A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again

“Derivative Sport in Tornado Alley” is unique among the essays in that it focuses chiefly on Wallace himself rather than other people. Wallace characterizes his unique approach to junior competitive tennis as a product of his environment and his unique circumstances. Since he was less athletically or technically gifted than his peers, he needed to find a different way to give himself an edge. This edge emerged from his ability to develop a defensive style, using the difficulties of his environment to his advantage in a way that other players did not. The high winds and uneven courts of the Midwest presented a unique challenge that he used to his advantage. This advantage was fleeting, however: As he rose through the ranks of junior tennis, improvements in court quality and the relatively greater increase in the physical prowess of his opponents meant that he could no longer frustrate them as effectively. Nevertheless, the experience of competitive tennis was formative for Wallace and provides instructive insight into the instincts that inform the rest of the essay collection. A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again is, as the title suggests, centers on Wallace’s idiosyncratic interpretation of American society. In sport, cinema, and vacations, he finds the nodes of irony, commenting on how they provide insight into the reality of society. In a literary sense, Wallace plays the whole court, highlighting the rough edges of society in a way that most of those around him do not notice. Wallace may have lost his edge in competitive tennis, but his development of a style of play centering on mathematical visualization is an effective prelude to his style of cultural analysis in other areas.

In addition, “Derivative Sport in Tornado Alley” establishes a point of contrast with the later essays in that it concerns Wallace’s personal experiences growing up in the Midwestern US. The later essays focus on other people (such as David Lynch and Michael Joyce) and his return to the Midwest as an outsider. In effect, the young person Wallace profiles in this opening essay is a character in his own right. The young Wallace, a part of the Midwest and a product of it, is distinct from the adult Wallace who writes the essay. The Wallace that the essay depicts is a youth who has a sense of direction and purpose (tennis) that he eventually loses. This character contrasts with Wallace as the author, just as the essay’s personal nature contrasts with his later centering his narrative on profiling other people.

The essay ends with Wallace and his great rival Antitoi playing tennis in the shadow of a tornado. This ending exposes the appeal of tennis to the young Wallace: It provides a system of regimented escapism from the drudgery of everyday life. He is bored by his surroundings. Although he fears tornadoes, when he practices tennis, he can insulate himself from the troubles of society. At his young age, he can’t quite understand why he finds tennis so soothing, but as the winds build behind him and he and Antitoi continue to rally, the reason becomes clear: Tennis is a form of escapism because it provides a self-contained, comprehensible system that he can manipulate, in stark contrast to the deadly chaos of the tornado. Tennis makes sense to him, whereas tornadoes do not. The tennis rally comforts him, right up to the moment when he and his opponent are forcefully blown into the net, which is a painful reminder of the brutal chaos of reality. This introduces the theme of Alienation and Detachment by emphasizing the escapism of the game and the jarring sensation of being snapped back to reality. Wallace’s tennis game never recovers, though he spends the rest of his life writing about similar subjects.