The Noble Hustle: Poker, Beef Jerky and Death, by Colson Whitehead
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The Noble Hustle: Poker, Beef Jerky and Death, by Colson Whitehead
Free Ebook Online The Noble Hustle: Poker, Beef Jerky and Death, by Colson Whitehead
An NPR Best Book of the YearIn 2011, Grantland magazine gave bestselling novelist Colson Whitehead $10,000 to play at the World Series of Poker in Las Vegas. It was the assignment of a lifetime, except for one hitch—he’d never played in a casino tournament before. With just six weeks to train, our humble narrator took the Greyhound to Atlantic City to learn the ways of high-stakes Texas Hold’em. Poker culture, he discovered, is marked by joy, heartbreak, and grizzled veterans playing against teenage hotshots weaned on Internet gambling. Not to mention the not-to-be overlooked issue of coordinating Port Authority bus schedules with your kid’s drop-off and pickup at school. Finally arriving in Vegas for the multimillion-dollar tournament, Whitehead brilliantly details his progress, both literal and existential, through the event’s antes and turns, through its gritty moments of calculation, hope, and spectacle. Entertaining, ironic, and strangely profound, this epic search for meaning at the World Series of Poker is a sure bet.
The Noble Hustle: Poker, Beef Jerky and Death, by Colson Whitehead - Amazon Sales Rank: #480229 in Books
- Brand: Whitehead, Colson
- Published on: 2015-03-03
- Released on: 2015-03-03
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 8.00" h x .80" w x 5.15" l, .0 pounds
- Binding: Paperback
- 256 pages
The Noble Hustle: Poker, Beef Jerky and Death, by Colson Whitehead Amazon.com Review
An Amazon Best Book of the Month, May 2014: Every year, thousands of card players converge in Las Vegas for the World Series of Poker, all hauling varying levels of hope and skill with them into the southern Nevada desert. As a regular in a neighborhood game, Colson Whitehead didn’t harbor that kind of ambition—until Grantland.com staked him $10,000 for a seat at the WSOP. Whitehead goes all-in with a Rocky IV-worthy regimen, hiring a personal trainer to prepare himself for the long, grueling table hours and a tournament-hardened coach to navigate the mysteries of Texas Hold’em. When he arrives at the tournament, he navigates using a set of laws essential to any aspiring card sharp: which casino restaurants provide poker-appropriate nutrition; how to hit the bathrooms ahead of the mad rushes of the game breaks; and, of course, the necromancy of a successful Hold’em hand. With its cast of poker-universe luminaries and aspiring misfits, the tournament stuff is fun, especially to this gambling rube. But Vegas is Vegas, and between the notes of the Wheel of Fortune slot machines, one can hear the suck of entropy. Whitehead--whose previous books landed him on the short-list for the Pulitzer, as well as a MacArthur "Genius" grant--has the wry sense of humor to observe the twisted reality of the “Leisure Industrial Complex” without mocking it; he’s the kind of writer who can see the human condition reflected in the windows of a failed Vegas market that sells only beef jerky (and other jerky-like products). Buy the ticket, take the ride.--Jon Foro
From Booklist *Starred Review* This is not one of those poker books about a gang of math whizzes from Harvard who go to Vegas and win a gazillion dollars. About those guys, Whitehead says, The part of the brain they used for cards, I used to keep meticulous account of my regrets. And, yet, Whitehead has some personality quirks that make him a decent poker player: I have a good poker face because I am half dead inside. A self-described citizen of the Republic of Anhedonia, whose residents are unable to experience pleasure, Whitehead, author of Zone One (2011) and other novels, agrees to enter the World Series of Poker in Las Vegas and see how far his half-dead poker face and a $10,000 stake can take him. Not very far, as it turns out, despite reading countless poker books and working with a coach and physical trainer. Yes, he learns a little, but in the end, people, as ever, are the problem. Specifically, those nine other people at the table, their weathered faces showing the underlying narrative of their decay. Yes, Whitehead’s account may seem at first like just another sad story about a pair of Jacks, but it’s really something very different, much sadder and much, much funnier. He calls his book Eat, Pray, Love for depressed shut-ins, and that pretty much says it, if you remember that the eating part is mostly about beef jerky and the praying is for aces. If you’re looking for read-alikes, forget other poker books and pick up Geoff Dyer’s Out of Sheer Rage: Wrestling with D. H. Lawrence (1998). --Bill Ott
