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The Tournament: A Novel of the 20th Century
The most unusual tennis tournament in history is about to start. Albert Einstein's seeded fourth. Chaplin, Freud and Van Gogh are also in the top rankings. World number one is Tony Chekhov. In all, 128 playerseveryone from Louis Armstrong to George Orwell, Gertrude Stein to Coco Chanel;are going to fight it out until the exhilarating final on Centre Court.John Clarke, Australia's best-loved comedian, the comic genius behind ABC television's The Games, is there to report on everything of interest. This is a funny, strange and beguiling book in which, game by game and match by match, the world's most creative players put their tennis skills to the ultimate test. A brilliant, bizarre comic novel.
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First published June 30, 1995
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About the author
John Clarke
19 books7 followersLibrarian Note: There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name. See this thread for more information. This is John^^Clarke.
John Clarke (29 July 1948 – 9 April 2017) was a New Zealand–born comedian, writer, and satirist. He was born in Palmerston North, New Zealand, and lived in Australia from the late 1970s. He was a highly regarded actor and writer whose work appeared on the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) in both radio and television and also in print.
John Clarke (29 July 1948 – 9 April 2017) was a New Zealand–born comedian, writer, and satirist. He was born in Palmerston North, New Zealand, and lived in Australia from the late 1970s. He was a highly regarded actor and writer whose work appeared on the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) in both radio and television and also in print.
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Displaying 1 - 17 of 17 reviews
April 30, 2009
This book is just too smart for me...
Unless you know the life and times of:
Anna Akhmatova, Hannah Arendt, George Orwell, Marcel Duchamp, T.S. Eliot, Edna St. Vincent Millay, James Joyce, Anton Chekhov, René Magritte, Henrik Ibsen, Mary McCarthy, Sarah Bernhardt, J. D. Salinger, Gustav Mahler, Friedrich Nietzsche, etc, etc then you will be seriously struggling even to get through the first chapter. I gave it 87 pages before declaring defeat.
The premise is a common refrain - why don't we celebrate our authors, scientists, poets, artists, philosopher as we do our sportspeople. I suppose this book just proves the point that many of these people have not registered on my radar - but then again my knowledge of the life and times of professional sportspeople isn't great either.
While Barry Jones forever makes me feel inadequate (poorly read, travelled, etc, etc) (see his 'A Thinking Reed'), he always seems to genuinely think that everyone is like him... John Clarke on the other hand simply takes joy in your inadequacy.
Unless you know the life and times of:
Anna Akhmatova, Hannah Arendt, George Orwell, Marcel Duchamp, T.S. Eliot, Edna St. Vincent Millay, James Joyce, Anton Chekhov, René Magritte, Henrik Ibsen, Mary McCarthy, Sarah Bernhardt, J. D. Salinger, Gustav Mahler, Friedrich Nietzsche, etc, etc then you will be seriously struggling even to get through the first chapter. I gave it 87 pages before declaring defeat.
The premise is a common refrain - why don't we celebrate our authors, scientists, poets, artists, philosopher as we do our sportspeople. I suppose this book just proves the point that many of these people have not registered on my radar - but then again my knowledge of the life and times of professional sportspeople isn't great either.
While Barry Jones forever makes me feel inadequate (poorly read, travelled, etc, etc) (see his 'A Thinking Reed'), he always seems to genuinely think that everyone is like him... John Clarke on the other hand simply takes joy in your inadequacy.
Read
January 12, 2018‘An affable book full of the hubbub and potential hilarity of high and other culture translated to the domain where things get serious: sport.’
Australian
‘What Peter Ustinov once did for Grand Prix motor racing, The Tournament does for tennis and world culture combined.’
Clive James
‘A brilliant invention from a national treasure.’
Daily Telegraph
‘Game, set, match and championship: J. Clarke.’
Australian Book Review
‘Ingenious flair for encapsulating a writer, artist or thinker in a few sentences…A funny, clever book.’
Washington Post
‘A genius-touched tour de farce…A wondrously comic tumult of personalities, anachronisms, jokes.’
