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Breaking Back: How I Lost Everything and Won Back My Life
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Music Books > James Taylor > Item 2
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Breaking Back: How I Lost Everything and Won Back My Life
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by James Blake
Sales Rank: 9687
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List Price: $25.95
$17.13
At Amazon
on 12-29-2007.
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Features
Hardcover: 288 pages
Publisher: Harper July 3, 2007
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0061343498
ISBN-13: 978-0061343490
Product Dimensions:
9 x 6.1 x 1.4 inches
Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
From Publishers Weekly
Tennis champion Blake, who has appeared on Oprah and The Tonight Show, shares his string of hard-won successes both on the court and in his personal health. A child of a black father and white British mother in Fairfield, Conn., Blake hooked into serious tennis playing by age 11, when he was paired with coach Brian Barker, who remained his gentle mentor for the duration of his career. Having turned professional by his sophomore year of college at Harvard in 1991, Blake had mixed success on the pro circuit for the first few years. Sustaining confidence seemed to be Blake's biggest challenge, as he struggled to follow the advice of his father, Tom, who was fighting a losing battle with stomach cancer: You can't control your level of talent, but you can control your level of effort. At age 23, he decided to shave his trademark dreadlocks. Soon after, he ran into a steel net post during a practice game in Rome, fracturing his neck vertebrae. Blake was later diagnosed with paralyzing zoster, or shingles. His memoir is an inspirational account of overcoming the odds to return to competitive playing by 2004. (Aug.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
From The Washington Post's Book World/washingtonpost.com
Reviewed by Bruce Schoenfeld
The zone of unreality that often separates important politicians from the real world is nothing compared to the cocoons that surround top professional tennis players. As teenagers, they're already getting handed off from tournament director to tournament director, lodged in luxurious hotels and catered to by sponsors, agents and tour officials while the endorsement checks accumulate. Any interaction with normal people in the cities they pass through is fleeting.
James Blake has always been different -- but not that different. Raised by an African-American father and white mother in an academic-minded household in Fairfield, Conn. (his middle-class parents awarded him $25 for every 100 books he read), he wasn't shipped off to a tennis academy at the first sign of precocious talent; he actually played on his high school team. For two years, Blake attended Harvard and became the best collegiate player in America. But after a flurry of interest from some of the world's biggest management groups, which saw in him the sketchy outline of a Tiger Woods of tennis, he turned professional in 1999.
Before long, he was tucked into the same cocoon as the tennis lifers, partying with Giorgio Armani, meeting the pope, accepting as his due the perks of his profession. "Life out on the tour," he admits early in Breaking Back, his chronicle of a 2004 season filled with distress, injury, illness and -- ultimately -- insight, "is often one long dream." Four years into his professional career, he'd won only a single ATP Tour event. He routinely stayed up all night after each loss, distracting himself with hours of video poker. Yet as he shamefully realized, as of December 2003, his biggest decision was whether to shave off the dreadlocks that had become his signature look and risk losing endorsement dollars in the process.
During the annus horribilis that followed, Blake came to understand the shallowness of such an existence. First his father, an ex-soldier called "iron man" by his wife, fell ill with stomach cancer. He was already deteriorating when Blake suffered a freak accident on a practice court in Italy that fractured a vertebra. Then he contracted zoster, or shingles, which rendered half his face immobile, forced him to shuffle down hallways like an invalid and threatened to end his career.
The fracture had a silver lining: It enabled Blake to spend his father's last weeks with him. And in the midst of his own recovery, Blake experienced an epiphany: "[I] thought about how many matches I had squandered or let go out of impatience or frustration . . . how little I had bothered to learn about all the cities I'd visited. I thought about how truly unique my position was, and yet it was not until then that I'd ever recognized it as such."
As his run of misfortune continued, so did his philosophical journey. When he attempted to push through a comeback session against his doctor's recommendations, he found he could hardly hit the ball. "That was the first time when I really came to recognize the limits of willpower and resolve," he writes, words of true wisdom that I've been waiting years for any athlete to utter. (Next on my list: "God had no interest in the outcome of this game.") Ultimately, it became clear to Blake that his former concerns were hardly concerns at all. "When you play tennis for a living," he writes, "the world is pretty simple; it's the rest of the world and the rest of life that's much more complicated."
Not since Courting Danger, Alice Marble's 1991 tale that revealed (or perhaps invented) her undercover work as a World War II spy, has a tennis autobiography offered its readers so little tennis. By the time Blake offers detailed play-by-play of a match 186 pages in, we're ready for it -- and firmly on his side. Befitting the heightened state of Blake's enlightenment, the book's climax is a defeat: to Andre Agassi, in a U.S. Open semifinal.
Yet in true Zen fashion, by relaxing his grip, Blake began to succeed as never before, winning two more tournaments and earning a ranking in the world's Top 25. Taking stock of his success in December 2005, he asked Brian Barker, his longtime coach, if he was truly "bound for bigger and better things than either of us really thought were possible." Barker's response serves as a fitting coda for this admirably unusual sports memoir: "He looked at me incredulously. 'I have no idea,' he said."
Copyright 2007, The Washington Post. All Rights Reserved.
Owner Reviews, Ratings, Comments and Criticism
Maybe it's because I grew up in a Connecticut town just a few miles away from James Blake's hometown of Fairfield or that James is one of the most exciting tennis players to watch play a match....whatever the case, James has written a compelling memoir about the trials and travails of his recent life only to see him experience a renaissance in personal growth both on and off the court. "Breaking Back" is the story of James Blake's triumphs over adversity and it is one fine read. As James says, a tennis match is not unlike life, itself. It's packed with victories and losses and all the drama that accompanies it. For James, a serious neck injury, the death of his father and being diagnosed with zoster (or "shingles") all in one year would drive anyone underground for a time. On top of all of that, James reveals he was born with scoliosis (curvature of the spine) and had to wear a back brace for years. James is lucky, though, to come from a close, loving family, have a coach, Brian Barker, (who is as much a mentor as anything else) and have dozens of friends who support him in his darkest hours. They form the basis of J-Block, the chief rooting section for James. Shining above anything or anyone else, though, is his dad. Thomas's fatherly advice is well-taken by the young tennis pro and it serves him well as he struggles with his own illnesses and some of the psychological barriers that hold him back on the court. He refers to his Dad as "Superman" and the elder Blake's death from cancer is the harshest blow for James. This book plumbs the depths of an inner life filled with joy and sorrow but the great news is the rebirth of James Blake. And the ways he comes roaring back onto the court and takes control again over his own life make this book a fascinating look at one of the outstanding tennis players of our day and one of an inspirational young man who happens to play it. James's creed is "get better" and he does step by step and day by day. He is truly the comeback kid. I highly recommend "Breaking Back" for its honesty and courage.
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Breaking Back: How I Lost Everything and Won Back My Life
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