Tennis and the Feral Prodigy: clichés of sport
Be a Student of the Game. Like most clichés of sport, this is profound. You can be shaped, or you can be broken. There is not much in between.
Context
The E.T.A. counterpart of AA's working banality, stated in a single aside. "Like most clichés of sport, this is profound" is the whole irony-sincerity wager compressed: the platitude is banal (a locker-room truism) and true (load-bearing pedagogy), and the two are not in tension. The tennis academy runs, exactly like the recovery house across the river, on trite phrases that work — "Learn to care and not to care," "what is unfair can be a stern but invaluable teacher" — and the only difference is the venue. Mario's narration hands Hal's own catalog of clichés straight, without the ironic wince the culture would demand. (The Feral-Prodigy pedagogy/body substance is the-body-tennis', NOT built; landed here is the cliché-that-works register, twin to AA's.)