Double Fault by Lionel Shriver

protected with "Copyright © 1967 by Charles Novinsky" on the title page.
       The End of the Story had been more of a slog. The prose was dry and spare, recalling the cutting, droll sarcasm of the father she knew. The satire described a mythical population grown so vicarious that content was extinct. An automated world whose only work was entertainment divided between the watcher and the watched. Consequently, all art was reflexive: films concerned screenwriters, TV programs followed the "real lives" of sitcom actresses, and novels, the author noted with special disgust, exclusively detailed the puerile pencil-sharpening of literary hacks. The manuscript had left off in the middle of a sentence. Little wonder; with its theme that storytelling was dead, the narrative dripped with such self-loathing that to finish such a book would be antithetical.
      "That last manuscript was depressing," said Willy. "He'd even worked the phrase 'a bit of a giggle' into the text. He was smarting. I'm not sure he's smarting anymore, which is probably what's wrong with him."
      "You think all those failed novels explain why he's discouraged you from playing tennis?"
      "I wouldn't be that simplistic. I'd give my parents some credit

    for genuinely wanting to protect me. Original sin in my family is getting your hopes up ."

      "Honey?" They'd been sitting on Willy's bed; her mother had patted her hand. Willy was seventeen, and still feuding with her father over college. "Every young person wants to be a celebrated artist, a fashion model, or a big-name sports star. All but a very, very few end up working for IBM, or teaching youngsters who themselves want to be famous that they still have to learn to spell, like your father. And there's nothing wrong with having an ordinary life. We'd just like you to be prepared. If you set your heart on being Chris Everest—"
      " Evert ," Willy corrected, twanging her racket strings with her fingernails.
      "We're just afraid you'll get hurt."
      "You're afraid, all right." Willy had stood and zipped her case. "Afraid I might make it ."
      She'd stomped out; but later her father had been adamant.
      "I have nothing against tennis," he said, which was a bald-faced lie. "But as for going pro, you could as well announce that instead of earning a degree you're taking your Christmas check to Las Vegas."
      "Max thinks I'm playing with more than a Christmas check," she returned hotly.
      "A gamble is a gamble, and this is a poor bet that will only pain you when you're older. In my day we wanted to join the circus—"
      "Or write a book," Willy spat.
      His double take was steady. "Or write a book," he repeated coolly. "And then we grew up."
      "Spare me your adulthood."
      "I would if I could, Willow." For a moment he sounded dolorous. "But you are not throwing away a college education for a childhood hobby, and that's final."

    "Do you think he had a point?" asked Eric.
    "Now you, too?" Willy groaned. "My father didn't have a
    problem with tennis when a sports scholarship covered my tuition, did he?"
      "It's just, I still don't understand why after three years at UConn you dropped out."
      "My father didn't want me to have credentials to rely on after I'd made a name for myself in tennis. He wanted me to have a degree for when I fell on my face. I had to drop out and turn pro. To finish college was to believe him."
      Eric smoothed her hand, uncomfortably like her mother.
      "What I still can't get over," Willy gazed out the window at the darkening buildup of industrial New Jersey, "is he taught me to play. When I was little, we hit three times a week. We had a great time."
      "So why the hostility?"
      "I could say he was mad that I've beaten him since I was ten. But I don't think so. I found trouncing my father upsetting. He seemed to find it marvelous."
      The memory remained a queer color. They were playing at that lumpy macadam court nearest Willy's house. She