About this episode

Brendan O'Meara interviews Giri Nathan about his book on tennis and the influences of art criticism and nature writing on sports writing.

"When I was writing the book, I used a lot of my interest in art criticism and nature writing to get cross pollinate into my sports writing. And I really try not to fall into a rut and just read only adjacent to my own subject or my own field," says Giri Nathan, author of Changeover: A Young Rivalry and a New Era of Men's Tennis. Today we have Giri Nathan (@giricube on IG), he is a staff writer/cofounder of Defector and the author of Changeover: A Young Rivalry and a New Era of Men's Tennis. It's one of the best books I've read in the last couple years. It's funny and voicey and if David Foster Wallace's tennis writing made sweet, sweet love to John McPhee's Levels of the Game, you get Changeover. How Giri is able to illustrate why Carlos Alcaraz and Jannik Sinner are so captivating and capable of inheriting the mantle held by Roger Federer, Rafa Nadal, and Novak Djokavic (who's still going) is a triumph. This book may very well be the future of sports biography in that access to principal figures is almost impossible so you have to approach your subject more with a critical eye, like an art critic, and we talk about that … Giri Nathan's work has appeared in New York Magazine…

People in this episode

Host: Brendan O'Meara

Guest: Giri Nathan

Topics covered

• sports writing
• art criticism
• nature writing
• tennis
• biography
• influences

Keywords

• Giri Nathan
• Changeover
• sports biography
• tennis
• art criticism
• nature writing

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Defector, New York Magazine, The NYT Book Review, The Believer, National Geographic

Books & works: Changeover: A Young Rivalry and a New Era of Men's Tennis, Year's Best Sports Writing, The Best American Food & Travel Writing

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