Kirkus Reviews
Australian
‘What Peter Ustinov once did for Grand Prix motor racing, The Tournament does for tennis and world culture combined.’
Clive James
‘A brilliant invention from a national treasure.’
Daily Telegraph
‘Game, set, match and championship: J. Clarke.’
Australian Book Review
‘Ingenious flair for encapsulating a writer, artist or thinker in a few sentences…A funny, clever book.’
Washington Post
‘A genius-touched tour de farce…A wondrously comic tumult of personalities, anachronisms, jokes.’
Kirkus Reviews
February 16, 2020
What an unusual, charming quasi-novel this is!
John Clarke was one of Australia's supreme satirists, and here he daringly creates an entire novel out of just two concepts: gags about tennis and jokes about great minds of the 20th century. Styled as a series of daily reports on a tennis tournament in Paris, we witness the arguments, heroics, controversies and badinage that emerge from the world's most famous personages on the court. Virginia Woolf, Frida Kahlo, Agatha Christie, Rosa Luxemberg, Albert Einstein, TS Eliot, George Orwell, Marcel Proust... the list is seemingly endless.
Clarke seems to have taken his inspiration from the kind of "university humour" found in the more intellectual magazines of his youth. If you don't have a working knowledge of the output of Tristan Tzara or Christina Stead, you may be overwhelmed. (And if you don't like tennis, prepare to be confounded!) Those who persist may still find themselves exhausted by the repetitive nature of the material; indeed, this feels like it would work well as a weekly serialisation rather than a one- or two-session read. And any reader will face the vicissitudes of their own areas of knowledge and styles of humour - the jokes range from the obvious (a crowd left waiting for Beckett on a court with a lone tree as set dressing) to the niche (Carol Reed being the 'third man' to take a set from another player). Still, who wouldn't enjoy a pensive umpire Rodin, cocksure Ayn Rand cursing at the press, Einstein questioning whether the match feels as long for him as it does for the crowd, and Proust's epic response to a simple question at the post-match conference? Clarke describes Scott Fitzgerald as a man "who looks to many Europeans to be the quintessential American, and to many Americans like something out of a play". Clarke also allows his skill for imitation to emerge from the fray, such as when he mimics the celebrated bon mots of Wilde: "A gentleman should always be serious. It amuses one's butler and fortifies the religious convictions of one's mother."
The extent of Clarke's game playing (pardon the pun) is made clear in the appendix, where he lists in detail the scores of every match in the tournament. Several hundred of them, many of which are not mentioned in the text itself. It's bewildering stuff.
At the heart of this novel, one supposes, is a question about how we as a culture value our literary, philosophical, and social minds. I'm a tennis lover myself, but Clarke rightly questions why we send rabid packs of photographers to interrogate anyone who hits a ball over a net (or successfully launches a reality television show) yet we allow the minds that have transformed our world and our culture to languish, save late-night debates in university dorm rooms and smoky coffee houses.
Something unique in the annals of Australian literature.
John Clarke was one of Australia's supreme satirists, and here he daringly creates an entire novel out of just two concepts: gags about tennis and jokes about great minds of the 20th century. Styled as a series of daily reports on a tennis tournament in Paris, we witness the arguments, heroics, controversies and badinage that emerge from the world's most famous personages on the court. Virginia Woolf, Frida Kahlo, Agatha Christie, Rosa Luxemberg, Albert Einstein, TS Eliot, George Orwell, Marcel Proust... the list is seemingly endless.
