the individual skill of the players, but the social conditions of America that made their rise possible. To the extent they can move beyond their humble beginnings, we can pin those promises to ourselves and our children. To win is to be immortalized, championed and the great promise for generations to come. -
Wow. What an unusual read. Recommended by my daughter, I finished it practically in one sitting.
Originally published in the New Yorker in 1969, the book is set in 1968 and is a journalistic piece on an amateur tennis match between Arthur Ashe and Clark Graebner. The author uses the match as a backdrop to profile the lives of two individuals who couldn’t be more different, and whose individual attitudes to life couldn’t be more relevant metaphors at this precise moment, weeks away from a Presidential election defined by extreme and bitter partisan divisions in society.
The author’s sharp observations on Graebner’s conservative profile could apply to any midwestern white suburban conservative voter today ; his upbringing in white Cleveland suburbs; his blind support for Nixon (“ how can anyone not believe him ? How can anyone not be for him ?”); his Germanic Protestant upbringing in an environment of white entitlement; his model all-American white family; his deep religiousness; his social ambitions including his deep desire to join the tony “whites-only” clubs; his tendency to blame everyone but himself for his errors on court; his thwarted attempts at upward mobility that are humiliating ( applied for the American Express card and was rejected for not having enough income); and the most telling one about his hypochondria - wiping the inside of a coke bottle after removing the cap. A mind-boggling list of little things that set the image ( or caricature depending on how you see it) of the conservative white voter in concrete for the ages.
And Arthur Ashe ? The liberal that Graebner can barely conceal his scorn for ( too loose, no discipline, undeserving, etc etc ), Ashe is nothing if not the outwardly cool but inwardly insecure African American in the 1960’s. He is a rare combination of intellectual and a gifted athlete, caught between the the expectations of his professional career and the demands from his more militant black compatriots whom he rejects, a burden that would be carried by the other great black athlete of the time - Muhammad Ali.
The author turns a play by play reporting of the game ( which Ashe ultimately wins - no spoilers here) into a profound and scathing commentary on contemporary American society in the sixties. We all know what happened afterwards. Nixon was indicted in the Watergate scandal, earning himself the dubious distinction of the worst ever President in our history ( likely to be eclipsed by Donald Trump). Ashe would go on to be the first black to win Wimbledon in 1975 and would die of Aids in 1993.
The book is a wonderful read, a throwback to what was presumably less complicated times, even though it leaves the reader with a sense of wonder at how little American society has really changed in the past 50 years. -
One measure of my interest in a nonfiction book is the amount of time I spend researching beyond the pages, and for this one, I am still not finished learning. I read this because it was selected for the Andrew Luck book club, and found myself wondering, why did he pick this? Was it because it is considered a hallmark of sports journalism? Because Arthur Ashe was once stationed in Indianapolis? Why tennis?
I do remember Graebner and Ashe, as well as most of the other tennis players mentioned. One of ironic things about reading a book like this 40 years after it is published is that today's readers know the rest of the story. Who could have imagined in 1968 that he would die tragically early due to a blood transfusion? That Graebner would divorce the wife who carried so many of his burdens during a match, even encouraging him to direct his anger at her rather than himself?
If would be interesting to talk to McPhee and ask him to reflect on this book now; I looked him up, as well as most of the other key players, including Dr. Johnson, Graebner, and Ashe's brother, Johnnie (an interesting story in itself, especially since he was just included in special ceremonies at the Open in August of this year, and was featured in an ESPN "30 for 30")
I admire the way that McPhee winds the timeline of the players' lives into a single match, although, by the end, the shifting was a little too sudden for me at times. It had to take some great planning to mention key components of Ashe's life as the match progressed. For instance, it made perfect sense to include Ron Charity at the time Graebner's and Ashe's grips were compared, and it moved along Ashe's backstory in concert with the match.
I felt compelled to find some video of Ashe playing, and have not finished. Most backhands are now two-handed, and I do remember when players were more apt to point at a lob as they readied their return. I believe I may have seen Ashe play in person when the Clay Courts were in Indianapolis, and also found it entertaining that Graebner and Ashe won the doubles championship together here the year after this book was written.
There are so many interesting individuals in this book; when reading about Dr. Johnson, I learned that he died two years after it was published. I wondered how much access McPhee had to Ashe, Graebner, Johnson, and others. I would like to know a bit more about the context of some of the quotes; did they tell him these things knowing that they would be in a book?
An interesting choice, and effective way to weave sports, history, and storytelling. -
McPhee on tennis. To be fair, some of it reads exactly like the chatter of an informed television commentator, and it is mostly forgettable. But McPhee brings it together as a dual character study.
> Ashe and Graebner play tennis with an efficiency that is thought by some to diminish tennis itself. Modern power tennis—the so-called Big Game (overwhelming serves followed by savage attacks at the net)—has now had many years in which to evolve, and Ashe and Graebner are among the ultimate refinements of it in the United States.
> Graebner’s angry look seems to say that he believes it was Carole who served the double fault. She absorbs this, by grace and by agreement. “I tell him to look over at me when he gets mad, because I would rather have him get mad at me than at anyone else—or at himself,” … Ashe is thinking, “Graebner just looked at his wife.” And behind Arthur’s impassive face—behind the enigmatic glasses, the lifted chin, the first-mate-on-the-bridge look—there seems to be a smile. Progress against Graebner in any given match, many players believe, can be measured directly by the number of times Graebner has looked at his wife.
> After this game, new balls will be coming in—all the more reason for Ashe to try to break Graebner now. Tennis balls are used for nine games (warmup counts for two), and over that span they get fluffier and fluffier. When they are new and the nap is flat, wind resistance is minimal and they come through fast and heavy. Newies, or freshies, as the tennis players call them, are a considerable advantage to the server—something like a supply of bullets. -
Excellent book about a semi-final tennis match between (black) Arthur Ashe and (white) Clark Graeber. Great writing: match description interspersed with background information on both players, sketching a picture of different America’s in the ‘50s and 60s.
The game is played on grass in the US. And the Davis Cup meant something back then (Ashe and Graeber were both members of the US team). Graeber would rather win the Davis Cup than Wimbledon.
Snippets:
The door happened to have windows in it, and little Clark's already Wagnerian forehand had a tendency to penetrate the glass.
As Mr. Ashe drives around the countryside near Gum Spring, he turns into a fanatic for neatness and tidiness, and gets visibly angry at the sight of houses surrounded by automobile parts, miscellaneous cordwood, old oil drums, piles of scrap lumber. He says that people have no right to mess up the landscape that way.
Then he drives into his own property, which is be strewn with automobile parts, miscellaneous cord- wood, oil drums, scrap lumber, and gravel, and he explains that things are different here, because he knows exactly what and where everything is and the use to which he intends to put it.
Dell [Davis Cup captain], who is thirty, is an attorney in the District of Columbia. He has sandy hair and he looks like half the older brothers in the world.
It is an inaccurately auspicious begin ning, for Ashe now begins to hit shots as if God Himself had given them a written guarantee. He plays full free, windmilling tennis. -
Contents of this book, published in 1969, originally appeared in the New Yorker magazine. Levels of the Game describes the 1968 semi-finals U.S. Open tennis match between amateurs Arthur Ashe and Clark Graebner at Forest Hills in New York. The players were friends and members of the U.S. Davis Cup team that played in international competition but from very different backgrounds. Graebner, whose father was a dentist, was a Republican from an upper middle-class Cleveland family; Ashe, whose father ran a modest custodial business in Richmond VA, was black and more sympathetic to Democratic Party positions. Neither was a political activist. At the time of the match, Ashe was an Army Lieutenant stationed at West Point. Both were smart and well educated.
