Pages 213-255 Summary and Analysis

Wallace begins the fourth essay "Tennis Player Michael Joyce's Professional Artistry as a Paradigm of Certain Stuff about Choice, Freedom, Limitation, Joy, Grotesquerie, and Human Completeness" by describing Michael Joyce easily serving a ball in a qualifying match for the 1995 Canadian Open. Wallace assumes that although Joyce is in the top one hundred tennis players in the world, the reader has never heard of him.

Wallace explains that tennis tournaments have numerous corporate sponsors, and the sponsor of the Canadian open is du Maurier cigarettes, who has placed red flags around Stade Jarry Stadium Court. While there are numerous matches going on, few people are there to watch them except other players. The stadium is mostly empty because matches like Joyce's are qualifying matches in which players who are ranked relatively low must play in order to gain entrance...