Book Review: Off the Court

Book Review: Off the Court

Author: Arthur Ashe with Neil Amdur

Date: 1981

Publisher: Signet / New American Library

ISBN: 0-451-11766-2

        

Length: 230 pages including statistics sheets

Quote: “Tennis is a metaphor for life.”

Arthur Ashe was the only African-American male tennis star of his day. In 1981 that was all he was known for. Fans expected his post-tennis memoir to be a tennis success story, and it is—lists of tennis scores at the back, memories of games, some harmless gossip about other athletes. About the rest of a young man’s life in the 1960s and 1970s it was, well, tactful. Ashe didn’t claim to have been a monk before marriage, nor did he tell sleazy locker-room stories; he didn’t claim to be un-bothered by race prejudice, nor did he rage about it. His image as a Perfect Virginia Gentleman never really slipped before, during, or after the writing of his first book. 

He would become famous for other things after 1981. Though trim and fit, he had a heart attack at 37 and had bypass surgery before publishing Off the Court. A blood transfusion, thought necessary to save his life, infected him with AIDS. A later book about life with AIDS was, briefly, an international bestseller.

Meanwhile, stardom had given Ashe unique opportunities to practice quiet generosity. Off the Court gives only passing mention to his belief that successful minority-group athletes would raise the social status of their groups even in segregated South Africa. It remained for the writer known as Mark Mathabane, and Ashe’s tennis-playing friend Stan Rogers, to describe what Ashe tried to do—and did—for South African youth.

This makes Off the Court an extraordinary, perhaps unique, specimen of the celebrity memoir genre. Most entertainers’ books downplay the well publicized mistakes these celebrities have made, and attempt to publicize—in a good way—the good things they are doing. Ashe was still fairly young, and in Off the Court he made some comments that seemed more outspoken than his quiet manner had led fans to expect, but he didn’t try to publicize his charitable efforts...and a few minor testosterone surges seem to constitute his biggest mistakes. He could, without attracting criticism, have included a full chapter on the young athletes he wanted to sponsor, their merits, their needs, and so on. He didn’t. Offhand I can’t think of another recent celebrity memoir that downplays the nice things a celebrity is doing.

Offhand I can’t think of a recent book in any genre that better explains what Virginians’ famous sense of honor requires of us. Off the Court is recommended to everybody.