The spectator's yardstick — the amateur who can see what the genius cannot
echoes
From: How Tracy Austin Broke My Heart
- Early text: "we spectators, who are not divinely gifted as
athletes, are the only ones able truly to see, articulate, and animate the
experience of the gift we are denied"; the autobiographical anchor — "I am
about the same age and played competitive tennis in the same junior ranks as
Tracy Austin, half a country away and several plateaus below her."; the
final "whether such a person is an idiot or a mystic or both and/or
neither." [closing; the junior-ranks ¶] [e-text]
- IJ echo: The autobiographical-tennis reading of Hal — the
gifted-but-observing consciousness (Wallace the junior player turned writer;
Hal the prodigy turned unspeakable interior). The spectator-who-articulates
is Wallace's authorial position and Hal's curse: to see and say too much to
simply act.
- Weight: prefiguration