Tristram Potter Coffin (1922–2012)

Cayman 2024 - #8 - My Story: In the fall of 1979, i began my college education at the University of Pennsylvania ....Quite a culture shock from my Northeast suburban upbringing to find myself living right in Philadelphia! That first year of my journey to a BS in Mechanical Engineering was full of all the non-engineering courses to get them out of the way....one of which was an intro to English Literature. Huge lecture Hall....hundreds of Freshman.....and this was one of 5 courses i had to take every semester. My professor was Tristram Potter Coffin, the author of this book! He was the very stereotypical Ivy League professor in appearance & demeanor......and i remember almost NOTHING from this class.....but i do remember we started the class by reading a book he had just published! This was early 1980......I remember thinking how cool it was to be taught a book by the author who wrote it, and i remember it was green. And there it stopped!!! For years i would remember this book......knowing i had read it, not being able to find it in all my boxes of college things i kept, and having no memory of it beyond a tennis theme. So, i recently went online, found one, and bought it, and brought it on my Caribbean vacation. The Book: I thoroughly enjoyed this. Nice sparse prose from the perspective of a college-aged kid working as an assistant to a CT country club tennis pro. It is his story.....but really the story of the goings on at an upscale country club......and not all of it is pretty and glamorous. He has an infatuation with a younger beautiful girl, Susan, that goes on for 3 summers, yet never seems to bring himself to approach her beyond his professional capacity in the tennis shack. The sordid realities of the real Susan vs. his perceived perfect Susan eventually force him to sadly confront truths he was unable to see. There is enough humor in this steady story to keep it fun, a little too much detail about Tennis (of which i know nothing) and blow-by-blow accounting of matches and scoring which made my eyes glaze over. But i enjoyed it a lot and it was a quick easy read. And no.....I did not remember one blessed thing about the story!… (meer)

An interesting little book about baseball in American literary and folkloric culture that would be more interesting if written today; the references to "Negroes" and, at one point, a "Negress," are off-putting in this context. Also some of the terminology of the game which he uses is no longer in circulation. Obviously, this is all a strange criticism in a way, he was writing using the vernacular of the time, but it's really hard to ignore now. Anyhow, it's worth a read, don't get me wrong, I enjoyed it overall, but if someone has a recommendation for an updated version of this, I'd love to hear it.… (meer)