In her debut novel, Underspin, writer E.Y. Zhao brings readers into the table tennis world. In it, we follow a young prodigy who, from the ages of eight to twenty-five, was taking the sport by storm. Until he abandoned the sport and ended up dead. Zhao carefully crafts a coming-of-age that questions the pressures of ambition, the complexities of intimacy, and the haunting cost of greatness.
Prior to writing her debut, Zhao’s work has appeared i The Georgia Review, Electric Lit, and Chicago Review of Books and she hasbeen recognized by the Georgia Review Prose Prize, the Le Baron Russell Briggs Prize, and various Hopwood awards.
We caught up with the writer via email to learn more about Underspin.
Table tennis or ping pong? Does it matter?
During copyediting I learned that an English company trademarked “Ping-Pong,” which has since been taken by an American company. That’s partly why we formally call the sport “table tennis.” But in Chinese it’s the onomatopoetic “ping-pong,” which is what I grew up calling it. Seeing how the Chinese dominate the sport, I’d say that makes “ping-pong” equally legitimate. So it doesn’t matter to me. If you’re addressing an Olympian, though, err toward table tennis.
Now that I got that out of the way, is this a table tennis novel or a novel with table tennis in it? What was the origin of wanting to write this story?
It’s a novel set in the table tennis world. I knew I wanted to write a novel about a community, like Jennifer Egan’s A Visit from the Goon Squad or Alice Munro’s The Beggar Maid. The table tennis world was a natural setting because I grew up in it. I played competitively from the ages of nine to 16, sometimes spending twelve hours a week training, six hours a day over the summers, though funnily, that’s not even much for the kids who were really good. I was raised by a cast of coaches, peers, and senior citizens at the rec center, all of whom appear in Underspin. And I learned a lot of my values—for better or worse—in that world. But, yes, it’s a book about the universal stories of striving, longing, and growing up, within this specific setting I hope readers enjoy learning about.
I’m always fascinated by the editing process of novels. What parts of Underspin were the trickiest to get right?
The structure, especially the timeline and whether to include Ryan’s perspective. I wrote twice as much material as made it into the book. When I queried agents, it bounced around time from chapter to chapter, converging on the year 2015. I did a rewrite before submission and made the body of the book chronological, like Julia Phillips’s Disappearing Earth. I had all these side characters I loved and cut. I had four or five drafts of Ryan’s point of view and never got it right. Then, during my MFA, Rebecca Makkai gave a talk in which she said the most difficult aspect of a novel is its real subject. That freed me. I realized the book was partly about Ryan’s unknowability and I should leave him blank.
What did you learn about yourself as a writer throughout the writing process of your debut novel?
I love to write about infatuation, even though I find it degrading IRL.
You recently wrote an article for Defector about a Grand Smash tournament in Las Vegas. How did this come about?
I’d been following Giri Nathan’s tennis writing in Defector and love the blog’s ethic. When it came time to place table tennis pieces, I knew I wanted to pitch them. The Grand Smash timing was perfect. It was a unique opportunity to see the greatest players in the world; I watched the best matches of my life and made amazing connections. I’m so lucky my editor, Tom Ley, accepted the pitch. Defector is the best to do it right now: the writers own the magazine, they pay a living wage, they paid me a generous fee and covered all my expenses as a freelancer. It felt a fever dream, and later I had the privilege of launching at Yu & Me with Giri. Everyone read his work!
In addition to all the writing you do, you also offer editing services and are an editor at Joyland. I’ve recently been thinking a lot about “literary citizenship.” I guess this is a pretty open question about why writers take on more writing work outside of their own projects. Why do you edit others?
Reader first, writer second. I just want more good writing to exist. So it’s actually more gratifying to be an editor than a writer, most of the time. As an editor, you get to be amazed, and unequivocally supportive, even when a project is not perfect or polished. And you get to bolster the confidence so lacking within the writerly soul. (Or maybe that’s just me.)