by Pete Bodo

What better time to curl up with a good book than a week or two after the end of two crucial weekends of Grand Slam play? To that end, I'm happy to announce that Jay Clark and Sam Starnes, two friends who are regular TennisWorld readers and have contributed personal essays to the pages of Tennis magazine, both have new books out.

Both of these guys have had a lifelong interest in and connection with tennis, but they are as different as their books (you'll see just how different, below).

Sam writes, and teaches writing at Widener University. He's married with children. Jay, who does something vague but undoubtedly subversive somewhere in the ever-widening digital universe, is living out his dwindling days as a single man. He recently got engaged to the lovely Caroline, whom he met through TennisWorld in a way that's a little too long and convoluted to go into here.

Long-time readers of this blog will remember that TW is directly responsible for at least one marriage, that of Juan Jose and Amy, two comment posters who struck up a relationship here despite living on different continents. I say it's about time we got another couple up on the board, right?

Anyway, I sent Jay and Sam a Q and A, thinking that it would be interesting to run them together to celebrate the publication of their books, and to give you a better idea of who they are.

Jay Clark, author of The Edumacation of Jay Baker.

1 - Can you summarize the book and describe who might most enjoy reading it?   

The Edumacation of Jay Baker is a coming-of-age tale that’s loosely based on my experiences as an awkward teen.  The book features, gasp, real people with real problems and really crappy reactions to those problems.  It’s funny.  It’s got bite.  But it doesn’t bite.  Which means no vampires.  These books about high-schoolers saving the world and turning into sexy werewolves, etc., are just a smidge unrealistic, no?  If someone had told my fifteen-year-old self I was being shipped off to compete in something called The Hunger Games, I would’ve rolled my eyes and said, “Yeah? Then how is it possible I’ve eaten four Brown Sugar Cinnamon Pop-Tarts today, b-hole?”  Then they would’ve shot me in the head with an arrow, but live and learn (and then die from the blood loss).

 I think any human with a sense of humor will get a kick out of reliving their high-school days through Jay Baker’s jaded blue eyes, taking comfort in knowing that they themselves never have to go back there.  If not, there’s a huge robot audience out there just waiting for me to tap.  #worldismyoyster

 2 - What role, if any, does tennis play in your new book?

 Freaking tennis.  It has a way of creeping into everything I do – whether that’s snagging myself a smokin’-hot girl from this here TW blog and then disappearing into thin air, or performing Bartoli-like shadow strokes from my bed to the toilet and back again. The latter hasn’t actually happened yet, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it did.  In fact, I’d embrace it and practice my swinging volleys, too, for good measure. Whether or not my fiancé looks at me the same way afterward remains to be seen.  Life is such an adventure. . .  

 Crap, I haven’t even answered the question yet?  One of Jay Baker’s two choice pieces of girl-candy, Caroline Richardson, is a tennis goddess who’d prefer having a conversation with her racket strings over one with her classmates.  She’s obviously a smart cookie, and Jay, a tennis-class dropout, figures practicing his strokes with her is better than doing so at home.  You could cut the subtlety of that double-entendre with a knife.  

Not-really-a-spoiler alert: One of my proudest moments while murdering myself over this book comes when Caroline engages in a spirited GOAT debate with her overzealous tennis-parent father. Jay somehow manages to bring up both Anna Kournikova and Mary Joe Fernandez in the process, but he knows not what he waxes pathetic about.

 3 - Did you play competitive tennis yourself, and what do you now think of that entire experience?

 I did and still do. Most of the time, I’m thinking, “You’re really awful, you know that?  How many years have you been sucking now?”  Then, after my male-ego regenerates itself in a flurry of testosterone, I get really excited about the possibility of shanking another overhead.  At the end of the day, we tennis players are all a bunch of masochists who enjoy putting ourselves through the ringer and using clichés like “at the end of the day.”  It is what it is.   

4 - How and why did you choose this story to write?

Working as a technical writer at Transpondsters International* a few years ago, I thought to myself, “Zzzzz…life doesn’t get much worse than this $*(@.”  Then I started writing the book in Outlook, a little hunk each day, under the guise of composing really important sales-related emails.  (Is that an endorsement opp with Microsoft I’m smelling, or just a cease and desist in the mail?)

Anyway, I chose myself as the main character, because I’m lazy.  Then I made myself more interesting, because I’m also boring and too antisocial to have “a mysterious way with the ladies” like Jay Baker does.  Now I’m extremely jealous of Jay Baker and plan on killing him off in the sequel.    

5  - Do you feel tennis has a literature that does justice to the sport?

There’s plenty of non-fiction fare to choose from—Courts of Babylon and Venus Envy, to name-drop a couple—but not so much in the fiction department.  Maybe other authors have recognized that tennis as a plot point is the kiss of bargain-bin death, and I’m the last to know. Anyway, if you'd like to order "The Edumacation of Jay Baker" just click on my Amazon link.  

6 - Federer, or Nadal? And why.

