david foster wallace was depressed by karen green

This is just incredible. You know what I do most on this blog? Besides blogging, which I don't do too often anymore, I am checking the stats to see how many and which and where and what led them here, people (is this a legit sentence anymore?) find their way to my site.

In the very first weeks, there was always some guy from Denmark on my site, actually checking daily what I wrote and what not. He ceased (maybe he deceased) doing that. The post that was read most often on my site, is this one about DFW, Karen Green and MZD and guess how people come to surf on it.
Someone actually googled: david foster wallace was depressed by karen green. And take a look at the links google gives for this search. There's not only "David was a big sweater" but also, and, well, you can check it out, a guy that tries to convince you that "Roger Federer killed David Foster Wallace."
He's somehow paralleling Federer's not so good performance of 2008 to DFWs equally not so good performance of 2008, which led to his suicide on September 14th, and well, somehow, Federer is a lousy saviour after all, and won the US Open on September 13th 2008. The argument goes something like this: In his piece about Federer, Wallace idealized Federer as the saviour, yes, Jesus Christ or GOD himself (does the idea of GOD contain a self, anyway?). Although Federer sucked bad, the whole year, he finally nailed the US Open and let's see, what our little friend on the other side of the internet has to say about it:

Federer would win the US Open on September 13th, but it was likely too late for redemption. God's immanence on Earth had been retracted, the age of miracles was over. DFW was found hung the next day.

 I would like to add the opinion that Federer's win was actually thought of  by DFW as the second coming of christ and so he subsequently hanged himself the next day to see if he was already dead. Jesus!

DFW, Federer and Nadal, This Sunday

The French Open. Today. Men's Semifinals. Rafael Nadal vs. Andy Murray and Roger Federer vs. Novak Djokovic. The top 4 in the world. Djokovic has won about every single tournament this year he showed up for and would have climbed the world ranking to #1 if he had beaten Federer today. The match was hard, but he didn't (win, that is). He lost the tie-break in the fourth. Earlier Rafael Nadal had a very hard match against Murray, who had about a hundred break points that Nadal all defended, at least in the end stage of the third set. The second set was "großes Tennis", as we say in Germany. It was Nadal's birthday, too. His 25th. Congratulations!

Why am I telling you about this, you might ask. Tennis is of no interest to me. I thought this blog was about literature (and movies and stuff, too!) Well, it might interest you, because the French Open Final on Sunday at about 2:45pm Middle European (Summer) Time is Rafael Nadal vs. Roger Federer and David Foster Wallace wrote a little piece for the New York Times's (regard Strunk and White!) Play Magazine on Federer back in 2006, mostly about the Wimbledon Final between Nadal and Federer, that is called Federer as Religious Experience, and that might interest you, if you are into tennis or not (DFW would suffice for that matter).

The semifinal between Nadal and Murray was mostly what is known as a "hard-hitter" match. Both most of the time residing at the base line, hitting hard across (or long-line) the court. It is something that DFW describes as "brute force" in his NYT piece. And there is not so much grace in it, I agree. The other semifinal today, between Federer and Djokovic was somehow lighter, much more playful, with a lot more variance in the game. Murray outplayed Nadal with stops a lot, something Nadal apparently couldn't cope with or understand, for that matter. It was 52 minutes into the match that Nadal played his first stop. There were two or three more in the match from him, and they hit Murray as much by surprise as Murray's had disconcerted Nadal. It was a match about every single point. Only two games went straight through. The first by Murray, the second, and final, thus winning the match, by Nadal.

Last year was the first that I watched some tv-tennis due to the interest in the sport that DFW induced through Infinite Jest. The only match I remember now (and only in terms of that I watched it and what general impression it left on me) was a match between Söderling and someone else that left me with the impression that hard-hitting tennis is no game of grace, of which trait (is grace a trait?) I thought modern tennis is robbed, or deprived of (I hadn't seen a tennis match in about 2 decades before that, so that evaluation might have been quite arbitrary). But the Wallace piece mentioned (and linked to) earlier describes exactly that. The change from virtuosic (and also dumb serve and volley) tennis to improved-racket-hard-hitting-top-spin-tennis (devoid of grace, until Federer). So, the Nadal vs. Murray match was mostly hard-hitting, but I attribute this more to Murray's style of play. Federer vs. Djokovic was a bit more virtuosic, it was softer, there was more touch, more feel to every ball, to every point and although The White Stripes sing "the problems hide in your curls" Federer really nailed Djokovic down every time he tried to run off with his incredibly deserved break-points. Also Federer doesn't have any real curls. The fourth and fifth were very fine tennis, indeed.

So, actually this is it. I'm looking forward to the women's finals tomorrow (Li Na vs. Schiavone) and the Nadal-Federer match on Sunday. If anyone wants to join me, you know where I live. If not, I probably don't know you but would nevertheless be pleased to watch the match with you. In the meantime, read the DFW piece and prepare yourself for a classic tennis match. It's like Germany vs. England in football (btw, I feel terribly sorry that Gomez scored twice today against Austria despite of being in the worse team. He should get a new haircut, too!).

By the way: I really tried to find that point between Federer and Agassi that DFW first talks about, but couldn't. I actually think it a) does not exist or b) was not televised. You should watch the fourth set of that match nevertheless, since Federer OBLITERATES Agassi 6-1. Federer is at the top of his game and Agassi just a few days before officially announcing that he quits active tennis. So long.

Almost forgot, a quarter-funny (quarter-final?) version of the "Hitler upset with" series.