Metaphysics of Ping Pong
Author(s): Guido Mina Di Sospiro
To spin or not to spin? - that is the metaphysical question. When a mortifying defeat to his teenage son rekindles his lifelong passion for table tennis, keen philosopher Guido Mina di Sospiro sets out to learn the game properly. Guido's love for spinning a feather-weight ball takes him from his local ping-pong club, populated by idiosyncratic players with extraordinary stories to tell, to training drills with a world-class coach. This seemingly harmless game also leads him into sticky situations in the CIA headquarters and the ganglands of Washington, D.C. Woven throughout his ping-pong epiphany are philosophical ruminations on Plato and Aristotle, metaphysicians and empiricists, Jung's dark shadow, Sun Tzu's war tactics, the I Ching, and much more. As Guido's journey takes him from Big Sur to a nail-biting showdown in China against a string of elite players, he finds ping-pong can teach us a surprising amount about life.
Product Information
Ping-pong: not just a sport for teenagers, ferociously talented Chinese players and East London hipsters - it seems that spinning plastic ball can teach us a great deal about life and the world we live in...
Guido Mina di Sospiro was raised in Milan in a multilingual home. He trained as a classical guitarist before leaving Italy after university to attend USC's School of Cinema Production. He then became a journalist and correspondent from Los Angeles on the movie and music industries for two Italian and one German magazines. He now maintains a blog on the New York-based web-magazine Reality Sandwich and on the alternative views website Disinformation. He has written three books that have been published around the world. Mina di Sospiro has been fascinated by table tennis since childhood and regularly plays competitively. He lives in the Washington DC area with his wife and their three sons.
General Fields
- :
- : Vintage
- : Yellow Jersey Press
- : 01 July 2013
- : 204mm X 132mm
- : United Kingdom
- : 01 October 2013
- : books
Special Fields
- : Guido Mina Di Sospiro
- : Hardback
- : 796.346092
- : 240