Arthur+JG

“Arthur Ashe Remembered” Joline Gaudet

The article “Arthur Ashe Remembered” appeared in the “Postscript” section of the New Yorker in the March 1, 1993 edition of The New Yorker.

This article is basically a narrative obituary, it commemorates the life of Arthur Ashe, who was a famous tennis player who died when he was in his forties, maybe even a little younger. McPhee honours Arthur Ashe’s life by sharing stories and little tidbits about him and his life. I found the first half of the article to be a very easym engaging read, while in the second part I got bogged down by the technical details.

In this short—only about half a page, article, McPhee assumes a lot from his readers. Just as an example of this, he only mentions that Ashe was a tennis player in the last paragraph of the article, and he does so indirectly. McPhee simply says “Other tennis players…”, he never actually says that Ashe was a tennis player. This might be because in 1993 Arthur Ashe was very well known, and it was assumed that everyone who would be reading anything about him would know who he was. It could also just be that McPhee assumes that readers of The New Yorker will know about Arthur Ashe, and he thinks it would take away from the article to spend time describing who Arthur Ashe was, and why we should care about him.

That being said, in a very short amount of words, McPhee does give readers a fairly intricate look into the life of Arthur Ashe. It’s obvious that he’s chosen his words consciously, and the potency of what McPhee’s saying makes up for the overall lack of description in the article.