Autobiographical Midwest substrate — the flat gridded plain, corn, wind
echoes
From: Getting Away from Already Pretty Much Being Away from It All
- Early text: "The land here is big. Pool-table flat. Horizons in
every direction." [08/13/1400–1600h, the flight-toward theory]; rural
Midwesterners "marooned in a space whose emptiness starts to become both
physical and spiritual" [08/13/0925h, the community-and-space passage];
Wallace "actually grew up around here, just a couple hours’ drive from
downstate Springfield," though he "never did go to the State Fair" as a kid,
topping out "at the County Fair level" [opening, 08/05/93/0800h].
- IJ echo: The Midwest that produced E.T.A.'s and Hal's Wallace-surrogate
substrate — the same flat, gridded, wind-worked Central-Illinois plane that
"Derivative Sport" renders as the ground of Wallace's tennis-as-geometry and
the origin of Hal. This essay is the companion documentary source: the adult
Wallace returned to the landscape "Derivative Sport" mythologizes, now
reporting the region's social psychology (space, emptiness, the hunger to
commune) rather than its tennis.
- Weight: shared-preoccupation