I’ve always been fascinated by carnivals, carnies, and con-artists. Two of my favorite books, the novel Nightmare Alley and Julian Prosauker’s Suckers All!, the story of honest John Kelly, are set in this milieu. So how does a more recent memoir of life on the carnival pitch fair? Let’s see.
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Book review: Eyeing the Flash
Book review: The Hand I Played
I originally reviewed this for the Nevada Historical Society Quarterly. Written three years before Positively Fifth Street, this book pioneered the literary take on the World Series of Poker genre.
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Book review: The Flea Palace
I read Elif Shafak’s The Flea Palace almost four years ago. I haven’t re-read it since, and don’t own a copy. But it’s still one of my favorite books, and I can still vividly recall much of the writing. Here’s what I had to say about it when I first reviewed it:
I saw this book in the “new books” shelf of UNLV’s Lied Library. The title jumped out at me, and I decided to read it on one of my cross-country flights back east. I originally approached it with some trepidation (it’s written by an academic, and in my experience most academic prose is eminently forgettable), but it’s a great book! Don’t trust me, read it yourself.
So keep on reading, and learn just why this book is one of my favorites.
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Book review: The Blackjack Hijack
My reposting of reviews continues. This one is a real gem. If you don’t believe me, look at the cover:
Click through to look at the big version of that if you don’t believe me, but yes, that is JFK and, yes, he does figure into the plot. Is he the BP on the count team? You’ll have to read on to find out.
By a strange coincidence, I’m meeting Ed Thorp today. I don’t think that this book is going to come up in conversation, but if it does, I’m covered.
Book review: Loaded Dice
James Swain. Loaded Dice. New York: Ballantine Books, 2004. 310 pp, $22.95 (hardcover)
When I started this site back in 2005, I posted many reviews as static pages. Now, instead of reformatting them all, I’m reposting them as posts. If you’re a longtime reader, enjoy the nostalgia, and if you’ve just found this site, it’s a chance to enjoy something new.
I’ve also made a few small graphics changes, so hitting the handy F5 key might make the site look better.
I’ve started with James Swain’s Loaded Dice, which was a fun book and the first fiction that I reviewed here. Enjoy. Click on through for the full review.
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Book review: Zeropolis
Bruce Begout. Translated by Liz Heron. Zeropolis: The Experience of Las Vegas. London: Reaktion Books, 2003. Softcover, 126 pp, lots of pictures.
They used to say that Las Vegas is where show business careers go to die. Reading this book, I think that we can now say that it’s where philosophers go to make no sense.
This shortish meditation on the “Vegas experience” suffers from a willful lack of focus and thoughtfulness. The book’s most obvious flaw is that the author’s goal is to figure out what “Las Vegas” actively does to people. “Las Vegas makes fun of everything. It makes every reality an object of mockery….it uncovers the primeval scene of society: the impossibility of believing in the truth of the other” (13).
My snappy answer to Begout is that Las Vegas is an inanimate collection of asphalt, concrete, and building ordinances. It doesn’t “do” anything any more than Cleveland, or Cardiff, or Amiens (Begout’s usual stomping grounds) does. Certainly people in Las Vegas do things: casino executives try to maximize their RevPAR and slot win, players try to hit a royal flush, and gourmands go all in at the buffet. But it is impossible for the city itself, which is either a physical object or an abstraction, to perform actions. But Begout spends page after page treading water with this kind of superficial analysis that, frankly, I wouldn’t accept from a freshman.
Begout’s chief conceit is that Las Vegas is “Zeropolis,” a city whose “urbanity is nothingness” (121). If that’s the case, I’d like a full refund of my real estate taxes, and the cops and firefighters are probably wondering why they’ve been getting paid to watch over “nothingness” all these years.
Las Vegas is a real place. Just ask any of us who live here. We’ve got very real lives, and aspirations, and failures, and Begout’s vapid reductionism is as hurtful as it is inane. Begout’s failure to accept Las Vegas as a city built and inhabited by real people leads him to some strange twists, such as, “The unknown artists who created the giant signs of the Sands, the Sahara, and the Stardust are called Hermon Boernge, Jack Larsen, and Kermit Wayne” (60). What? If we know their names, they are, by definition, not “unknown.” if Begout’s point is that the trio of artists are unappreciated, that line should read, “A mostly-unheralded group of neon artists, Hermon Boernge, Jack Larsen, and Kermit Wayne, created the trademark giant signs of the Sands, the Sahara, and the Stardust.” It’s evidence of poor writing and sloppy thinking that Begout resorts to such byzantine formulations to make his point.
