Roger Federer certainly seems to be the flavor de jour, partly because of his blog. I've found the blog interesting, but less for its contents (which are amusing enough) than for its sensibility. The Mighty Fed - UN Ambassador, James Bond impersonator, prankster, toilet connoisseur, budding interior decorator, Name-taking, butt-kicking tennis champion - comes off as lacking the outstanding quality that his general persona suggests: sophistication. Does anyone else thing there's a borderline goofy "Gee, whiz!" quality to the TMF's literary efforts?
I suppose this could be a matter of (writing) style. but the quality called "tone" is something that's hard to either affect or stage-manage, especially for an amateur auteur. If you can blank out the fact that this is TMF, candidate for Greatest Player of All Time, writing, and you dialed down the upscale peripherals, exchanged the princes and kings for students and teacher-chaperones, the exclusive restaurants for cafeterias, the sake for the clandestinely consumed bottle of beer (it made me jump out of bed with nightmares!), this could be an email home from a wide-eyed 16-year old on a class trip to Japan.
Hey, I stuck some wasabi mustard in Mr. Ponfret's rice today! Wow, the people here sure are polite! I would buy a samurai sword because it's a way cool ninja thing and sneak it on the plane, but I'm scared Mr. Ponfret will catch me!
It's all kind of sweet, actually, and suggests that there's this huge disconnect between what seems to be the increasingly well-crafted image of Roger as some kind of Interplanetary Bon Vivant and the "real" Federer - a spectacularly talented, good-natured, smart but under-educated and far less-worldly-than-you-might-think (or Nike and IMG want you to think) boy warrior. I suppose this taps into the way I've enjoyed tweaking TMF these past few months (I won't mention The Jacket, I promise!). I didn't realize it before, but I do now: it's partly because I'm getting a whiff of the odor that pours off the most carefully sanitized, scrubbed and disinfected of images.
A part of me suspects that TMF is being manipulated as thoroughly as was the young Andre Agassi, although it's to a far more attractive end. That's a matter subject to taste. And in these cases, I'm always the first to argue that it take two to tango. It's just that the willing partner (in this case, TMF), is usually adrift on that sea of mirrors called success to see things in perspective. Sure, TMF's "image" - if this indeed is a supportable line of thought - is attractive. But the simple fact and process of manufacture is off-putting, in and of itself.
Call me perverse, but I far prefer ingenuous Federer to Roger the IBV - after all, IBV's are a dime-a-dozen, but show me enduring innocence and you've melted my heart.