The Thumbnail Book Reviews

by John Q McDonald --- 24 June 2014

The Noble Hustle

Poker, Beef Jerky and Death

by Colson Whitehead

This reader isn't very good at games of any sort. It isn't that I don't enjoy games. It's just that I don't really care about winning. I don't have that lust for victory. It makes me a very easy person to beat, though. So, I can imagine that there are other psychic conditions that make games a different experience from just the need to win or lose. Pulitzer-winning writer, Colson Whitehead opens this quirky book by confessing to anhedonia, which is an inability to enjoy life, or to express the joys we all come to know and feel. It makes for a perfect poker face. Whitehead also says he is half dead inside.

This also makes him perfect for a big poker competition in Las Vegas. A magazine stakes Whitehead in the World Series of Poker (WSOP), which has, in the past few years, become a big deal on late night sports television channels. Now, the author is a regular poker player back in New York, and he jumps at the chance to play in the big show. But he knows the stakes are bigger and the nature of the play different from the weekly session with his buddies. So, Whitehead enlists the help of some big time players, and he makes a bunch of trips to Atlantic City to practice. Along the way, he tells us the story of the WSOP, of Las Vegas as a cultural artefact, and about himself. One might expect an Anhedonian to be impervious to the joys of a zoo like Las Vegas, that the result might be a bit gloomy and pessimistic about what Vegas says about our culture. On the contrary, Whitehead is quite enthusiastic about the glitz that takes so many millions away from their everyday lives, and so many millions of dollars away from them. It's an adult Disneyland, and that can be a good thing or bad, depending on what you think Disneyland means. Of course, there's lots of poker in this book. But Whitehead balances with skill and wit the extensive specialized language and litany of games with his idiosyncratic observations about himself and how he relates to the big game. Knowledgable players will likely experience a lot of recognition in his stories. Neophytes, like the present reader, nevertheless get engrossed in Whitehead's adventure and look forward to finding out how he did when it came to his final all-in bet. Still, this is not your typical hero's journey. Whitehead returns to the Republic of Anhedonia, but he is certainly not entirely without a sense of joy.

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