“Were he now still among
the living, Dr. Incandenza would now describe tennis in the paradoxical terms
of what's now called 'Extra-Linear Dynamics.' And Schtitt, whose knowledge
of formal math is probably about equivalent to that of a Taiwanese kindergartner,
nevertheless seemed to know what Hopman and van der Meer and Bollettieri seemed
not to know: that locating beauty and art and magic and improvement and keys to
excellence and victory in the prolix flux of match play is not a fractal matter
of reducing chaos to pattern. Seemed intuitively to sense that it was a matter
not of reduction at all, but — perversely — of expansion, the aleatory flutter
of uncontrolled, metastatic growth — each well-shot ball admitting of n
possible responses, n2 possible responses to those responses, and on into what
Incandenza would articulate to anyone who shared both his backgrounds as a
Cantorian3535 continuum of infinities of possible move and response, Cantorian
and beautiful because infoliating, contained, this diagnate infinity of
infinities of choice and execution, mathematically uncontrolled but humanly
contained, bounded by the talent and imagination of self and opponent, bent in
on itself by the containing boundaries of skill and imagination that brought
one player finally down, that kept both from winning, that made it, finally, a
game, these boundaries of self…
"…Schtitt's thrust, and his
one great irresistible attraction in the eyes of Mario's late father: The true
opponent, the enfolding boundary, is the player himself. Always and only the
self out there, on court, to be met, fought, brought to the table to hammer out
terms. The competing boy on the net's other side: he is not the foe: he is more
the partner in the dance. He is the what is the word excuse or occasion for
meeting the self. As you are his occasion. Tennis's beauty's infinite roots are
self-competitive. You compete with your own limits to transcend the self in
imagination and execution. Disappear inside the game: break through limits:
transcend: improve: win. Which is why tennis is an essentially tragic
enterprise, to improve and grow as a serious junior, with ambitions. You seek
to vanquish and transcend the limited self whose limits make the game possible
in the first place. It is tragic and sad and chaotic and lovely. All life is
the same, as citizens of the human State: the animating limits are within, to
be killed and mourned, over and over again.”
- Infinite Jest, page 82-84, David Foster Wallace
