A razor-sharp, darkly funny reckoning with the price of winning.
A psychiatrist and lifelong competitive fencer turns his most bruising victories and losses into a searching examination of ambition, identity, and the dangerous seductions of achievement in Radu’s candid memoir. Radu has spent decades on the fencing strip, rising from an intensely driven young competitor to an NCAA All-American, Ivy League champion, coach, and veteran national champion. Yet the memoir is less interested in celebrating that résumé than in interrogating what it cost him. Organized as a fragmented series of memories and reflections, the book revisits formative bouts, humiliating defeats, injuries, beloved coaches, changing rules, aging, and repeated attempts to walk away from a sport he cannot quite leave behind. The title captures the memoir’s wry spirit: after years spent constructing an identity around competitive excellence, Radu must eventually confront the humbling reality of losing to athletes young enough to be his children.
Radu is at his sharpest when dismantling the mythology surrounding athletic success. An NCAA All-American trophy once seemed capable of validating years of sacrifice, yet obtaining it left him unexpectedly empty. His therapist’s blunt reminder, “I don’t care about fencing, Andy, I care about you!” crystallizes a lesson Radu takes years to absorb: accomplishment and self-worth are not interchangeable. That insight feeds his provocative concept of the “masterpiece of undoing,” in which achievement becomes psychological armor, providing temporary relief from deeper vulnerability while ensuring that satisfaction remains perpetually out of reach.
The book’s psychological sophistication never completely overwhelms its humor. Radu gleefully punctures his own competitive mythology, particularly when recalling opponents he underestimated and losses he would prefer to forget. “It hurts to lose to someone who shouldn’t be able to beat you,” he admits after an NCAA defeat to the memorably eccentric “two-gloved man.” Elsewhere, longtime coach Dave Micahnik provides an understated counterpoint to Radu’s obsession with achievement. Told that he was the winningest coach in Ivy League history, Micahnik simply responds, “Who, me? I don’t keep tabs on that stuff.”
Radu’s excursions into existentialism, Taoism, psychotherapy, and punk-rock humanism occasionally make this a demanding read, while fencing jargon may challenge newcomers. But the fragmented, restless form suits a memoir concerned with memory, compulsion, and the stories people construct around success. Radu ultimately offers no easy cure for ambition; his achievement is recognizing its power without denying its pleasures. Fans of Andre Agassi’s Open and Haruki Murakami’s What I Talk About When I Talk About Running will feel right at home.
A funny, cerebral, and disarmingly vulnerable reckoning with the perilous distance between winning and being whole.
***
Pub date October 1, 2026
Print length 187 pages
ASIN B0GX33KF55
Price $10.99 Kindle edition