Clarke seems to have taken his inspiration from the kind of "university humour" found in the more intellectual magazines of his youth. If you don't have a working knowledge of the output of Tristan Tzara or Christina Stead, you may be overwhelmed. (And if you don't like tennis, prepare to be confounded!) Those who persist may still find themselves exhausted by the repetitive nature of the material; indeed, this feels like it would work well as a weekly serialisation rather than a one- or two-session read. And any reader will face the vicissitudes of their own areas of knowledge and styles of humour - the jokes range from the obvious (a crowd left waiting for Beckett on a court with a lone tree as set dressing) to the niche (Carol Reed being the 'third man' to take a set from another player). Still, who wouldn't enjoy a pensive umpire Rodin, cocksure Ayn Rand cursing at the press, Einstein questioning whether the match feels as long for him as it does for the crowd, and Proust's epic response to a simple question at the post-match conference? Clarke describes Scott Fitzgerald as a man "who looks to many Europeans to be the quintessential American, and to many Americans like something out of a play". Clarke also allows his skill for imitation to emerge from the fray, such as when he mimics the celebrated bon mots of Wilde: "A gentleman should always be serious. It amuses one's butler and fortifies the religious convictions of one's mother."
The extent of Clarke's game playing (pardon the pun) is made clear in the appendix, where he lists in detail the scores of every match in the tournament. Several hundred of them, many of which are not mentioned in the text itself. It's bewildering stuff.
At the heart of this novel, one supposes, is a question about how we as a culture value our literary, philosophical, and social minds. I'm a tennis lover myself, but Clarke rightly questions why we send rabid packs of photographers to interrogate anyone who hits a ball over a net (or successfully launches a reality television show) yet we allow the minds that have transformed our world and our culture to languish, save late-night debates in university dorm rooms and smoky coffee houses.
Something unique in the annals of Australian literature.
August 1, 2020
Clarke's overarching joke, making prominent figures from the twentieth century play each other in a tennis tournament, wore thin after only a few pages but I enjoyed reading it a short chapter at a time. His endless match reports contained many witticisms about the players and allusions to their public and private personas. For example, every time Chekhov gave a post-match interview, he expressed a desire to go to Moscow. Some of the combinations of personalities he dreamt up, in singles and in doubles, were very entertaining. The humour turned darker as the book progressed, as tennis became something of a metaphor and some of the competitors disappeared or were killed. The explanatory subtitle is a good addition since the edition I read.
December 31, 2019
"Later op de avond ontstond er enige opschudding toen de Franse journalist Roland Barthes naar de bestuurskamer werd ontboden, waar zich een verhitte discussie afspeelde over zijn artikel in de Paris-Match van afgelopen donderdag. Barthes stelde dat het tennis fundamentele veranderingen heeft ondergaan, en dat tegenwoordig de relatie tussen de verslaggevers en het publiek het belangrijkste intellectuele contract is. Volgens hem is de speler in feite dood. [...]
De voorzitter bracht naar voren dat als het tijdperk van de speler inderdaad voorbij was, de heer Barthes zich de moeite kon besparen de rest van het toernooi bij te wonen.
Barthes antwoordde dat aangezien de discussie over het evenement belangrijker was dan het evenement zelf, het er niet toe deed of hij het al dan niet bijwoonde. Het enige wat van betekenis was, was wat hij erover schreef.
'Maar je zult er niet veel over kunnen schrijven als je er niet bij bent, jochie,' zei de voorzitter.
'U bent blijkbaar niet erg op de hoogte van de geschiedenis van het tennis,' reageerde Barthes.
'Juist omdat ik daar zoveel van af weet, is mij de voorzittershamer toevertrouwd,' zei de voorzitter.
'Hoe kunt u nou óveral bij zijn geweest wat er sinds de oorsprong van het tennis is gebeurd?'
'Ik zei niet dat ik erbij was geweest. Je vroeg me of ik er wat vanaf wist.'
'U hebt erover gelezen?'
'Nou ja zeg, natuurlijk heb ik erover gelezen.'
Barthes glimlachte. 'Geen verdere vragen, edelachtbare,' zei hij." (84-85)
De voorzitter bracht naar voren dat als het tijdperk van de speler inderdaad voorbij was, de heer Barthes zich de moeite kon besparen de rest van het toernooi bij te wonen.
Barthes antwoordde dat aangezien de discussie over het evenement belangrijker was dan het evenement zelf, het er niet toe deed of hij het al dan niet bijwoonde. Het enige wat van betekenis was, was wat hij erover schreef.
