Episode 107 of the Tennis Abstract Podcast, with Carl Bialik of the Thirty Love podcast, is our fourth book club episode, a discussion of Alvaro Enrigue’s novel, Sudden Death.
The book is set around the year 1600, and a central feature is a real tennis match between the Italian painter Caravaggio and the Spanish poet Francisco de Quevedo. Enrigue is fascinated by the various ways tennis pops up in the documentary record of the era, a mix of high and low culture, cutting across continents and national borders.
The novel is digressive, so we follow suit and stray far afield from the contents of the book itself. Carl and I get into the advantages and difficulties of writing blow-by-blow descriptions of points, how many numbers is too many numbers, the various ways theatrical productions depict tennis, and why tennis fans seem so insecure.
Thanks for listening!
(Note: this episode is about 52 minutes long; in some browsers the audio player may display a different length. Sorry about that!)
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Music: Everyone Has Gone Home by texasradiofish (c) copyright 2020. Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Noncommercial (3.0) license. Ft: spinningmerkaba
