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Levels of the Game
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Levels of the Game Paperback - 1979

by John McPhee


About this book

This book is centered around the events of the semi-final match in the 1968 U.S. Open Championship at Forest Hills, between Clark Graebner and Arthur Ashe. Ashe won, and went on to win the Championship, as a result becoming the only amateur player to win it in the Open era. It alternates between describing the match and the profiles of the two contestants, who had found tennis from completely different environments. Only 25 years old  at the time, they had known each other for half of their lives. This concept interested McPhee, who wanted to explore how the long interaction and dissimilar backgrounds of the two, shaped the match between them. 

From the publisher

Levels of the Game is John McPhee's astonishing account of a tennis match played by Arthur Ashe against Clark Graebner at Forest Hills in 1968.

It begins with the ball rising into the air for the initial serve and ends with the final point. McPhee provides a brilliant, stroke-by-stroke description while examining the backgrounds and attitudes which have molded the players' games. "This may be the high point of American sports journalism"- Robert Lipsyte, The New York Times

First line

Arthur Ashe, his feet apart, his knees slightly bent, lifts a tennis ball into the air.

First Edition Identification

Levels of the Game was first published in 1969 by Farrar Straus & Giroux, NY. This edition is octavo with red publisher's cloth and a gilt stamped spine. 

Details

  • Title Levels of the Game
  • Author John McPhee
  • Binding Paperback
  • Edition Reprint
  • Pages 160
  • Volumes 1
  • Language ENG
  • Publisher Farrar, Straus and Giroux, Gordonsville, Virginia, U.S.A.
  • Date 1979-11-01
  • ISBN 9780374515263 / 0374515263
  • Weight 0.45 lbs (0.20 kg)
  • Dimensions 8.2 x 5.4 x 0.5 in (20.83 x 13.72 x 1.27 cm)
  • Themes
    • Ethnic Orientation: African American
  • Library of Congress subjects Tennis players, Ashe, Arthur
  • Dewey Decimal Code 796.342

About the author

John McPhee was born in Princeton, New Jersey, and was educated at Princeton University and Cambridge University. His writing career began at Time magazine and led to his long association with The New Yorker, where he has been a staff writer since 1965. Also in 1965, he published his first book, A Sense of Where You Are, with Farrar, Straus and Giroux, and in the years since, he has written nearly 30 books, including Oranges (1967), Coming into the Country (1977), The Control of Nature (1989), The Founding Fish (2002), Uncommon Carriers (2007), and Silk Parachute (2011). Encounters with the Archdruid (1972) and The Curve of Binding Energy (1974) were nominated for National Book Awards in the category of science. McPhee received the Award in Literature from the Academy of Arts and Letters in 1977. In 1999, he was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Annals of the Former World. He lives in Princeton, New Jersey.

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