'Maar je zult er niet veel over kunnen schrijven als je er niet bij bent, jochie,' zei de voorzitter.
'U bent blijkbaar niet erg op de hoogte van de geschiedenis van het tennis,' reageerde Barthes.
'Juist omdat ik daar zoveel van af weet, is mij de voorzittershamer toevertrouwd,' zei de voorzitter.
'Hoe kunt u nou óveral bij zijn geweest wat er sinds de oorsprong van het tennis is gebeurd?'
'Ik zei niet dat ik erbij was geweest. Je vroeg me of ik er wat vanaf wist.'
'U hebt erover gelezen?'
'Nou ja zeg, natuurlijk heb ik erover gelezen.'
Barthes glimlachte. 'Geen verdere vragen, edelachtbare,' zei hij." (84-85)
August 11, 2011
I love John Clarke. I think the man's a genius. However this is the least funny thing he's ever done. Also, it is very similar to a book from the early 1980's by New Zealander Michael O'Leary.
January 30, 2020
Not without merit and some serious moments of gold but the idea gets tired real quick. Would possibly work better as a series of radio shorts
March 28, 2020
An odd sort of book, very true to Clarke's dry sense of humour. The French Open (tennis on clay), envisaged as a contest between the greats of the arts and sciences drawn from across the 19th and first half of the 20th Century. Playing tennis.
Hmmm.
Given the conceit, I was impressed how well it all worked. The titanic semi-final clash between the favourite "SuperTom" TS Eliot and maverick outsider James Joyce was genuinely laugh out loud funny.
The high-brow jokes demand a fair bit from the reader - while I loved the quip from Hannah Arendt in response to the media's questioning of her choice of Heidegger as mixed doubles partner ("The question is flawed. Martin Heidegger is the partner I have chosen. No one else can make my choice") - I do wonder what someone less familiar with mid-century German political theory might make of it.
Still, I'm reviewing it, and I'm giving it four stars. The Eliot/ Joyce tussle alone is worth a couple of stars...
Hmmm.
Given the conceit, I was impressed how well it all worked. The titanic semi-final clash between the favourite "SuperTom" TS Eliot and maverick outsider James Joyce was genuinely laugh out loud funny.
The high-brow jokes demand a fair bit from the reader - while I loved the quip from Hannah Arendt in response to the media's questioning of her choice of Heidegger as mixed doubles partner ("The question is flawed. Martin Heidegger is the partner I have chosen. No one else can make my choice") - I do wonder what someone less familiar with mid-century German political theory might make of it.
Still, I'm reviewing it, and I'm giving it four stars. The Eliot/ Joyce tussle alone is worth a couple of stars...
October 29, 2020
Take a list of the famous and put them in a tennis tournament.
Any particular order, well not really and only the odd laugh eventuated. A few amusing if not pseudo intellectual comments about philosophy. Several of the pairing are simply not funny, smart or relevant.
His time on the television was very funny and well scripted with inciteful comments.
Presumably this was only published on the back of his other work.
Any particular order, well not really and only the odd laugh eventuated. A few amusing if not pseudo intellectual comments about philosophy. Several of the pairing are simply not funny, smart or relevant.
His time on the television was very funny and well scripted with inciteful comments.
Presumably this was only published on the back of his other work.
January 1, 2018
Really quite marvellous
February 11, 2024
Added Magritte quote, having mislaid it 11 February 2024
This is a strange, unique book, highly original, with a grand premise - what if there were to be a splendid tennis tournament, held in Paris, featuring men’s and women’s singles, doubles and mixed doubles, contested by the greatest figures in twentieth century arts and letters.
Imagine such an event with matches involving T S Eliot (‘SuperTom’), James Joyce, Rosa Luxembourg, Virginia Woolf (Virginia Stephen Woolf) and Ernest Hemingway (‘Ernie’).
It’s a glorious concept enabling Clarke to deploy his elephantine erudition to cleverly reference the ideas, characteristics and style of each of the protagonists in tennis idiom: for Hemingway, simple dialogue focusing on food and drink; Harold Arlen is unable to ‘get happy’; SuperTom (Eliot) unbuttons a fanatical Vincent van Gogh; George Orwell’s down and out (almost), and we have an enjoyably crude and dyspeptic DH Lawrence.
