Analysis Of How Tracy Austin Broke My Heart By David Foster Wallace

In David Foster Wallace’s essay, “How Tracy Austin Broke My Heart,” he argues that the true talent of star athletes is to completely engross themselves in playing the game. While worshipping the “abstractions like power and grace and control” of Tracy Austin, he notes the contradicting quality, her inability to articulate such abstracts (143). He continues by writing, as people’s expectation while reading the autobiography of a successful athlete is to take a peek at the secrets of their god given gifts, whereas the expectations are rarely met, making spectators, such as himself, disappointed. As a matter of fact, Wallace suspects that the exceptional talent of athletes may be brought out by their apathetic and ignorant nature when it

concerns subjects other than their specialty.

He supports this claim by stating how talented Tracy Austin is at tennis then moving into the degree of naivety she displays at varying degree.

Starting tennis at a young age, she quickly rose as the young prodigy by managing to play against those who are much older than her with an outstanding result. Then, all the flaws of her life, as well as the autobiography, itself, have been listed. For instance, in one of her earlier years when she had accepted money to play, was an illegal act and also accepted the costly diamond necklace from a stranger. In the same fashion, he emphasized her miserable failure to articulate her memories, victories, and tragedy. Bland words on her memoir did not reflect, nor influence the readers in any way whatsoever, according to him. Even the part where she narrated how she felt when she had to “think about the end of the only life she’d ever known,” the writing was rather insipid (151). The purpose of stress on the vapidity of writing was to illustrate the reduction of an endless gap before reading the memoir. Furthermore, “it forgets who its supposed to be for” (145). She fails to recognize the readers and does not make any attempt to communicate with them, instead “the author’s primary allegiance seems to be to her family and friends” (145). She is by no means the divine person he and many had once thought she is. Her brilliance that shines when playing tennis, doesn’t stretch out in other areas. He claims that she does not have a common gift of communication unlike that of normal spectators, such as

himself.

In short, this prose was to express what he had felt as he read the memoir of Tracy Austin, tennis star whom he looked up to since young. In addition to how the athlete’s reflex in the game is not proportional to their ability to touch people’s heart by writing. This work is significant because, it challenges the idolization of athletes and asks what its true essence is, suspecting their flaw as the necessary intrinsic nature for the gift many envies.