Whether a colorful trickster or amoral predator, Thompson becomes an irresistible folk legend in Cook’s capable hands.
Former Sports Illustrated editor Cook (Driven: Teen Phenoms, Mad Parents, Swing Science and the Future of Golf, 2008, etc.) provides a raucous retelling of the life of a consummate gambler, grifter and quintessential American character.
At age 16, Alvin “Titanic” (so called because he sank everybody he gambled with) Thompson (1892–1974) bet a man his dog could fetch a stone he threw into a river. Suspecting a trick, the man demanded an X be scratched on the rock. Sure enough, the dog retrieved the rock. Of course, Thompson had spent the day before throwing hundreds of X-marked rocks into the river. Soon after, around 1910, Thompson left Arkansas and for the next 50 years proceeded to gamble on anything and everything, fleecing suckers wherever he found them, killing five men (mostly in self-defense) and marrying five times, all of them teenage brides. He would win, and lose, millions. “His goal, his compulsion,” writes Cook, “was to prove he could beat any man at anything.” Blessed with astounding physical dexterity and a mind that could calculate odds like a computer (even though he was illiterate), Thompson beat the best at cards, dice, pool, horseshoes and anything else he could think of. A road gambler, he would “sail between towns like a pirate, skinning the locals and hitting the road again before they felt the breeze of his passing.” Along the way, Thompson found himself in the company of a pantheon of iconic American personalities, including Houdini, who did not much impress him; Al Capone (Thompson had the good sense to fleece him only once); Arnold Rothstein, fixer of the 1919 World Series; Damon Runyon, who based Sky Masterson from Guys and Dolls on him; Minnesota Fats, to whom Thompson lost and then won back $1 million; and a host of other high and lowlifes. Time passed, Thompson got old and so did his tricks. He died broke, but that hadn’t been the point. Money had only been a way of keeping score.
Whether a colorful trickster or amoral predator, Thompson becomes an irresistible folk legend in Cook’s capable hands.Pub Date: Nov. 22, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-393-07115-3
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Norton
Review Posted Online: Aug. 16, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2010
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
A wonderful page-turner written with humility, immediacy, and great style. Nothing came cheap and easy to McCandless, nor...
The excruciating story of a young man on a quest for knowledge and experience, a search that eventually cooked his goose, told with the flair of a seasoned investigative reporter by Outside magazine contributing editor Krakauer (Eiger Dreams, 1990).
Chris McCandless loved the road, the unadorned life, the Tolstoyan call to asceticism. After graduating college, he took off on another of his long destinationless journeys, this time cutting all contact with his family and changing his name to Alex Supertramp. He was a gent of strong opinions, and he shared them with those he met: "You must lose your inclination for monotonous security and adopt a helter-skelter style of life''; "be nomadic.'' Ultimately, in 1992, his terms got him into mortal trouble when he ran up against something—the Alaskan wild—that didn't give a hoot about Supertramp's worldview; his decomposed corpse was found 16 weeks after he entered the bush. Many people felt McCandless was just a hubris-laden jerk with a death wish (he had discarded his map before going into the wild and brought no food but a bag of rice). Krakauer thought not. Admitting an interest that bordered on obsession, he dug deep into McCandless's life. He found a willful, reckless, moody boyhood; an ugly little secret that sundered the relationship between father and son; a moral absolutism that agitated the young man's soul and drove him to extremes; but he was no more a nutcase than other pilgrims. Writing in supple, electric prose, Krakauer tries to make sense of McCandless (while scrupulously avoiding off-the-rack psychoanalysis): his risky behavior and the rites associated with it, his asceticism, his love of wide open spaces, the flights of his soul.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1996
ISBN: 0-679-42850-X
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Villard
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1995
SEEN & HEARD
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