By his own admission, award-winning author Colson Whitehead went on a "strange odyssey" when he journeyed to Las Vegas for the World Series of Poker. He was on assignment for Grantland, ESPN's culture website, and had trained for weeks with Helen Ellis, a tournament-hardened card player. But there was just one thing: the odds were, well, stacked against him.Amid the "colada-soaked pool parties" and "curvilinear hotels," Whitehead found himself in the "Land of Fabled Buffets" in 2011 with "slack features, negligible affect" and a "soulless gaze" (his poker face) as his only sure bet. "You make the best of the hand you're dealt," he begins in his most recent book, The Noble Hustle: Poker, Beef Jerky, and Death.
But this isn't just a book about poker; the stakes, as Whitehead accounts over the course of seven weeks, are much higher. "We are all a bit Vegas now," he writes, "more comfortable exposing ourselves in all our weaknesses and appetites." Taken in full, The Noble Hustle details many of the unfortunate, life-questioning realities that come with one man's journey through the "Leisure Industrial Complex." It's an allegory for modern life, and one that, by book's end, will leave you asking life's great questions—"Should I go all in?" and "Where can I find the best beef jerky?" The answers: No, and Las Vegas.
Whitehead will join us at 1 p.m. EST to answer questions about the book, and his career, in the comments.A decade prior before you went to the World Series of Poker for Grantland, James McManus famously went to Las Vegas for Harper's, risked his entire advance, and placed fifth, earning $250,000. Was there ever a moment when you thought you could actually win big? Or were you doomed from the beginning?
Although negative thinking drives a lot of the book, in this case my sense of doom was based on reality, instead of temperament. The 2011 game had 6,800 entrants—it would be crazy for me to think that I could train for six weeks and make it "into the money." That said, once I settled into the World Series, got my mistakes out of the way and started really playing to best of my ability, it was exhilarating. I still didn't think I could win a bunch of loot, but I was operating at a level I'd never reckoned before, and that was quite special to me.
Your novels, as well as your previous works of nonfiction, have a wonderfully assured sense of place: the manicured enclave of Sag Harbor, present-day and post-apocalyptic New York, the folkloric plains of West Virginia. What was it about Las Vegas that most spoke to you?
When Ash, the robot science officer in Alien, is asked by Ellen Ripley why he admires the monster, he replies, "I admire its purity." I admire Vegas's purity, its entirely wholesome artificiality. It didn't exist 100 years ago—it's a completely modern gizmo. We made it in our own horrible image.
So, if you could invite any four authors, dead or alive, to play a game of poker with, who would they be?
I'm going to go corny/old school and say certain members of the original Ocean's 11 film, the 1960 one. Peter Lawford, who always seemed to me to be the One Who Held the Secrets in the Rat Pack. Why else would they hang out with him? Dean Martin—the Nick Tosches biography of him is wonderfully dark. Very Anhedonian. Sammy Davis Jr., because it would be cool to see if the Candy Man really can, and if he can't, find out why. And Angie Dickinson, 'nuff said, but also for stories about hijinks on the Police Woman set....MORE
I'm reminded of the story last seen in the intro to "60 Elvis Impersonators Flee Fire Alarm":
Some years ago I was trying to track down something or other relating to Ted Binion's silver hoard and found myself standing on Fremont Street quoting Hunter S Thompson:"Still humping the American Dream, that vision of the Big Winner somehow emerging from the last minute pre—dawn chaos of a stale Vegas casino. Big strike in Silver City. Beat the dealer and go home rich. Why not? I stopped at the Money Wheel and dropped a dollar on Thomas Jefferson—a $2 bill, the straight Freak ticket, thinking as always that some idle instinct bet might carry the whole thing off. But no. Just another two bucks down the tube. You bastards! No. Calm down. Learn to enjoy losing....when the longest limousine in a city of long limos pulls up and all these Elvis impersonators start piling out.
It was hilarious and I lost it and couldn't stop laughing at the sight of maybe two dozen Elvii, young Elvis, older Elvis, fat Elvis, leather pants Elvis etc.
About half of them went with the Jumpsuit Elvis look. Sooo... when I saw this story....Note the helipad at rear:
