Louisa Thomas
Appearances
The New Yorker Radio Hour
Louisa Thomas on a Ballplayer’s Epic Final Game; Plus, Remembering the Composer of “Annie”
I love that opening line.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
Louisa Thomas on a Ballplayer’s Epic Final Game; Plus, Remembering the Composer of “Annie”
What I know about the genesis of the story is what he told us. In 1977, he published a reprint of this in a slender little volume, and he wrote an introduction. And he said in the introduction that his plan had been to go visit a paramour on Beacon Hill. He was married, but his marriage was dissolving. And he knocked on the door, and his paramour was not there.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
Louisa Thomas on a Ballplayer’s Epic Final Game; Plus, Remembering the Composer of “Annie”
So he went to the game instead, to Fenway Park, to watch Ted Williams play in his last game. And he was so moved by what he saw that he felt compelled to write about it.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
Louisa Thomas on a Ballplayer’s Epic Final Game; Plus, Remembering the Composer of “Annie”
Ted Williams was this boyhood hero. Sometimes, you know, we can go back and find all the great reasons that Updake loved him. But I think some of them were, you know, born out of a child's imagination. There's a lovely passage, actually, in the piece that he wrote about how Ted Williams was originally always this line in a box score.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
Louisa Thomas on a Ballplayer’s Epic Final Game; Plus, Remembering the Composer of “Annie”
He felt a sort of sympathy with him because Updike was this great practitioner of his craft, as Williams was. And they both cared tremendously about these details. And there was something so pure about the way they took their swings.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
Louisa Thomas on a Ballplayer’s Epic Final Game; Plus, Remembering the Composer of “Annie”
I had the chance, actually, the other day to go back and look at his draft. And there's this passage, and it's one of the passages that Updike actually worked over most, both in the original process of writing it with the typewriter. You can see all these Xs out, and also with his pencil after. He's really...
The New Yorker Radio Hour
Louisa Thomas on a Ballplayer’s Epic Final Game; Plus, Remembering the Composer of “Annie”
really trying to get it exactly right so that, you know, there's this line, it went over the first baseman's head and rose along a straight line.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
Louisa Thomas on a Ballplayer’s Epic Final Game; Plus, Remembering the Composer of “Annie”
And when you see, when you look at the draft, you know, it went over the first baseman's head and rose, originally it was just, and rose along a straight line. And then he made it rose slowly along a straight line. But then it's not slowly, it's meticulously along a straight line.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
Louisa Thomas on a Ballplayer’s Epic Final Game; Plus, Remembering the Composer of “Annie”
And I mean, there's just kind of constant emendation, refining, getting it right, because these marginal differences really matter. And it's those marginal differences that are the difference between a pop-up, between a long fly, and between a home run. And Updike really understood that, and so did Williams.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
Louisa Thomas on a Ballplayer’s Epic Final Game; Plus, Remembering the Composer of “Annie”
I just love that line, gods do not answer letters. His editor on this piece was William Shawn. He said it was the best thing that they'd ever published in the magazine about baseball, although Updike sort of made a quip that that wasn't saying much because they didn't really, the previous editor, Harold Ross, had not liked baseball among many other things. So, but William Shawn did.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
Louisa Thomas on a Ballplayer’s Epic Final Game; Plus, Remembering the Composer of “Annie”
And, you know, there weren't a lot of sports writers writing like this. In some ways, he really kind of set the bar for great writing about sports. It's not really sports writing, right? It's great writing that happens to be about sports. It happens to be about a great human being who is playing a great game.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
Louisa Thomas on a Ballplayer’s Epic Final Game; Plus, Remembering the Composer of “Annie”
I actually was teaching this piece by John Updike about Ted Williams to a nonfiction creative writing class that I teach at Harvard. And this is one of those pieces that I refer to sometimes when I need to enter the right voice. when I sort of need to remember how to start, when I need to sort of get in the mood. This piece is so good at mood, so good at beginnings.