The Tournament
A Novel of the 20th Century
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- $9.99
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
A novel of the 20th century in which the greatest thinkers and personalities engage in a two-week tennis tournament.
"If you didn't know better you'd think this city had gone crazy. The streets of Paris are full of celebrities and media, and out at the stadium the crowds are already huge as players pound the practice courts in preparation for the greatest tournament of the modern era. At the airport, where they've opened three more runways and put on extra staff, players and officials have been arriving like migrating birds. From all corners they've come, the stars of the modern game. What a line-up!" -- from The Tournament
The most unusual tennis tournament in history is about to start. Albert Einstein is seeded fourth, Chaplin, Freud, and van Gogh are in the top rankings, and seeded first is Tony Chekhov. In all, 128 players -- everyone from Louis Armstrong to George Orwell, Gertrude Stein to Coco Chanel--are going to fight it out until the exhilarating final match on center court.
The Tournament is a funny, strange, and beguiling book in which, game by game and match by match, the world's most creative thinkers put their tennis skills to the ultimate test. And if you read carefully, you'll be set for life--having learned the cultural history of the 20th century!
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Clarke's chatty latest novel boasts an outrageous premise: the greatest minds of the 20th century 128 of them to be exact have gathered in Paris for a two-week tennis tournament. Hence there's "Jerry" Salinger, "SuperTom" (T.S.) Eliot, "Plum" (P.G.) Wodehouse and other luminaries (Darwin, Magritte, Earhart, Wittgenstein, Rachmaninov, Barthes, etc.) trading backhands and parrying wits. One-liners abound, about "Doc" Freud's theories regarding seeing ones' parents "in the act of congress" and "Ernie" Hemingway's constant search for the sun. Clarke's apparent aim beneath the yuks is to offer an entertaining cultural education. But with a new game beginning every few paragraphs, readers are introduced to a dizzying array of characters who never transcend caricature. Dali plays imaginary tennis, Auden expounds in verse and Munch sits "throughout the press call with his hands up to his face, his mouth open and a look of blind panic in his eyes." A few short interludes allow relief from the tennis-game-recap narrative, most notably the communist conspiracy surrounding the disappearance of Rosa Luxemburg and a number of other individuals from the tournament, but the novel quickly returns to tennis. The author of The Complete Dagg, A Dagg at My Table and others writes an intermittently amusing tale, but readers may feel this was a great idea best realized in a shorter, more comic form.
