Books and Books

The five-city, six-event Terrible Splendor World Tour ’09 kicked off last Wednesday with a reading at Books&Books in Coral Gables. Due to a great effort by my local connections, the room was packed, there were plenty of interesting questions, and the store sold all their copies of the book. The next reading is this Saturday morning at The Bookloft here in Great Barrington, Mass.

Richard Pagliaro at Tennis Week wrote a great review of the book, which you can see, along with his interview of me, at tennisweek.com. The Wall Street Journal also published a long review. Although a bit mixed, it was mostly positive, and apparently was responsible for a surge in sales. The Boston Globe also ran a brief review in Jan Gardner’s Sunday “Shelf Life” column. The Globe is planning a regular review as well this coming Sunday, as is the Washington Post. 

Finally, if you missed my NPR interviews, here are some convenient links to listen to just my parts of the shows: “The World” (click “download” or the arrow next to the speaker icon) and “Only a Game” (my segment begins at 48:10).

The World is Only a Game, a Vanity Fair

This week I taped interviews for two NPR shows,  “Only a Game” and “The World.” “Only a Game” will be broadcast tomorrow, Saturday. It airs on most stations at 7 a.m., but instead of setting your alarm you can listen to it anytime afterward at onlyagame.org. “The World” is scheduled to air next Tuesday, Wednesday, or Thursday. Click here to see when it’s on where you live. Again, you can listen to it anytime afterward online.

I also did an interview yesterday with Tennis Week, which will appear on its website sometime soon.

The new (May) issue of Vanity Fair gives Splendor a one-sentence review (the only kind they do) in its “Hot Type” column: “For his smashing serve and spectacular rallies between sports history and political drama, game, set, and match go to Marshall Jon Fisher’s A Terrible Splendor.”

Also look for a review this Sunday in the San Francisco Chronicle and a writeup with photo(s) in Jan Gardner’s “Shelf Life” column in the Boston Globe. 

Finally, click here for a view of the ad that Crown put in the new (May) issue of Harper’s.

Financial Times are Good

I just got off the phone with my first interviewer, Buddy Early, the editor of the gay sports monthly, Compete. Our call was scheduled for 1pm, so when the phone rang at 12:59, I almost picked up with, “You’re Early, Buddy.” But he probably gets enough of that. In any case, the interview went well and presumably will be included in his review of the book in the May issue.

In other news, a few weeks ago our first review, a very favorable one, came in from the Financial Times of London. We don’t as yet have a British publisher, and the review was over a month early, but still it was very nice to get.  Peter Aspden called Splendor a “vivid account,” “a gripping read,” “lively and scrupulous.”

There’s a very nice mention also in the “Buzz” column on Inside Tennis‘s website. In fact, the writer took the column’s title—”The Fine Membrane Between Anticipation and Fulfillment”—from the book’s opening paragraph.

In coming weeks I’ll be making appearances on public radio’s “The World,” a Boston cable show, “The Literati Scene,” and another public-radio show, “Writer’s Voice“. See my Events page for more details.

Finally, the New York Times Book Review and the Wall Street Journal have confirmed that they will be reviewing Splendor (though they don’t say when or by whom). Also keep an eye out for a full-page ad in the May issue of Harper’s, and online ads on tennisweek.com and Harpers.org.