FDR, The Hustler, and Activity Partners
Apr. 26th, 2021 07:47 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mallorys_cameraIt rained.
I worked.
By the time it had finished raining, I had finished my work, and went out to the FDR Presidential Library for a modest tromp.
I consider FDR and Eleanor the local Lares and Penates.
I pray to them for good harvests, continuing cat health, quick inter-library book loans, etc.
The pear trees were in bloom:
Speaking of inter-library book loans, Walter Tevis’s The Hustler finally arrived.
I read half of it last night.
It’s a good book, but I wouldn’t say it grabbed me. Too gritty.
At the time it was published (1959), reviewers did a lot of Hemingway comparisons. Papa, then still two years shy of shooting his mouth off (yuk, yuk, yuk), may have reached for the whiskey and soda a little bit earlier in the morning on the day he read that review. Pool hall hustlers and bullfighters? No, no, no, no, no.
Truthfully, I think that comparison is a bit of a stretch, too.
Plus, Tevis does not write like Hemingway, he writes like Nelson Algren.
I get that nobody reads Nelson Algren anymore, but I didn’t realize they weren’t reading him as early as 1959.
There are significant differences between the plotting in the novel The Hustler and the film The Hustler, and I’d say those differences work to the film’s advantage: It’s a much tighter, more archetypal and therefore potentially redemptive storyline.
The Hustler is of the same genre as Fat City (a novel I much admire.) I suppose that genre could be described as Fringe Sports as Life Metaphor.
Fat City, though, while it describes the same demimonde and uses many of the same dialogue tricks, is an intensely lyrical book.
I’m not sure whether that’s because Leonard Gardner was a better writer than Walter Tevis or because it represents the sea change in American literature that took place in the 1960s as Hemingway’s influence slowly ebbed and the iron hand was eased from the metaphor.
Like I said, I’m not crazy about The Hustler, but I will force myself to finish it.
###
What else?
I have kind of a social week coming up.
Meeting up with Kimberly tomorrow for the first time in 14 months. Kimberly is what I would describe as an “activity partner” rather than a friend—useful distinction courtesy of the Well's own slf—but she’s proactive about tapping and draining the sap from experiences, which makes a good counterpoint to floaty, dithery moi who by nature is more of a surface skitterer.
On Thursday, I go up to Ithaca to hang out with RTT.
Then on Sunday, I am taking Sam up to Hudson to see the meat vending machines. Everyone should see the Meat Vending Machines of Hudson at least once before they die! There are other cool things in Hudson, too, of course.
This means I need to pump out the current crop of remunerative projects by Wednesday.
I worked.
By the time it had finished raining, I had finished my work, and went out to the FDR Presidential Library for a modest tromp.
I consider FDR and Eleanor the local Lares and Penates.
I pray to them for good harvests, continuing cat health, quick inter-library book loans, etc.
The pear trees were in bloom:
Speaking of inter-library book loans, Walter Tevis’s The Hustler finally arrived.
I read half of it last night.
It’s a good book, but I wouldn’t say it grabbed me. Too gritty.
At the time it was published (1959), reviewers did a lot of Hemingway comparisons. Papa, then still two years shy of shooting his mouth off (yuk, yuk, yuk), may have reached for the whiskey and soda a little bit earlier in the morning on the day he read that review. Pool hall hustlers and bullfighters? No, no, no, no, no.
Truthfully, I think that comparison is a bit of a stretch, too.
Plus, Tevis does not write like Hemingway, he writes like Nelson Algren.
I get that nobody reads Nelson Algren anymore, but I didn’t realize they weren’t reading him as early as 1959.
There are significant differences between the plotting in the novel The Hustler and the film The Hustler, and I’d say those differences work to the film’s advantage: It’s a much tighter, more archetypal and therefore potentially redemptive storyline.
The Hustler is of the same genre as Fat City (a novel I much admire.) I suppose that genre could be described as Fringe Sports as Life Metaphor.
Fat City, though, while it describes the same demimonde and uses many of the same dialogue tricks, is an intensely lyrical book.
I’m not sure whether that’s because Leonard Gardner was a better writer than Walter Tevis or because it represents the sea change in American literature that took place in the 1960s as Hemingway’s influence slowly ebbed and the iron hand was eased from the metaphor.
Like I said, I’m not crazy about The Hustler, but I will force myself to finish it.
###
What else?
I have kind of a social week coming up.
Meeting up with Kimberly tomorrow for the first time in 14 months. Kimberly is what I would describe as an “activity partner” rather than a friend—useful distinction courtesy of the Well's own slf—but she’s proactive about tapping and draining the sap from experiences, which makes a good counterpoint to floaty, dithery moi who by nature is more of a surface skitterer.
On Thursday, I go up to Ithaca to hang out with RTT.
Then on Sunday, I am taking Sam up to Hudson to see the meat vending machines. Everyone should see the Meat Vending Machines of Hudson at least once before they die! There are other cool things in Hudson, too, of course.
This means I need to pump out the current crop of remunerative projects by Wednesday.
no subject
Date: 2021-04-26 02:58 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-04-26 03:17 pm (UTC)Fruit's good, too.
no subject
Date: 2021-04-27 10:52 am (UTC)“A Walter Tevis renewal is underway with the success of The Queen's Gambit on Netflix, another of Tevis's novels that faithfully describes the environment of high-level competition and the toll paid by the players.”
“The Queen’s Gambit” (on Netflix) was great, but I just don’t feel pulled in by the genre that “The Hustler” fits into.
Oooh, the pear trees look great!!
no subject
Date: 2021-04-27 11:50 am (UTC)I'm not loving it. But I can see what Tevis was trying to do with it: He was trying to ground the novel in a genre milieu and then transcend that milieu with a flawed hero's journey that could take place anywhere. It's not working for me—possibly because the status details of the genre milieu are just so strong.
no subject
Date: 2021-04-27 12:13 pm (UTC)A flawed hero’s journey that could take place anywhere, like in his other adopted-to-movie book, “The Man Who Fell to Earth”? I saw the movie first — Bowie! — but I did buy his own work, too. (Wish I could remember anything of it, but re-reading could be fun, too!)
no subject
Date: 2021-04-27 12:18 pm (UTC)Exactly! 😊
I find it so interesting that Tevis wrote The Hustler and The Man Who Fell to Earth!
But not interesting enough to actually track down The Man Who Fell to Earth and read it. 😊
no subject
Date: 2021-04-27 12:53 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-04-27 01:46 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-04-28 02:05 pm (UTC)