Sign in with Facebook
Loading...
Levels of the Game
by
John McPhee
This account of a tennis match played by Arthur Ashe against Clark Graebner at Forest Hills in 1968 begins with the ball rising into the air for the initial serve and ends with the final point. McPhee provides a brilliant, stroke-by-stroke description while examining the backgrounds and attitudes which have molded the players' games.
Paperback, 152 pages
Published
November 1st 1979
by Farrar, Straus and Giroux
(first published September 23rd 1969)
Friend Reviews
To see what your friends thought of this book,
please sign up.
This book is not yet featured on Listopia.
Add this book to your favorite list »
Community Reviews
(showing
1-30
of
499)
Jessica says my reviews are too snooty; I assume this is because my reviews are comparative based - so many allusions to David Markson, or other books I've read.
But I challenge you to meaningfully review books in a non-comparative manner. I can talk about a book's pacing, and tone, and vocabulary, and meaning, and entertainment - but what are the scales for those? What qualitative and quantitative words would lend any meaning to my attempts to elucidate those factors for someone else? And even i...more
But I challenge you to meaningfully review books in a non-comparative manner. I can talk about a book's pacing, and tone, and vocabulary, and meaning, and entertainment - but what are the scales for those? What qualitative and quantitative words would lend any meaning to my attempts to elucidate those factors for someone else? And even i...more
This is certainly the most unusual sports books I've ever read. The framework is that the entire book is a play-by-play of a single tennis game in 1968 between Arthur Ashe and Clark Graebner. Interspersed throughout are digressions into both players' personalities, backgrounds, and politics. As per usual for McPhee I did learn a lot of random trivia (Arthur Ashe was a lieutenant in the army!) Language about race was off-putting 40 years later (it was written in 1969) although I know it was accur...more
Great book about a tennis game, and so much more.
Written in 1969, only five years from the 1964 Civil Rights Act, the book, this book is ostensibly about the 1968 US Open game at Forest Hills between Graebner and Ashe. But McPhee weaves in comments and thoughts from both of the players and their families and, because Graebner and Ashe, while compatriots and colleagues in the game of tennis, come from such different backgrounds, paints a social portrait of the times.
I was really struck by Ashe's...more
Written in 1969, only five years from the 1964 Civil Rights Act, the book, this book is ostensibly about the 1968 US Open game at Forest Hills between Graebner and Ashe. But McPhee weaves in comments and thoughts from both of the players and their families and, because Graebner and Ashe, while compatriots and colleagues in the game of tennis, come from such different backgrounds, paints a social portrait of the times.
I was really struck by Ashe's...more
It was eye opening to read this account of Championship level tennis from just over 40 years ago. Ashe and Graebner were two of the top players in the world and they both had day jobs because tennis was still an "amateur" sport.
Graebner has been lost to history but it was interesting to get his insights about hoping to be a millionaire by his early 40's, of course if he had come along thirty years later he would have been a millionaire many times over for his tennis ability alone but in that er...more
Graebner has been lost to history but it was interesting to get his insights about hoping to be a millionaire by his early 40's, of course if he had come along thirty years later he would have been a millionaire many times over for his tennis ability alone but in that er...more
What a delightful little book about tennis. If you enjoy the sport at all, it's definitely worth your while to pick up this quick read. The pacing could have gone awry with all the back and forth between play-by-play and personal histories of Arthur Ashe and Clark Graebner, but it actually worked and worked well.
It's interesting to think about 'tennis purists' of the time thinking Ashe & Graebner's power games were ruining the sport for the future. If only they could have seen Roddick, Isner...more
It's interesting to think about 'tennis purists' of the time thinking Ashe & Graebner's power games were ruining the sport for the future. If only they could have seen Roddick, Isner...more
This book, at first glance, seems almost like stunt-writing. It reminds me of Ian McEwan's Saturday; let's take this super-restrictive premise (a single day, a single tennis match) and see if my superb writing skills can still create an engaging story. McPhee pulls it off, though, and the whole story is a great read. I think you'll get more out of this if you've played competitive tennis, but all the background on Ashe and Grabner is enough, I think, to hook even folks who have only a casual int...more
John McPhee is a truly gifted writer. He can make anything interesting, and, while there are some clear consistencies in his style, I like the way he addresses different subjects in different ways in his books. Levels of the Game is basically two mini-biographies of tennis players Arthur Ashe and Clark Graebner, set against the backdrop of their US Open semifinal in 1968. But the match, rather than being just the context, is interwoven into the biographies. So in covering the two men's history,...more
McPhee puts us courtside, watching the ball go by and feeling in our guts the ebbs and flows of the match. Each points pulls a connecting thread that leads us to know a lot about the players -- Ashe, the (today) underrated star, Graebner the forgotten WASP -- and how American society worked at the time. Saying the latter played tennis like a Republican somehow gives me a clearer image of his game than any YouTube footage could, and yet you understand very well where he comes from and why he sees...more
Levels of the Game is a book about a tennis match, but also a fantastic character study of two great tennis players. Possibly the single best book about sports I’ve ever read, it immerses us in the semifinal match between Arthur Ashe and Clark Graebner at the inaugural U.S. Open. McPhee switches back and forth between a detailed narrative of the entire match, starting from the first serve and ending with the last point, and a look at how these two fascinating athletes, who were friendly competit...more
This early John McPhee book works on many levels, as an account of a match between two young tennis stars, Arthur Ashe and Clark Graebner; as profiles of each man at the start of their careers; as an examination of race and sport in America at the end of the 1960s. I wish there were less tennis jargon in the accounts of the match between Ashe and Graebner but that's a quibble. I was surprised by how meaningful this book still is.
