On Being John McEnroe

Description

The greatest sports stars characterise their times. They also help to tell us who we are. John McEnroe, at his best and worst, told us the story of the eighties. His improvised quest for tennis perfection, and his inability to find a way to grow up, dramatised the volatile self-absorption of a generation. His matches were open therapy sessions, and they allowed us all to be armchair shrinks. Tim Adams sets out to explore what it might have meant to be John McEnroe during those times, and in his subsequent lives, and to define exactly what it is we want from our sporting heroes: how we require them to play out our own drams; how the best of them provide an intensity by which we can measure our own lives.

Tim Adams has been an editor at Granta and literary editor of the Observer, where he now writes full-time. An occasional tennis correspondent and scratchy parks player, he once lost in straight sets to Martin Amis and served a whole game of double faults to Annabel Croft. He lives in London.

Terrific...On one level, it's about the author's fascination with a tennis player. But it's much more than this; it's a book about how the world has changed in our lifetime -- William Leith * New Statesman * A beautiful little book * Daily Express * Tim Adams is one of the best of our new sportswriters * Observer * Inspiringly in touch with what McEnroe was and what he meant -- Giles Smith * Daily Telegraph *