The author makes one interesting point, that someday museums will collect Las Vegas artifacts just as assiduously as they currently collect paintings by the Dutch masters or pre-Columbian Incan engravings. It’s a throwaway observation, and one that, upon reflection, isn’t true: by the time the intellectuals develop an appreciation for the Las Vegas of Tom Wolfe and Robert Venturi, it won’t be there anymore. It’s already not there anymore. We’ll have pictures and prose, and a few scattered signs and matchbooks. But the buildings themselves will be long gone.
Begout has a general contempt for humanity and a particular loathing for Americans, as shown by his description of the crowd at Caesars Palace:” poverty-stricken pensioners; obese and dowdily dressed black matrons; southern white trash there to gamble away their social security cheques; large parties of convention participants who have flown in to do some slumming on the cheap, etc.) 27). He genuinely does not like people, and you almost feel sorry for him as he drives his car down the Strip, watching the buildings pass by, aching for some human contact. Las Vegas, Begout says, amounts to “practically nothing in anyone’s life,” and he feels it’s an apposite utopia for us ignorant US Americans.
Reading this book, I kept waiting for Begout to deliver some original insight gained from his time in Las Vegas, or at least to get out and talk to someone. It sounds most of his time here alone in his room, reading Baudrillard and feeling uninspired, or cruising the streets in a rental car. He observes, but doesn’t interact. This wouldn’t be a problem, but he claims with great authority to reveal the soul of Las Vegas, and it’s clear that he doesn’t have the slightest idea about how the city really works. He knowingly tells us that “the ideal Las Vegas customer resembles Raymond, an engineer from Phoenix and an unrepentant gambler, still sitting at a craps table at half past three in the morning,” then goes on to blockquote Tom Wolfe’s description of Raymond, first published in 1964! (51) One of the characteristics of Las Vegas is that it changes quickly, so using forty-year old borrowed reportage hardly esteems Begout as a topical commentator.
Nor does the author let the facts get in his way: one page 38, for example, he says that there is gambling in the “toilets” at McCarran airport. Yes, there are slots at the airport, but last time I check, nobody’s installed them in the bathrooms yet. Unless Begout was talking about some Larry Craig-type antics, which is probably a whole other book in and of itself. As a result, Zeropolis is glib without being pithy. It’s mostly stuff that Begout’s read about Las Vegas glued together with unoriginal generic “Vegas is bad” musings–whether it’s by design or by accident, there’s no “experience” in this book about the “Las Vegas experience.”
To make matters, worse, either Begout’s original prose was hideous or he’s suffered from a gruesome translation. How else to explain text like, “With its thousands of fitful garish glitterings, it illuminates the celestial vault, which puts on a pallid show by comparison. (17)”. Now that’s mildly amusing if you imagine it being read by Jean Girard or spoken as a piece of linking narration in a Sandy Frank movie, but it’s impossible to take it seriously.
Book review: Howard Hughes: Power, Paranoia, and Palace Intrigue
Geoff Schumacher. Howard Hughes: Power, Paranoia, and Palace Intrigue. Las Vegas: Stephens Press, 2008. Hardcover, 292 pp.
More than four dozens books about Howard Hughes have been published since the 1960s. It would seem that there’s little more we can learn about his life. Why, then, should you bother to read another book about Hughes? Because, in addition to being well-written and entertaining, it’s the most exact summary of his documented life to date, and because it also has some thoughtful theories on mysteries that still swirl around the erstwhile aviator.
Schumacher’s book is a hybrid. In some regards, it’s a synthesis of the plethora of previous Hughes works. Schumacher combed through what must have been an endless array of news clippings and tomes of Hughesiana. But he also availed himself of rare and unique primary sources at UNLV Special Collections, the Nevada State Museum and Historical Society, and the treasure troves of private collectors. His thoroughness definitely shows. I doubt there’s much about Hughes–particularly his four Las Vegas years–that Schumacher doesn’t touch on.
