!94280413 by Pete Bodo
The other day, I said I'd have some further thoughts on Andre Agassi's autobiography, Open. It's nothing less than the best sports autobiography I've ever read in a number of ways, starting with its promise to be . . . Open. And if you read it, you'll know why I say they ought to revise the old proverb, Never judge a book by its cover. . . to, Never Judge a book by the publication of its first serial rights. If the folks at Time Inc. and The Times of London wouldn't have basically leaked (for that's one of the reasons first-serial rights sell, and for such a high price) the portion of the book dealing with Andre dabbling in crystal meth, the general impression of the book - especially among those who haven't read it, and/or are quick to leap to judgment - would have been different.
No matter. The book the book eventually gained enough momentum to catch up with the headlines, although the way Tiger Woods KO'd the Agassi saga probably prevented attitudes about Open from achieving the balance the book deserves.
This is an extraordinary book on a number of levels, starting with the fact that it reads like fiction. In a good novel, the characters reveal themselves; what you need to know about them is conveyed in their actions and words, without a lot of explanation by the author. Andre's book takes the same tack.
Those who are, or would be, shocked by Agassi's harsh criticisms of Nick Bollettieri - or his own father Mike, for that matter - need to keep in mind that Agassi and his collaborator, Pulitzer-Prize winning novelist JR Moehringer, didn't set out to paint a "balanced picture" of Agassi's life and times in tennis. There are no attempts to be objective, no ambivalences, no ifs, ands or buts.
The idea was to convey to the reader exactly how Agassi felt and what he thought while on his career path. Sure there's another side to the story when it comes to Andre's relationships, as well as the decisions he made. But that's not the story he set out to tell, and he clearly didn't want to compromise the way he told that story. Agassi had the right to tell his story any way he chose; honesty has nothing to do with it. His approach also frees the reader up to read between the lines; and isn't that what we do with so many great works of fiction, even though the message is usually the famliar refrain the life is a vale of tears?
Those who think they knew Agassi will find the book a trove of surprises. Nobody ever accused Agassi of being an underexposed celebrity; yet ever few pagesin Open you come across a revelation that makes you shake your head and think: You can't make this stuff up. . . There's the revelation that when Agassi's first wife, Brooke Shields, wanted to get in shape for their marrriage, the woman whose picture she cut out and pasted on her refrigerator door was. . . Steffi Graf. There's the whole wig thing.
To me, though, one of the more interesting stories concerns Andre's former assistant, the now notorious "Slim" who introduced Agassi to meth. I don't recall any of the first serial holders publishing the bit about how, when Slim's own first child was born premature, Agassi took the point on finding and getting the child to a critical natal-care hospital far from Las Vegas. In fact, Andre seems to have spent an awful lot of time in hospitals when friends or their loved ones were in need.
Parts of the book read almost like farce - can you see Andre, desperate after his break-up with Shields, trying to guide his vintage Cadillac over snowy mountain passes en route to Vegas (he ultimately slid to a halt and had to spend the night in a flea bag hotel along the way)? Or trashing what he himself describes as his "cheesy" bachelor pad and destroying most of his tennis trophies in a fit of misery? Like I say, you can't make this stuff up.
Andre and I had a pretty long talk about all this, but I can't go into details here because it's for a story that will run in an upcoming issue of Tennis magazine. But the way he and Moehringer went about determining exactly what kind of book they wanted to make is fascinating stuff, and it underscores the degree of care - and extraordinary time and effort - that went into the project. The artistic hand of Moehringer is evident everywhere, even though he insisted on keeping his name off the cover. "It's your book," he told Andre. "Yours should be the only name on it."
There's an added element of appropriateness in that, because the book's strongest quality is something you might call its integrity. Agassi set out to let the reader into his mind and heart as he re-created his life and times. He resisted the urge to rationalize, justify, or put his career and the decisions he made into perspective, which means he decided not to try to be all things to all people. It isn't easy to pull that off - it requires a kind of discipline, a determination to just say no to the temptation to explain yourself.
The result is an autobiography that's less a template for success in tennis or even a cautionary tale about the perils of prodigy than a window on the soul of a kid - for Agassi was a kid through most of the book's pages - who was confused, self-absorbed, mercurial and unable to find his place in life for far longer than most of us are allowed when we're making a mess of it. Andre doesn't resort to sweeping away the hoofprints and covering his trail. He just takes you along on his ride. That he was able to finish the ride and ultimately emerge a much finer and more thoughtful individual was just another gift he received from the talent he mistook for a ball and chain for so long.