A great dual-biography told over the course of a tennis match between Arthur Ashe and Clark Graebner. Some of the old-fashioned tennis references are fun (reminds me of a tennis version The Glory Game) - two amateurs facing off in a US Open semi! McPhee is basically a master of making mundane stuff exciting, and he succeeds here. Doesn't quite have the flair of any of DFW's tennis pieces, but that's a high bar to try to reach.
John McPhee's writing is so precise, so eloquent and so brilliant it takes my breath away. In this short work, he details the semi-final tennis match at the US Open in Forest Hills, NY played by Arthur Ashe and Clark Graebner in 1968. In addition to narrating the match almost stroke by stroke, he examines each player's background, and the impact that it has on their tennis games.
A scenic path through a 1968 US Open semifinal featuring Arthur Ashe and Clark Graebner. Meandering narrative thread, but in a way that made the book very enjoyable, if tough to put down and pick back up. More like a 140 page essay than a book, really. No chapters, and few natural breaks, but I like short books so I was a fan.
It's 40 years old - anyway the tennis match is that McPhee describes play-by-play in a breathtaking way, filling in with bits of the players' lives and thoughts. Everyone knows about Arthur Ashe, but I'd never heard of Graebner, his opponent. I don't know much about tennis but I would think that those who do would enjoy this book even more than I did. Fantastic read!
McPhee uses a match between Arthur Ashe and Clark Graebner as the anchor of his descriptions of the two men, their personalities, tennis games, different paths to the match itself, and to a small degree the game of tennis. A nice snapshot of Ashe, and the state of tennis at the sport at the time, before his stardom and meaning in American culture is fully realized...
This is a book about two tennis players and particularly about Arthur Ashe. I know nothing about tennis but I loved this book because the author narrates of the two players life, evolves the players through out the game and you can't help but root for your favorite.
John McPhee is one of my favorite writers. Other favorites of McPhee: A Sense of Where You Are (Basketball's Bill Bradley), Encounters with the Archdruid (inside the argument for use, conservation and preservation).
Terrific analysis of a tennis match between Arthur Ashe and his opponent Clark Graebner at Forest Hills in 1968. Love the way their contrasting styles played a part in the outcome of the game.
After slogging through some denser work of fiction, Levels of the Game was just the clear tonic my system needed. McPhee never disappoints and the arc of his story is a delight.
if you are a tennis fan....
all the legends are discussed: ashe, laver, pancho gonzalez...a step back into time.
also, touched by the camraderie in the game of tennis where its every man for himself.
all the legends are discussed: ashe, laver, pancho gonzalez...a step back into time.
also, touched by the camraderie in the game of tennis where its every man for himself.
Couldn't wait to pick this up after finishing Agassi. Also interested to see how much of Peter Hessler, McPhee's old student, I can see in the writing.
Finished. Best book on sports I've ever read. Gets so deeply into the game of tennis and characters of Clark Graebner and Arthur Ashe that you feel transported bAck to the court and the childhoods that shaped their games. Tennis descriptions are beautiful and only get at a poetry that I thought existed just wirh hockey: "scything cross court backh...more
Finished. Best book on sports I've ever read. Gets so deeply into the game of tennis and characters of Clark Graebner and Arthur Ashe that you feel transported bAck to the court and the childhoods that shaped their games. Tennis descriptions are beautiful and only get at a poetry that I thought existed just wirh hockey: "scything cross court backh...more
Also recommended by Sports Illustrated's Jon Wertheim as an all-time top tennis book. And so I've got to add it.
Sep 11, 2010
Snail in Danger (Sid) Nicolaides
marked it as maybe-read-sometime
Recommends it for:
tennis fans, especially those interested in the history of U.S. tennis
Shelves:
sports
Another book referenced in A Terrible Splendor. This didn't seem to have as much scope as that book.
A very different world and tennis world in 1968 that McPhee very effectively brings to life.
Feb 25, 2013
Steve
added it
Great book - even if you don't know anything about tennis.
i love dorky john mcphee.
excellent.
Reading a review of a John McPhee book means that you are wasting valuable time that could be spent actually reading a John McPhee book. One of his better early books, "Levels" is, first and foremost, a book about a tennis match. Then you realize that, first and foremost, it's a book about race in America. What's remarkable is that these two competing centers exist at the same time, in the same space, and are, in fact, the same conversation.
Oct 26, 2009
Matt Buchholz
rated it
5 of 5 stars
Recommends it for:
David Foster Wallace fans
Recommended to Matt by:
Nate Dore
Shelves:
book-club
A concise, intricately paced piece of creative non-fiction that makes a compelling argument for the view of sports, or at least tennis, as intellectual endeavors. Makes a boy curious about all those "America's Best Sports Writing" anthologies that seemed like a joke before.
There are no discussion topics on this book yet.
Be the first to start one »
John McPhee was born in Princeton, New Jersey, and was educated at Princeton University and Cambridge University. His writing career began at Time magazine and led to his long association with the New Yorker, where he has been a staff writer since 1965. The same year he published his first book, A Sense of Where You Are, with FSG, and soon followed with The Headmaster (1966), Oranges (1967), The P...more
More about John McPhee...
Share This Book
No trivia or quizzes yet. Add some now »
Jan 26, 2010 09:02am