I’ve read lots of dry prose about Suzanne Lenglen. Words words words words . . . It’s stuffy inside and I open a window. The breeze coming in feels like turning the pages of Tom Humberstone’s new graphic novel: Suzanne: The Jazz Age Goddess of Tennis. Suzanne’s not a fixed portrait, but a river, a […]
Miscegenation. I first read that word in a Faulkner novel. Métisse (mixed race). I first heard that word in one of Noah’s hit songs.* Half man whispered in the women’s locker room after Mauresmo came out as a lesbian. A mere decade later, a muscular body such as hers was accepted by everyone, desired by many. […]
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Imagine Lenglen playing tennis in a hidden corner of Antoine Watteau’s Pilgrimage to Cythera. Dressed more lightly than the crowds of spectators in their rococo frills, her body is both concealed and revealed in all its ballet. A breast can be glimpsed or imagined. Lenglen’s every tennis stroke a musician’s glissando or dancer’s glissade perfectly […]