Review
“Astonishing. . . . Witty. . . . Tom Wolfe crossed with Tom Pynchon.” —The Washington Post “The Noble Hustle is fierce, funny and totally worth the buy-in.” —New York Daily News“Whitehead proves a brilliant sociologist of the poker world.” —The Boston Globe “The Noble Hustle, part love letter, part dark confessional, captures perfectly the mix of neurosis and narrative that makes gambling so appealing.” —Mother Jones“[A] trenchant, ruefully funny memoir of one man’s attempt to dispel the banality of living with the anxiety of chance.” —USA Today “Fascinating. . . . Funny. . . . It’s hard not to root for the underdog.” —Chicago Tribune “Mordantly funny from the first sentence. . . . Mr. Whitehead may not have gone home in the money, but he has a way with upstanding sentences.” —The Economist “Hilarious. . . . Equal parts philosophical and farcical.” —The Seattle Times “Clever and entertaining.” —The Miami Herald “[Whitehead’s] reporting on the grimy glitz of casinos and competitive gambling has a funny, tragic, loser-chic sensibility.” —The New Yorker “A literary guide to the often bizarre world of casino-poker tournaments.” —The Wall Street Journal “Whitehead captures the sketchy and zombielike nature of poker tournament play well enough to leave you wishing this book came with a free bottle of Purell.” —Entertainment Weekly “A sly, shambling, self-appraising riff on how he—a fervent amateur (and newly divorced father)—braved a Las Vegas World Series of Poker tourney.” —Elle “From the first sentence to the last, Colson Whitehead never stops being clever. . . . If Whitehead played poker as well as he writes, he would have made the final table.” —The Philadelphia Inquirer “Part memoir, part satire, part meditation on the fractured state of contemporary culture.” —Los Angeles Times “A masterpiece of sportswriting.” —The Rumpus
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Most helpful customer reviews
15 of 15 people found the following review helpful. A satire of all those other stunt memoirs By Kindles & Wine Book Blog REVIEWED BY LAURAFirst of all, you should know that I am a total sucker for a good "stunt memoir" (or "participatory journalism," if you want to get fancy). You cooked a Julia Child recipe every day for a year? I want to read about it. Read the entire Encyclopedia Britannica? I'll preorder your book. Played in the World Series of Poker (WSOP) as a reporter for a magazine? I'm all-in, if you will. My fascination with getting a peek into different subcultures is definitely satisfied by authors doing crazy things and then writing about them.This, however, is not your typical stunt memoir. So for a while I was a little confused--I wanted more of a plot, more of an inside scoop on the scene at the WSOP. Then it finally hit me--he's doing a satire of all of those other stunt memoirs! Gosh, that's clever! Because while I do love those stunt memoirs, they usually are pretty predictable--person decides to do something crazy/unique/ill-advised, does it, writes about it, learns a valuable life lesson and then finds love/a job/a new passion for living. This book is like the anti-that.And Colson Whitehead flat-out won me over with his satirical sense of humor, witty observations, and terrific writing. Whitehead is an AMAZING writer! His writing is so slick sometimes I almost couldn't stand it. At the beginning, he takes some time to explain the game of poker to those readers who aren't familiar with it:"To start, when judging a five-card hand of random crap, the highest card determines its value...Whoever has the better stuff wins. Sound familiar, American lackeys of late-stage capitalism?"Come on, that's pretty funny, right? Well, the whole book is basically like that. I'm not kidding. I had to sort of forcibly stop myself from highlighting something on almost every page. I also had to stop myself from reading huge chunks out loud to my husband."For my part, I was not enthused about reading a poker how-to while queued for the omelet station of the buffet. Might as well get caught highlighting Beyond First Base: Advanced Booby Tips of the Pros on the way to prom."I do have a couple of criticisms, though. There is a running gag throughout the book about the Republic of Anhedonia (where Whitehead claims to be a citizen). Toward the end I found it got to be a bit tiresome. Also, even though I was eventually OK with it not being a "typical" stunt memoir, I still had a little trouble when he moved back and forth between a couple of different years of