 Great, now I’m about to lose half my potential audience. Thanks a pant-load, Pete!  I have to go with Nadal here.  Not that I can’t appreciate the WTFian beauty of Fed’s game, but I happen to possess an aesthetically unpleasing arsenal of shots myself, which means I relate more to Nadal as a player.  Did I mention I’m all about world peace?   

                                                    ***************************   

 Joe Samuel Starnes, author of Fall Line. 

1 - Can you summarize the book and describe who might most enjoy reading it? 

   This book will appeal to readers of literary fiction (especially southern fiction), as well as readers of crime fiction and historical fiction about the 1950s.

 The story takes place all on one day, December 1, 1955 as floodgates are poised to slam shut on a concrete dam straddling the fictional Oogasula River, creating a lake that will submerge a forgotten crossroads and thousands of acres of woodlands in rural Georgia.  

 The story is viewed through the eyes of Elmer Blizzard, a troubled ex-deputy; Mrs. McNulty, a lonely widow who refuses to leave her doomed shack by the river; her loyal, aging dog, Percy; and a rapacious politician, State Senator Aubrey Terrell, for whom the new lake is named.

A story of land grabs, wounded families, bitterness, hypocrisy, violence, and revenge in the changing South, Fall Line is populated by complex characters who want to do the right thing but don't know how. 

 Here are a few blurbs that summarize it better:

 “An affectionate, eloquent story of loss and survival”  -- Atlanta Magazine 

"If you liked Deliverance by James Dickey, you'll like Fall Line by Joe Samuel Starnes. The Oogasula is about to be dammed by the Georgia Power Company and to hell with the folks whose houses and graves are going to be flooded. Some people take the money. One of them takes the law into his own hands. This novel is vividly alive with people (and a great dog) and the river." -- John Casey, author of Compass Rose and Spartina, winner of the National Book Award

If you're interested, check out the online book trailer on YouTube.

2 - What role, if any, does tennis play in your new book?

 The only time the word tennis is used in this novel is the acknowledgements where I thank my buddies at the Green Valley Tennis Club in Haddon Township, N.J. for their friendship.   Although tennis is never mentioned, I’m certain the golf club the crooked politician has planned beside the new lake will have a tennis court or two.

 3 - Did you play competitive tennis yourself, and what do you now think of that entire experience?

I started out with a sawed-off Jack Kramer racket at a very early age, and played junior tournaments from about the time I turned six in 1973 to the age of 18 in 1985.  I peaked at the age of 15 (after spending a few short weeks at Nick Bollettieri’s Academy during the holidays).  My best result, however, was in one of my last junior tournaments when I reached the finals of the Georgia State Closed tournament in the 18-and-unders. I made the front sports page of the Savannah for upsetting the top seed.

The best memories I have of junior tennis are not of the matches but of the trips.  I grew up in Cedartown, a small town in the northwest part of the state, so my dad and I (and sometimes my mom) often drove to Atlanta, Macon, Columbus, Savannah and other towns for tournaments.  It was always an exciting, especially if I won my matches and we stayed for a while.  Often times, however, I would lose in the first round and head on back home.  Those could be long drives, especially if we didn’t spend the night.

 I played so much tennis that by the time college years rolled around, I was burned out. I also decided I wanted to attend University of Georgia, and was not nearly good enough to crack that squad, endowed as they were at the time with players like soon-to-be French Open finalist Mikael Pernfors. 

I played very little tennis from the age of 19 until I turned 30, when I got back in the game.  Now, I play a few times a week, and am very much enjoying playing.  I play in a 4.5 league, and since I just turned 45, hope to try my luck in some tournaments in a new age bracket this year.

 4 - How and why did you choose this story to write?

 The genesis of the idea goes way back to 1989 when I was a cub reporter for a newspaper in Milledgeville, Georgia, and was assigned to write about minor earthquake tremors caused around Lake Sinclair, a large manmade lake there.  A former local sheriff there told me it wasn’t an earthquake, that it was just someone “dynamiting for catfish.” 

It turned out there actually were earthquakes caused by water from the manmade lake seeping into the fissures of the earth. I wrote a story about the earthquakes and the lake and became fascinated with the fact that all the big lakes I knew in Georgia were manmade.  For a long time I wanted to build a story around the damming of a river and construction of a major lake.  

 5  - Do you feel tennis has a literature that does justice to the sport?

Absolutely not.  It seems that baseball and golf books outnumber tennis books by 100 to one.  I’m probably especially sensitive to this as I have finished a novel about tennis that has been in a protracted search of a publisher.  It’s called Red Dirt, and is the story of Jaxie Skinner, an unlikely tennis pro from a blue-collar family in rural Georgia. My agent has heard from many publishers who have said that if a tennis novel is not by a famous player, they are not interested.  The tennis community is sizable, and a smart audience, so I don’t understand why there isn’t a demand for more literature about the game.  

6 - Federer, or Nadal? And why.

I'm not allegiant to either one. What I would really love to see is my fellow Georgia Bulldog John Isner beat one of them on an Grand Slam stage, preferably in the finals of the U.S. Open.