I spent the remainder of my paycheck on a ticket to see Roger Federer at the US Open tonight, so until next Friday I’m officially on financially restricted diet. During that interval we’ll go over the basics of said diet. But first, a digression on the final cause of the upcoming impoverished menu.
By common consensus, Federer is the best tennis player ever; and this isn’t even the kind of common consensus about greatness that attaches to people like Michael Jordan: you can get an argument going about whether Jordan was the best ever, but there’s not really any way to get that kind of argument going about Federer. You know that prime Federer could beat prime anyone else (even though prime Rafael Nadal can (as of their last few meetings) beat less-than-prime Federer; if Nadal returns from injury, beats Federer a few more times, and comes anywhere near Federer’s career total of Grand Slam wins, then you’ll be able to get an argument going.) (The Federer-Nadal rivalry is the obvious analogue of the Moore-Marciano fight immortalized by A.J. Liebing in “Ahab and Nemsis”; even when Nadal beats him, you experience the defeated Federer as the nobler, smarter, and better player.) Tonight Federer encountered Simon Greul, an unranked player out of Germany, in the second round of the Men’s Singles tournament, and came away with a surprisingly competitive straight-sets win.
Arthur Ashe stadium is a very fine venue; even the worst seat in the house (being all that I could afford) was pretty good and not too far from the court. I was shocked, I suppose as I standardly am when engaging with an “event” that I consider significant, at the apathy of the other spectators. A good half of them arrived at least 30 minutes into the match (at which point Federer was poised to go up one set to love); the remainder spent the main of the match bustling back and forth between their seats and the concession stands, poking at their iPhones, and asking each other about the rules of tennis, of which they were ignorant. Apparently the man that David Foster Wallace described as “exempt, at least in part, from certain physical laws” doesn’t warrant the same consideration as an insufferable Bucks-Knicks game in November, at which MSG security will not allow fans to walk to their seats except during a time-out. So my view was occasionally obscured by the sight of some buffoon or other, bobbing up and down as he mounted the steps, arms stacked with chicken fingers and waffle fries and $8 beers. But the really distressing thing about these experiences is that I cannot make sense of how people can possibly fail to be enraptured by things like the tennis of Roger Federer. It’s not just that they’re rich (and therefore don’t care, because they can, like, pay Roger Federer to come over to their house or something); they’re not all rich, even at tennis, and definitely not in section 318, row U. For me there are certain things — The Pogues, anything by Cezanne, the foie gras terrine at Per Se, Roger Federer — that shine brighter than everything else, they glow with meaning and significance and magic, a magic that can take over your attention and control your passions and make you pleased and fascinated and amazed, as in, like, what an outstanding thing. The way these things look, or sound, or taste, just cries out to be paid attention to. How can there be people capable of not paying attention to them?
Possibility #1: Those people have the same experience as I do, they have that experience that says: Pay Attention To This!, but they ignore it somehow. I find this unthinkable and very upsetting.
Possibility #2: These people don’t have the same experience that I do; they look at Federer and just see some guy hitting a ball with a racket. This is too weird, too; the beauty and brilliance of Federer is something I can see, I can see it right there in Federer himself, in his movement around the court, in the varying rapidity of his stokes, in his placement, in the way he bounces and drifts and scrambles about, in the way his opponent is tossed this way and that, like a toy. If someone can’t see this, then they’re blind, and why would all these blind people pay to watch a tennis match?
Possibility #3: These people are all automata, with no subjective experiences of any kind. They’ve been programmed or otherwise non-rationally caused to buy tickets and go to the stadium, but since they don’t have consciousness, they can’t have the conscious experience of Federer that makes conscious creatures gasp and shake their heads in amazement. This is the best explanation I have been able to come up with, for the inexplicable lack of concern manifested by tennis spectators, art museum visitors, concert-goers, and all the rest.
It was a good match, given that Greul, in some important sense, never had a chance. In another sense, he did: he broke Federer once, but had six opportunities, and was as close as deuce to breaking Federer late in the second set, which would have allowed him to serve for the set. I was expecting Greul to attain no more than 3 games in any set; instead he nabbed 5 in both the second and third sets, and I was convinced by the middle of the second that Federer could easily drop a set. He didn’t.
I suspect that Federer did not perform at his highest level; he didn’t have to. He missed a few shots that I think he should have made, committing an unsightly 27 unforced errors. But, as I’ve already suggested, there was something numbingly beautiful about the way he moved, something sickly graceful and powerful in his “great liquid whip” of a forehand (Wallace), something assuring and peaceful about the calm of his backhand placement. (During the warmups you could see that, when given easy shots, he could move the ball anywhere he wanted, and along any route he wanted, with unimaginable ease.) Wallace marveled at Federer’s lightness (“a creature whose body is both flesh and, somehow, light”); I note the related fact of his overwhelming readyness: no matter what, he is in the right place and is already doing what needs to be done, the ball already tracing its arc, through your future but Federer’s present, to the place it belongs.
The speed of live tennis is impressive, especially changes in speed; when someone turns on the power, it’s shocking. Federer can be exchanging shots, three, four, five shots, and then suddenly, a tangible moment before you the spectator realize that his opponent could not possibly now get back to the other side of the court, he Federer has sent the ball swiftly tilting towards the corner on that other side.
At the break before the final game (Federer’s service), they played “I Can’t Get No Satisfaction” over the speakers; you could watch fans dancing on the big screen. But down in his chair, alone, waiting, Roger Federer had stretched his feet out and was gently wagging them from side to side, casually but precisely in accord with the beat.
End of digression. Our first lesson of low-budget eating concerns academic receptions. All scholars involved with Universities know about these, and the wise ones swear by them. The two crucial things for any graduate student or impoverished junior faculty member to know are: (1) the schedule of public lectures and colloquia (and other such reception-postdated events) for the current semester, and (2) the typical menu served by each department or academic unit. At the University of Illinois at Chicago, it was common knowledge that Classics had the best reception spreads (including minimal hot appetizers and decent wine), until Stanley Fish made effort to boost the profile of the newly-formed Catholic Studies department by funding lavish affairs to follow their inaugural series of public lectures. (At one of these shindigs, Stanley and I made short work of a chafing dish of delicious stuffed mushrooms.) At Brown I do not remember going to any talks. (One exceptionless rule here: never go to a reception without going to the lecture first; this is what separates the hungry scholar from the common thief.) Fordham, as far as I can tell, has four levels of reception catering; the philosophy department utilizes level two for its talks (cheese, fruit, cookies), while such well-heeled outfits as the Freshman Advising program and the Natural Law Colloquium utilize level four: marinated vegetables, Italian deli meats, puff pastry, higher-end cookies, and so on. The key thing here is to know what you’re getting in to; an hour listening to someone jabber on about alienation and the construction of queerness in Victorian children’s poetry might be justified for the sake of a plate full of prosciutto, but not for a stack of peanut butter cookies.
Today was the annual reception to welcome new graduate students to the philosophy department. I drank two glasses of wine and ate two 1/2 sandwiches, before jumping on the train for Flushing Meadows. I respect the Plate of Sandwiches at a reception: it says, Yes, you need to eat, and Yes, we will feed you. No bullshit. None of this dainty sliced melon shit. On that note, let the week of cheap food begin.
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