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LATE TO THE BALL

Name: LATE TO THE BALL
Author: Gerald Marzorati
ISBN: 978-1-4767-3739-3

AGE. LEARN. FIGHT. LOVE. PLAY TENNIS. WIN.

by Gerald Marzorati ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 17, 2016

What begins as a straightforward chronicle of a not-entirely-unusual midlife quest evolves into an examination of midlife...

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A career editor and writer takes up tennis at age 60—not as a hobby, but competitively.

One of the benefits of advancements in medicine and the lengthening of the human life span is the range of options open to people in the second part of their lives. Increased physical and mental health make all sorts of pursuits possible that would have one day seemed ludicrous—within limits, of course. Where those limits are, however, continues to shift. Marzorati (A Painter of Darkness: Leon Golub and Our Times, 1990) spent nearly his entire working career as a writer and editor, culminating with editorial oversight of the New York Times Magazine from 2003 to 2010, a job that demanded attention and rigorous oversight of the minute details of words and letters. The author decided to apply this level of discipline and exactitude to tennis—but not simply to play the game. Marzorati had a loftier goal: to be competitive despite his age and despite his need to learn the game from the ground up. The author draws many neat and insightful parallels between his career and his new pursuit, including the mix of solitude and competition and of pushing oneself in honing the necessary skills. The adage involving an old dog and new tricks doesn't hold up as well as one might think; studies have shown that task analysis—breaking down tasks into smaller components—can enable learning at any age. That isn’t to say it’s ever easy, and Marzorati put in the work, seeking counsel from trainers and others. Ultimately, his physical self-challenge grew into a larger questioning of the assumptions—both positive and negative—that he has about himself.

What begins as a straightforward chronicle of a not-entirely-unusual midlife quest evolves into an examination of midlife reinvention in general, both the how and the why.

Pub Date: May 17, 2016

ISBN: 978-1-4767-3739-3

Page Count: 288

Publisher: Scribner

Review Posted Online: March 2, 2016

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2016

Categories:

BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | SPORTS & RECREATION | SELF-HELP | GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR

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THE PURSUIT OF HAPPYNESS

FROM MEAN STREETS TO WALL STREET

by Chris Gardner with Quincy Troupe ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 1, 2006

Well-told and admonitory.

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Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.

Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.

Well-told and admonitory.

Pub Date: June 1, 2006

ISBN: 0-06-074486-3

Page Count: 320

Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006

Categories:

GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | BUSINESS

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INTO THE WILD

by Jon Krakauer ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 1, 1996

A wonderful page-turner written with humility, immediacy, and great style. Nothing came cheap and easy to McCandless, nor...

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The excruciating story of a young man on a quest for knowledge and experience, a search that eventually cooked his goose, told with the flair of a seasoned investigative reporter by Outside magazine contributing editor Krakauer (Eiger Dreams, 1990).

Chris McCandless loved the road, the unadorned life, the Tolstoyan call to asceticism. After graduating college, he took off on another of his long destinationless journeys, this time cutting all contact with his family and changing his name to Alex Supertramp. He was a gent of strong opinions, and he shared them with those he met: "You must lose your inclination for monotonous security and adopt a helter-skelter style of life''; "be nomadic.'' Ultimately, in 1992, his terms got him into mortal trouble when he ran up against something—the Alaskan wild—that didn't give a hoot about Supertramp's worldview; his decomposed corpse was found 16 weeks after he entered the bush. Many people felt McCandless was just a hubris-laden jerk with a death wish (he had discarded his map before going into the wild and brought no food but a bag of rice). Krakauer thought not. Admitting an interest that bordered on obsession, he dug deep into McCandless's life. He found a willful, reckless, moody boyhood; an ugly little secret that sundered the relationship between father and son; a moral absolutism that agitated the young man's soul and drove him to extremes; but he was no more a nutcase than other pilgrims. Writing in supple, electric prose, Krakauer tries to make sense of McCandless (while scrupulously avoiding off-the-rack psychoanalysis): his risky behavior and the rites associated with it, his asceticism, his love of wide open spaces, the flights of his soul.

A wonderful page-turner written with humility, immediacy, and great style. Nothing came cheap and easy to McCandless, nor will it to readers of Krakauer's narrative. (4 maps) (First printing of 35,000; author tour)