Even the more compelling essays in this volume — like so much of his fiction — could have done with a little judicious pruning. But at their best these essays remind us of Wallace’s arsenal of talents: his restless, heat-seeking reportorial eye; his ability to convey the physical or emotional truth of things with a couple of flicks of the wrist; his capacity to make leaps, from the mundane to the metaphysical, with breathtaking velocity and ardor. An article about Roger Federer moves from a discussion of his skills as a tennis player to a meditation on sports as “prime venue for the expression of human beauty” to musings about “whatever deity, entity, energy or random genetic flux” that could have produced both sick children and a paragon of grace like this athlete.

That same article communicates the state of wonder Wallace feels at watching Federer make certain shots on TV: “I don’t know what-all sounds were involved, but my spouse says she hurried in and there was popcorn all over the couch and I was down on one knee and my eyeballs looked like novelty-shop eyeballs.” A second tennis essay uses Tom Wolfe-ian status details to give us Dickensian portraits of people at the United States Open, from the security guys wearing “lemon-yellow knit shirts that do not flatter their guts” and chomping on chewing gum that “seems to be part of Security’s issued equipment” to the Thurston Howell types in the expensive seats who radiate an aura of “Connecticut license plates and very green lawns” to the younger, rowdier types who show up at night. (“Their faces are stonier; eye contact seems hazardous the way eye contact on subways can be hazardous.”)

Many of the essays here deal with ideas or themes the author has explored elsewhere. “The Nature of the Fun” probes his efforts to articulate (perhaps to himself) the reasons for writing, noting that what starts out being “a lot of fun” all too often devolves into “an overwhelming need to be liked.” And “Twenty-Four Word Notes” reminds us of Wallace’s fascination with grammar and usage (interests inherited from his mother, an English teacher). He gives us a little lecture about when to use “whether” and “if,” and deems “utilize” a “noxious puff-word” used by pompous twits and insecure naïfs and “feckless” a “totally great adjective” that “lets you be extremely dismissive and mean without sounding mean.”