Critic Siobhan Welch said of him "Cary Tennis has resurrected the advice column into a relevant, even thriving, literary form.
He passed his oral examinations (Wallace Stevens, William Faulkner and Vladimir Nabokov) and had his creative thesis approved ("The Riverwood House and Other Stories"), but he never completed the degree program.
[6] In the column, Tennis makes occasional reference to his own life, both as a suffering cancer patient and a recovering alcoholic.
"[4] Tennis writes of America: "Nothing has changed structurally; we are still a hateful, war-waging culture that denigrates women, celebrates killing, despoils the planet, plunders the resources of less powerful people, keeps a permanent underclass in virtual economic slavery and wages imperialist wars abroad.
Tennis announced in his column of November 19, 2009, that he has been diagnosed with a chordoma, a rare malignant tumor that usually occurs in the spine and base of the skull.