The book starts with a quick summary of Hughes B.V. (before Vegas), then discusses his lesser-known earlier stays in Las Vegas, including his 1943 Lake Mead crash and his purchase of the “Green House,” which is still intact on the land of KLAS-TV, in 1953. Then he brings in the story of Hughes’ right hand, Bob Maheu. Maheu’s story has been well-documented, but seems to gain something by being placed in the context of Hughes.
Here’s where business really starts to pick up. As the Hughes roller coaster inches higher up the initial slope, Schumacher stops to describe “what Vegas saw” with a quick chronological survey of contemporary media coverage the Hughes Las Vegas years (1966-1970). The he dives into the real substance of the book–detailed chapters on Hughes in Vegas. These run the gamut from profiles of significant figures such as Hank Greenspun, Paul Winn, and John Meier, to discussions of key topics: the Clifford Irving hoax biography, the Palace Coup that brought Maheu down, and the sometimes-outlandish fight over the estate in the face of competing Hughes wills, none of which was proved authentic. Melvin Dummar’s tragicomic tale–more tragedy than comedy, it now seems–gets ample space, and probably its best analysis yet.
Schumacher then jumps tracks, switching from biographer to critic with a section called “Hughesiana” that features a mix of non-Vegas profiles (Jane Russell, Rupert Hughes, and the RKO fiasco) and extended takes on “Weird Tales” (obscure Hughes texts) and “the Fictional Hughes,” which is an up-to-date consideration of the reams of paper and reels celluloid fantasy that Hughes has inspired.
The book’s key strength is Schumacher’s attention to detail and thoughtful use of his sources. Without an axe to grind, he is able to write a dispassionate book about the eccentric billionaire, a decided rarity. One of the mavens quoted on the back cover commented that few Hughes books are “as lucid as this one.” I think that is an astute judgment by an extremely insightful critic. Since Hughes was far from balanced, he invites wild speculation and still, more than thirty years after his death, an almost messianic fervior. Schumacher immersed himself in his sources without becoming captured by them–a hard task, indeed, where Hughes in concerned.
If you enjoy books about Las Vegas, I’d say that there is room in your library for this book. Unless you are a Hughes-obsessed maniac, I guarantee that you’ll learn something new from it, and you’ll probably find, as I did, that Schumacher is able to make some intelligent guesses that make sense of some of the enigma surrounding Hughes–the Mormon will saga, in particular. Barring the discovery of authentic new documents or revelatory confessions from heretofore silent associates, this book will likely be the last word on Hughes in Vegas.
Book Review: Six to Five Against
Burt Dragin. Six to Five Against: A Gambler’s Odyssey. Berkeley: RDR Books, 2005.
Six to Five Against is a refreshing, sometimes wincingly honest look at one man’s gambling. Drawing chiefly on his own experiences but supported by Dragin’s investigations into the thrall that gambling holds for many, this is an open, honest, and readable story that will appeal to anyone who gambles or wants to better understand gamblers.
Dragin opens the book with an interesting thought: he’s got a lot in common with Steve Wynn. They were both born in the same year to gambling fathers, and both have had lifelong relationships with gambling, though Dragin admits that the billionaire casino owner has gotten rich from gambling, while he hasn’t. Along the way, Dragin luckily transformed his obsession with gambling into an obsession with gamblers and research into gambling, and the result is this memoir/problem gambling overview.
The short book is divided into four parts. The First, My Role Model, hinges on Dragin’s father Phil, a lifelong gambler. In the second part, Gambling Demons, the focus shifts to the author’s gambling travails. The third part, Profiles, is a series of quick (6 pages or so) sketches of several problem gamblers Dragin interviewed. Part four, The Last Act, is a coda of sorts, describing Phil Dragin’s last years and the author’s final acceptance of his problem gambling.
Six to Five Against works because Dragin is able to coolly, almost dispassionately analyze himself as well as his subjects. His honesty about his gambling is refreshing, and it puts him in a league with Dostoyevsky as a writer who can bring his own gambling to bear on his writing–in Dostoyevsky’s case fiction, in Dragin’s memoir/creative non-fiction–and produce something both eye-opening and thought-provoking.
Dragin’s father’s life parallels that of many men who ended up in Las Vegas one both sides of the table. Growing up in an immigrant, Yiddish and Russian-speaking household in Cleveland, he spurned hard work and sober devotion for the gambling underworld, which included Moe Dalitz’s Harvard Club and an entire stratum of pool rooms, racetracks, touts, and bustouts. Calling it Runyonesque is almost an understatement. Indeed, Dragin pays homage to Damon Runyon in the book’s opening pages, embracing him as a kindred spirit (his title is taken from a particularly pithy gem from Runyon’s “A Nice Price”), and its easy to see how he made a strong emotional connection between his father’s war stories of Cleveland’s gambling scene and Runyon’s memorable characters.
