The Tennis Players: Analysis of Major Characters
"The Tennis Players: Analysis of Major Characters" explores a cast of diverse characters connected through their interactions in an academic setting and their shared passion for tennis. Central to the narrative is Lars Gustafsson, a visiting professor who grapples with professional and personal dilemmas presented by his students. Doobie Smith, a talented graduate student, navigates her commitment to Nietzschean philosophy while confronting moral challenges related to her role in a university production. Bill, another graduate student, stirs controversy with his radical reinterpretation of Strindberg's works, while Chris, a computer genius, seeks to leverage technology to further academic discourse but faces setbacks due to external circumstances. The story also introduces Abel, a skilled tennis player who imparts valuable life lessons to Gustafsson, and key administrative figures like Hugh Frisco and Geoffrey Gore, whose actions impact the university's governance. Through these characters, the narrative reflects on themes of ambition, ethics, and the intersection of art and academia, offering a multifaceted view of university life.
The Tennis Players: Analysis of Major Characters
Author: Lars Gustafsson
First published: Tennisspelarna, 1977 (English translation, 1983)
Genre: Novel
Locale: The University of Texas at Austin
Plot: Philosophical
Time: 1974
Lars Gustafsson (lahrz guhs-TAHF-shuhn), a visiting professor of Scandinavian literature at the University of Texas. Sharing, not coincidentally, both the author's name and profession, the professor reveals that he is glad to have escaped his native Sweden so that he can divide his time between playing tennis in the hot Texas sun and delivering popular lectures at the university. Gustafsson's indolent existence is threatened by the problems presented by two graduate students.
Doobie Smith, the professor's favorite student, an expert on nineteenth century European philosophers. Blonde, blue-eyed, and sensuously plump, Doobie reminds the professor of Friedrich Nietzsche's beloved Lou Salomé. Theoretically a committed Nietzschean, Doobie reverts to her fundamentalist Baptist roots when she discovers that her role as one of the Rhine Maidens in the student production of Richard Wagner's Das Rheingold is jeopardized by her refusal to sleep with the conductor. Outraged, Doobie enlists Professor Gustafsson's help in defending her honor.
Bill, a graduate student who has unearthed from the university library a book by Zygmunt I. Pietziewzskoczsky, an obscure Polish writer. Pietziewzskoczsky's book, Memoires d'un chimiste, if authenticated, will force a reevaluation of August Strindberg's Inferno. Tall, black, and intense, Bill disrupts the professor's graduate seminar when he theorizes that Strindberg's so-called Inferno Crisis is not a product of the author's mad delusions, as Strindberg experts maintain, but stems from a real conspiracy of Polish exiles who were trying to find out the results of Strindberg's chemical experiments.
Chris, a nearsighted computer genius who works part-time at the Strategic Air Command near Fort Worth. Having met Gustafsson on the tennis court, Chris invites the professor to his lodgings to drink beer and to meet the psychiatrist under whose care he has been since his nervous breakdown two years earlier. When Chris learns of Professor Gustafsson's Strindberg problem, he offers to employ the Strategic Air Command's unused memory to collate Inferno and Memoires d'un chimiste to test whether there is in fact sufficient correlation between the two books to justify an overhaul of Strindberg criticism. Before Chris can complete his task and remove the books from the computer, however, he is arrested during a campus demonstration and fired from his post. As a result, the Inferno and the one known copy of Memoires d'un chimiste are frozen in the Early Warning System's memory. The professor and other Strindberg authorities are saved from having to go to the trouble of reexamining accepted theories.
Abel, a superb tennis player who has won the Australian open once and reached the finals at Wimbledon twice but who prefers to play pickup matches on public tennis courts. From Abel, the professor learns to improve his serve and to refuse to allow the past to taint the present.
Hugh Frisco, chairman of the board of trustees for the University of Texas. Rich and accustomed to getting his own way, Senator Frisco convenes the board to fire the university's president for defying Frisco's order to replace Wagner's Das Rheingold with Giuseppe Verdi's Aida as the spring concert.
Geoffrey Gore, an oil magnate and vice chairman of the board of trustees who sides with Frisco in wanting to fire the president.
Professor John R. Perturber, Jr., a former professor of forestry and the current president of the university. The last four university presidents lasted less than one year apiece. The timid Perturber appears to be on his way out when he refuses to give in to the board of trustees on the matter of the spring concert.
Gordon Hugh Smith, a Travis County assistant sheriff who discovers Gore's black Cadillac parked in the middle of the university's baseball field. Smith, sad-faced and rather nondescript, achieves notoriety when he arrests Gore for drunken driving and Frisco for having sex with a waitress, the real scandal being that Frisco chooses for his liaison the batter's box, a spot traditionally reserved for the school's best batter to meet his girlfriend on the night before a big game. As a result of Smith's discovery, Gore and Frisco are fired from the board, President Perturber keeps his job, the spring concert goes on as planned, and Sheriff Smith becomes a local hero.