Unfortunately the whole thing doesn’t work, because it is a one–note piece suffering from Bolero like repetition of this single idea: repeated match descriptions pitting these creative titans against one another. It becomes a slog to get through it, although I particularly enjoyed Rene Magritte hiding his face:
This is a strange, unique book, highly original, with a grand premise - what if there were to be a splendid tennis tournament, held in Paris, featuring men’s and women’s singles, doubles and mixed doubles, contested by the greatest figures in twentieth century arts and letters.
Imagine such an event with matches involving T S Eliot (‘SuperTom’), James Joyce, Rosa Luxembourg, Virginia Woolf (Virginia Stephen Woolf) and Ernest Hemingway (‘Ernie’).
It’s a glorious concept enabling Clarke to deploy his elephantine erudition to cleverly reference the ideas, characteristics and style of each of the protagonists in tennis idiom: for Hemingway, simple dialogue focusing on food and drink; Harold Arlen is unable to ‘get happy’; SuperTom (Eliot) unbuttons a fanatical Vincent van Gogh; George Orwell’s down and out (almost), and we have an enjoyably crude and dyspeptic DH Lawrence.
Unfortunately the whole thing doesn’t work, because it is a one–note piece suffering from Bolero like repetition of this single idea: repeated match descriptions pitting these creative titans against one another. It becomes a slog to get through it, although I particularly enjoyed Rene Magritte hiding his face:
The quieter Magritte had an idea of his own. He kept the ball between his head and the camera at all times so that the image projected around the world was a neatly dressed man, behaving perfectly normally, with a tennis ball instead of a face. (p253).
November 14, 2008
This is essentially an old-fashioned Literary Competition (of the sort now only really found in the Spectator and the New Statesman) but sustained to such an amazing degree.
The conceit is fantastic, and manages to remain interesting all the way through to the end. And as with any good "smart" humour, there are so many jokes and references in here that you're unlikely to catch them all even on a second reading (one of the quiet delights is to review the entire results table which is provided and speculate about some of the matches not featured in the main book.)
Probably a somewhat acquired taste though - I imagine that if you don't "get" it straight-away, you probably won't.
The conceit is fantastic, and manages to remain interesting all the way through to the end. And as with any good "smart" humour, there are so many jokes and references in here that you're unlikely to catch them all even on a second reading (one of the quiet delights is to review the entire results table which is provided and speculate about some of the matches not featured in the main book.)
Probably a somewhat acquired taste though - I imagine that if you don't "get" it straight-away, you probably won't.
January 26, 2016
This book is enchantingly unusual in terms of style, structure, subject matter, etc. I loved the word play that incorporates the real, surreal, and unreal histories of famous figures like Salvador Dali, Amelia Earhart, and Roland Barthes. Good for quite a few smiles, light chuckles, and many missed allusions (even with helping from everyone's trusted reading aid, Google). I'm pretty sure I would have given this 4.5 stars if I knew the least bit about tennis.
November 16, 2014
While this book was somewhat beyond me; some the characters were unknown, I do think the book was not edgy enough. A men's final between Orwell and Joyce was a pretty safe outcome. The women's tournament did not have the impetus for interest - it was a bit cumbersome. The style and prose was efficient and easy to follow.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
March 12, 2009
This book followed a fictional tennis tournament involving the greatest minds of the 20th century (scientists, philosophers, artists, writers, actors, etc.). Lots of references that I did not fully follow. It had me cheering for the artists, especially the Magritte/Dali doubles team!
September 11, 2010
Triple sec humour. I wish I was sufficiently well-read to fully appreciate it.
January 18, 2019
Interesting and it helps if you have a grasp of 19th-20th century art/history/literature, so you can figure out who the characters are.
Good to dip in and out of.
Good to dip in and out of.
Displaying 1 - 17 of 17 reviews