Colson Whitehead's new book The Noble Hustle: Poker, Beef Jerky and Death should be more fun than it is; Grantland paid the $10,000 stake for Whitehead-- a professional novelist and amateur poker player-- to take part in The World Series of Poker; Whitehead trains for the main event by playing in smaller tournaments in Atlantic City and he acquires a classy female novelist and professional poker coach who has actually played in the big event, and so the book has the potential to take on a Rocky tone, but playing poker at this level isn't much fun, nor is the training, and Colson Whitehead is not a fun guy, in fact, the funniest thing about the book may be the picture on the back cover, where he sports his poker uniform, a custom made "Republic of Anhedonia" track jacket . . . and while Whitehead is a bit of a grouch, the writing is hip, the allusions come fast and furious, and there's quite a bit of poker knowledge wedged in between his existential griping.
2 comments:
whitehead was on the bob edwards show this morning. his in-person (or at least on-radio) persona is exactly like you describe his print version. which is to say i found him to be a boring jackass.
unfortunately, that seems to be the case. the book was pretty entertaining, despite that.
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