the WSOP. I thought it interrupted the flow of the narrative.This is a quick and very funny read full of sharp observations and witty takedowns of modern society under the guise of a memoir about playing in a poker tournament. And you do still get a peek into the inside world of poker tournaments--just through a very different (and sometimes quite pessimistic) lens. Look, "sometimes you have to accept a casino trip for what it really is: an opportunity to see old people."BOTTOM LINERecommended for readers looking for a funny read with a bit of an edge. Anyone who likes cards or gambling (or beef jerky, for that matter...there is a surprising amount of information on beef jerky in this book!) should give this one a go.Rating: B+Note: I received a review copy of this title courtesy of the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
31 of 37 people found the following review helpful. Negatively fifth street By Aaron C. Brown You know what would be a great story? A novelist and casual home-game poker player gets sent to Las Vegas by a magazine. Using his expense money to enter a satellite tournament, he'd win to buy into the main event at the World Series of Poker. He'd get to the final table, and hobnob with top pros and old-style outlaw Vegas royalty, while thinking of life and friends and wife and kids. Between hands he'd get involved in a murder trial of a stripper accused of using a horror-movie technique to dispatch a casino owner. The whole tangled tale would climax in a double lap-dance session.That, of course, was Jim McManus' great Positively Fifth Street. Take away the murder, stripper, great title, lap dance, celebrities, constructive thinking and journey from lowly satellite seat to the final table and you have Colson Whitehead's interesting slacker version. It's much shorter without all the collateral stuff, and is intensely negative both in the sense accentuating unpleasant aspects of everything and showing more interest in what is missing than what is happening.The Noble Hustle belongs to an older poker tradition, the gritty decay of The Man with the Golden Arm and The Cincinnati Kid (the books, not the movies in which star power obscures the message). But this is Generation X Brooklyn and leisure-industrial complex casinos, not illegal private games in Depression-era Cincinnati or post-WWII Chicago. The protagonist is a couch potato who has lost interest (or never had it) in his life and his marriage, not a heroin addict right out of jail or a rambling-gambling man unable to accept his position in life nor change it. The author does not engage life with a bang, but with a whimper.Out of this affectless half-hearted struggle emerges an engaging account of a subtle metamorphosis. Add some manic gonzo energy and lots of drugs and you'd have something like Hunter Thompson's Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (or better, another magazine commission about a gambling/sporting event: The Kentucky Derby is Decadent and Depraved). The author portrays his journey as changing himself from soft and unappetizing fatty raw meat to delicious, lean and tough beef jerky; not through trials by fire, but slow, gentle sunlight.The writing is crisp and funny, recursive, ironic and mockingly self-referential. But all the posturing and artifice does not obscure the clear human voice. It's a simple, little story, barely more than an anecdote, but it carries as much weight as much longer works. You can read it for the pleasure of the writing, or for the insight. Befitting its negative orientation, you will not have favorable or unfavorable feelings about the protagonist-author, but you will have intense sympathy for his absent ex-wife.
9 of 9 people found the following review helpful. Bad Luck Schleprock Goes to Vegas? By T. Karr Colson Whitehead feels the need to go into training when he is staked by “Grantland” magazine to participate in the World Series of Poker. He has played in home games, but never before ventured into a casino to play poker. He fears the humiliation and shame that comes with bowing out early in the big tournament.But then again Colson Whitehead feels that doom and humiliation lurk around just about every nook and cranny of life. The looming tournament just adds to his burden.Mr. Whitehead’s self-deprecating humor is what makes this poker memoir different from others that have gone before. “The Noble Hustle” is awash in pop culture and literary references which also adds to the fun.
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The Noble Hustle: Poker, Beef Jerky and Death, by Colson Whitehead
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