Moving to Los Angeles, Dragin’s father enjoys a bit of good luck, followed by years of hard work, frustration, and disappointment, including more than one arrest for gambling. Dragin follows in his father’s footsteps, trying to balance the demands of adulthood with an unstoppable need to gamble. In the end, father and son seem to reach a rapprochement with their “gambling demon” that contains, but doesn’t entirely banish, it. As a simple family story, Six to Five Against is not only touching, but transforming–the reader is challenged to consider how gambling both tied together and tore apart the Dragins.
As remarkable a document the Dragin story would be as a simple memoir, it’s much more. Throughout, Dragin interweaves personal experience, interviews, and historical research quite effectively. As a historian, I’ve got to concede that the historical background isn’t as well-plumbed as it might have been, which in a few cases hinders Dragin. For example, Dragin just repeats the description of the Flamingo as “the first ornate palace” in the Nevada desert, completely ignoring the earlier El Rancho Vegas and Last Frontier. Worse yet, he doesn’t even mention Billy Wilkerson, whose story would have lent considerable weight to the narrative. Wilkerson, after all, was the brilliant promoter and compulsive gambler who first conceived of the Flamingo, and whose inabilities to control his gambling (combined with Siegel’s predatory avarice) forced him to lose the casino shortly before it opened. There’s also a bit of editorial sloppiness as Giralomo Cardano’s name changes to “Cordano” and back a few times on the same page. But these miscues don’t mar what is a powerful and convincing book.
Dragin is unflinchingly honest, talking candidly of his own struggles with gambling while admitting that no one held a gun to his head and forced him to gamble. Not willing to call himself a victim, he still grapples with an obsession so powerful that it must be biological. He includes many details that a less honest and courageous writer might not have–particularly a heart-breaking exchange between him and his father towards the end of the book–and our understanding of gambling is richer for his risk-taking.
I strongly recommend Six to Five Against for those who want to learn more about the gambler’s psyche, particularly because Dragin is adept at blending the psychological literature with interviews and biographical sketches. Necessarily anecdotal, the book provides rare insights and a highly personal account of one gambler’s journey. It’s a must for any gambling researcher’s bookshelf.
Craps, faith, and paradise
In what will hopefully be the first of three, I’ve got a new review up in, predictably, the review section. It’s about an excellent, excellent novel called God Doesn’t Shoot Craps:
The book is the story of Dante Alighieri “Danny” Pellegrino, a direct mail scam artist, who earns his bread from peddling holy water, chunks of the Blarney Stone, and “can’t miss” gambling systems, staying barely ahead of Richard Goldman, a criminal investigator for the US Postal Service who would like nothing better than to catch Pellegrino in an out-and-out fraud. Pellegrino’s life changes when he decides to test a system forwarded to him by one Virgil Kirk (are you seeing a pattern here). The system, based on the theories of Spanish physicist Juan Parrando (and therefore called “Parrando’s Paradox”) posits that, when properly combined, two losing games can yield a winning strategy.
This is, of course, the Holy Grail to any “serious” gambler, who knows that, in the end, the odds favor the house. I’m not going to pretend to understand the theory behind the paradox, or the Brownian ratchets that play a mysterious (for me) but nonetheless integral role. Pellegrino initially plans to send out a direct mail blast and make a tidy profit from selling yet another doomed “can’t lose” system. But while testing the system (not to see if it works, but merely to better appreciate its failings), Pellegrino discovers that it actually works. From there, the story really takes off, as something as mundane as a craps betting system (there are at least hundreds of them out there) becomes the Maguffin that speeds the plot along.
Armstrong knows how to create and maintain suspense, which keeps the reader not only in appreciation of the outstanding characters that populate the book, but eagerly anticipating the next twist, and the final resolution.
I can’t say much more about how impressed I was. You can check out the book’s website for more information.
I’m off to tape an interview for “Face to Face with Jon Ralston,” which should appear on Las Vegas One tonight.
FYI, I’ve been called out of the office for a few days, so don’t expect any posts for the next week or so.