The book deftly interweaves a point-by-point account of the match with passages on both participants’s lives from childhood to the present. Movement from the tennis match to Ashe and Graebner's background is seamless, sometimes occurring within the same paragraph. The match is hotly contested. Author McPhee gets inside the mind of both participants, recounting the match from their presumed perspectives, making for compelling reading. Readers who play tennis will better appreciate accounts of the action on the court, but many others will enjoy Ashe’s and Graebner’s intense competitiveness as well as the extant racial realities in the U.S. during the late 1960s. -
Levels of the Game's 160 pages of non-fiction bounces around a single tennis match played in 1968. The entire book could be said to be about this single event, told by a professional sports journalist. Hard-won match points and razor-sharp serves are described with such vigor that the only way you could top this is by hopping into a time machine and witness the actual game live! And even then, I doubt you would get the same impressions from the same match.
Yet, this book is not only about a single tennis match, in the same way, Terrence Malick's The Thin Red Line isn't about World War II in the Pacific. The stage is the paddling battle between Arthur and Clark. Still, it can also be said to be about racial differences in the US, going back to the slave boat that brought Arthur's distant relatives from Africa to the Americas.
It's also about what it takes for a person to become the best at what he's chosen to do in life. As the tennis match unfolds, we're presented with the training that Arthur and Clark undertook to get there. As if this was a biographic book about them, with the tennis match thrown in as a backdrop. An excuse to tell their story while also providing pivot points to move their lives forward up to that match point.
Levels of the Game is, in 2021, 42 years old. But stories like this one, told with such a force, are timeless. -
Levels of the Game is a well-written story about a tennis match, the personal histories of the two players, and the racial politics in the mid 20th century USA. McPhee expertly weaves together these narratives, picking them up and setting them down as the story progressive.
The name of the book implies a deep inspection of the mental game behind tennis. There was definitely an element of this - the players discussed when they most wanted to break serve, when to take aggressive or conservative shots, etc. However I did find this to be a bit light. There wasn't explicit review of the relationship between the players, only their different backgrounds. This made me wonder whether I missed something.
All in all, an interesting and unique read. It's a 3.5 star in my book, but I've rounded it up as the author very courteously wrote it in a succinct style, with the story weighing in at only around 150 pages. -
Found this at a thrift store and read the back cover just because I’ve read McPhee before (his environmental focused books) and was immediately intrigued since it’s about the famous tennis player Arthur Ashe and since I just worked at the US Open in Arthur Ashe stadium I figured I should get it! It was originally published in The New Yorker. Turns out to be a really interesting book. McPhee describes in detail the semi final match between Ashe and Graebner in the first US Open in 1968. As a tennis fan I can appreciate the details of the shots, but for someone who doesn’t understand tennis it would probably not be too interesting. But I also enjoy the background info about the two players interspersed throughout the play by play of the match. I really enjoyed learning more about Ashe and the history of the US Open, which has come to hold a special place in my heart after working there 3 times.
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After reading Draft No. 4–I felt destined to be a John McPhee fan. Which is why I wanted to read more of his work and Levels of the Game seemed like a really cool premise.
And that is what I liked most about it—the premise. Profiling two contrasting characters to the rhythm and backdrop of a tennis match. Very creative sports journalism. Full of the John McPhee style and one liners I love.
The story was written in 1969, however, and since I’m not a tennis buff—I found the material hard to get in to. I have no idea who the two main characters are or context to connect. I’ve learned a lot about them now but certainly never heard of them before.
I think if you’ve been a tennis fan for decades and like sports writing this is a great short read. It probably deserves more than 3 stars but that’s about how enjoyable it was for me. -
After watching Virginia civic leaders dedicate and rename Boulevard for Arthur Ashe, I knew I needed to reread this.
McPhee's spare, vivid writing engages me so thoroughly I feel I understand something about tennis. I can very nearly picture the matches of a sport I don't follow. At this point in my life I know Richmond much better than at first read; I have a better sense of the places and the people. I did not remember from my first reading the weird ideas of Ashe's opponent (Clark Graebner) in the match that sets the framework for this book: Democrat -> liberal [social ideas] -> certain was of playing the game. This is in contrast to his Republic/conservative way of play. Ashe, Graebner and many others we encounter spoke openly about racial matters on their minds.
An elegant piece of sports writing and an interesting time capsule.
