Martin Schneider, the man behind the admirably focused and semi-extant Between the Squibs, has kindly agreed to contribute an occasional column, in which he’ll spelunk into The Complete New Yorker archives and tell us what he’s uncovered. Here’s Squib’s first dispatch, to which he adds a thoughtful email note: “It’s not so much that the piece is bad as much as it’s just curious, and positively screams ‘early Tina.’ I’ve always felt that Tina was necessary in 1992, and excesses in this direction (brevity, breeziness) are not to be scolded too much.”
We know what The New Yorker can do. We know what The New Yorker cannot do, and usually for that reason doesn’t indulge in the endeavor. The New Yorker can cover tennis—excuse me, “lawn tennis.” Herbert Warren Wind did it for decades—and golf too. What The New Yorker cannot do is make tennis cool, hip, exciting.
Does anyone but me remember when Martin Amis used to write tennis reports? He only actually did it three times over three years, just enough to make you think it might be a permanent feature, but infrequently enough that you didn’t notice the absence.
The first tennis piece Amis ever did remains a fascinating shard from the past. July 1993, not even a year into Tina’s reign. And boy, does it show. At this distance it comes off like an experiment more than anything else. Amis does tennis! With drawings by Gerald Scarfe! An experiment. Yes. That must be it.
It must be one of the shortest serious articles the magazine ever ran, five quick pages dominated by Scarfe’s large drawings. It’s so short that it’s practically a statement, probably heaved in the general direction of the recently dispatched Mr. Wind. None of these endless disquisitions on the “immense diligence” of Mats Wilander, no.* None of that. It is the 1990s if you have not heard. People aren’t going to read all that.
Amis is a terrific writer, but his nonfiction stuff leaves me cold. I’m not sure if it’s how hard he seems to be trying (to be Saul Bellow?), or if it’s that his unlikeable authorial persona is just so much more effective in his novels. The first few paragraphs of this particular piece are devoted to Jim Courier’s tendency to sweat a lot.
Gerald Scarfe isn’t my cup of tea, but I can see his appeal; even his staunchest defenders would have to concede that the 1993 Wimbledon tournament was probably not the best match of artist and subject.
But Amis is such a good writer that the piece is still worthwhile. Curiously, just three years later, another serious novelist, David Foster Wallace, would write one of the greatest sports articles ever written, about little-known journeyman Michael Joyce, for Esquire. That experiment may have worked out a little better.
* October 17, 1988, p. 91.