The New York Review of Books (24 June 2010) carries Michael Kimmelman’s review of Open: An Autobiography, Andre Agassi’s account of dealing with growing up under his father’s expectations for him to be a star tennis player. Kimmelman writes:
“From punk to paragon” is how Bud Collins, the tennis commentator, described Agassi’s public transformation – the pigeon-toed teen brat in stone-washed denims, gambler’s shades, and a Mohawk who becomes a philanthropist, philosopher, and statesman. “To my thinking,” Agassi writes, “Bud sacrificed the truth on the altar of alliteration. I was never a punk, any more than I’m now a paragon. . . . Transformation is change from one thing to another, but I started as nothing. . . . I was like most kids: I didn’t know who I was, and I rebelled at being told by older people. . . . What people see now, for better or worse, is my first formation, my first incarnation. I didn’t alter my image, I discovered it.”
Kimmelman goes on to say of Agassi,
While he “never questioned” his father’s love, he wished it had been “softer, with more listening and less rage. In fact, I sometimes wish my father loved me less.”
And of Agassi,
It is yet another step that brings him to the revelation that now “I play and keep playing because I choose to play. Even if it’s not your ideal life, you can always choose it. No matter what your life is, choosing it changes everything.
And of Steffi Graf, whose father forced her into tennis when she hated it, Kimmelman says that she convinced Agassi that she was his soul mate:
They shared, along with preternatural physical gifts and competitiveness, an understanding of the downside of a tennis career and a determination not to repeat with their own children what had been inflicted on them.
Reading Kimmelman, we thought of Philip Larkin’s poem, "This Be The Verse," of how a one-size social image scarcely fits all, producing millions of messed up lives. The poem:
They fuck you up, your mum and dad.
They may not mean to, but they do.
They fill you with the faults they had
And add some extra, just for you.
But they were fucked up in their turn
By fools in old-style hats and coats,
Who half the time were soppy-stern
And half at one another’s throats.
Man hands on misery to man.
It deepens like a coastal shelf.
Get out as early as you can,
And don’t have any kids yourself.
(Quoted from page 180 of Philip Larkin: Collected Poems, edited by Anthony Thwaite. The Noonday Press, 1988.)
For a brief biography of Andre Agassi, click here. For a brief biography of Steffi Graf, click here. For a brief biography of Philip Larkin, click. here. For a brief biography of Michael Kimmelman, click here. For information about the Andre Agassi Foundation for Education, click here.
As would be expected, there are counterviews to the above, which we leave to you to work out.
“From punk to paragon” is how Bud Collins, the tennis commentator, described Agassi’s public transformation – the pigeon-toed teen brat in stone-washed denims, gambler’s shades, and a Mohawk who becomes a philanthropist, philosopher, and statesman. “To my thinking,” Agassi writes, “Bud sacrificed the truth on the altar of alliteration. I was never a punk, any more than I’m now a paragon. . . . Transformation is change from one thing to another, but I started as nothing. . . . I was like most kids: I didn’t know who I was, and I rebelled at being told by older people. . . . What people see now, for better or worse, is my first formation, my first incarnation. I didn’t alter my image, I discovered it.”
Kimmelman goes on to say of Agassi,
While he “never questioned” his father’s love, he wished it had been “softer, with more listening and less rage. In fact, I sometimes wish my father loved me less.”
And of Agassi,
It is yet another step that brings him to the revelation that now “I play and keep playing because I choose to play. Even if it’s not your ideal life, you can always choose it. No matter what your life is, choosing it changes everything.
And of Steffi Graf, whose father forced her into tennis when she hated it, Kimmelman says that she convinced Agassi that she was his soul mate:
They shared, along with preternatural physical gifts and competitiveness, an understanding of the downside of a tennis career and a determination not to repeat with their own children what had been inflicted on them.
Reading Kimmelman, we thought of Philip Larkin’s poem, "This Be The Verse," of how a one-size social image scarcely fits all, producing millions of messed up lives. The poem:
They fuck you up, your mum and dad.
They may not mean to, but they do.
They fill you with the faults they had
And add some extra, just for you.
But they were fucked up in their turn
By fools in old-style hats and coats,
Who half the time were soppy-stern
And half at one another’s throats.
Man hands on misery to man.
It deepens like a coastal shelf.
Get out as early as you can,
And don’t have any kids yourself.
(Quoted from page 180 of Philip Larkin: Collected Poems, edited by Anthony Thwaite. The Noonday Press, 1988.)
For a brief biography of Andre Agassi, click here. For a brief biography of Steffi Graf, click here. For a brief biography of Philip Larkin, click. here. For a brief biography of Michael Kimmelman, click here. For information about the Andre Agassi Foundation for Education, click here.
As would be expected, there are counterviews to the above, which we leave to you to work out.
We all tell lies——little lie, big lies, necessity lies in order to insure social and psychological peace and comfort. Do you think so?
Posted by: jordan 1 flight low | July 29, 2010 at 09:01 PM