“How Tracy Austin Broke My Heart”, an essay by an American post-postmodernism writer David Foster Wallace, is formally a review of the autobiography of once a child prodigy in women’s tennis Tracy Austin. However, the text quickly overcomes the initially outlined framework and develops into sharp criticism of sports autobiography as a literary genre. Austin’s book illustrates the duality of this type of literature. The prose of great athletes becomes commercially successful because of the irrational charm of their physical gift. At the same time, sportsmen’s inability to verbally reflect on their talents, including through literature as a focus of the essay, naturally leads to readers disappointment, and for Wallace this disappointment is quite painful. As the article establishes, reason for Wallace’s criticism stems from his goal as a writer, which is meant to make a connection between a writer and a reader and historically have served to develop a poetics of New Sincerity in literature.
For citation:
Tikhomirov V.A. Physical genius and atrophy of self-reflection in David Foster Wallace’s “How Tracy Austin Broke My Heart”, Ivanovo State University Bulletin, Series: Humanities, 2022, iss. 2, pp. 37—44.