Teddy Wayne is an award-winning author and Cobble Hill resident who recently published “The Winner.” The novel, which is being developed into a film, is about Connor — a tennis coach in Cape Cod — and the moral quandaries he encounters from pandering to the rich.
“I had, from the very inception, the idea that Connor would be there as a tennis pro. I needed him to be an outsider, and there are very few reasons why an outsider would be brought into a place like this,” said Wayne. “I thought maybe a rich person would put them up for the whole summer, not having the ability to do much else recreationally. Tennis always felt like a perfect sport to use for this given that it is a sport associated with affluence, and for someone who could potentially pass through these two different worlds, yet still always feels like a constant outsider.”
Wayne explained his process of designing the plot, which he describes as “Ripley-esque.” A GoodReads review echoed this sentiment and labeled the novel “eat-the-rich” fiction. Wayne uses his characters to dissect modern understandings of class and late-stage capitalism-induced moral depravity, exacerbated by a global pandemic and the 2020 U.S. presidential election.
“Connor’s actions are more representative of a moral drift that has afflicted the country in the past eight years or so, to be imprecise, and it is the result of various external conditions, both social factors and economic desperation, but also his lack of having processed a certain traumatic event from his youth,” said Wayne. “An emotional state that never allowed him to be in touch with his feelings, combined with this financial desperation, make him do things that he would not normally do.”
Class implications are rife throughout the novel, even reflected in names. Wayne researched White Anglo-Saxon Protestant (WASP) names from the 1965 social register when he…
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