Andre Agassi’s Book: It’s Well-Written, Too?

By now, you may have heard about Andre Agassi’s revealing autobiography. We mentioned the meth use earlier this week; other intriguing pull-outs have involved Agassi’s use of a wig and the hustling of Jim Brown.But the substance of his story is actually really well-written, too. Read this bit of the excerpt Sports Illustrated has in its November 2nd issue:

⇥I’m a young man, relatively speaking. Thirty-six. But I wake as if 96. After two decades of sprinting, stopping on a dime, jumping high and landing hard, my body no longer feels like my body. Consequently my mind doesn’t feel like my mind. I run quickly through the basic facts. My name is Andre Agassi. My wife’s name is Stefanie Graf. We have two children, a son and a daughter, five and three. We live in Las Vegas but currently reside in a suite at the Four Seasons Hotel in New York City, because I’m playing in the 2006 U.S. Open. My last U.S. Open. In fact my last tournament ever. I play tennis for a living, even though I hate tennis, hate it with a dark and secret passion, and always have.⇥⇥As this last piece of identity falls into place, I slide to my knees and wait. In a whisper I say: Please let this be over.⇥

⇥⇥Then: I’m not ready for it to be over. ⇥

That’s just excellent writing. And you can attribute it to his co-writer, Pulitzer Prize-winner J.R. Moehringer, who, as SI’s Jon Wertheim explains, was brought in at some cost to help with the project. It reminds me, tangentially, of the excerpt of the LeBron James/Buzz Bissinger book that Deadspin got its hands on: Both pieces are well-crafted, and flesh out the stories of sports. (Maybe, instead of highly self-indulgent blathering, other athletes could consider this route?)

In any case, with the fall-back hour of Daylight Savings Time to play with on All Sports’ Day, it might be worth a half-hour diving into the lengthy Agassi excerpt, not just for what is written, but for how.

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