The Noble Hustle: Poker, Beef Jerky, and Death

Poker and poker stories bring me joy. Which made this a bad fit for me - Whitehead is incapable of feeling joy, and as such his writing about poker is as interesting as reading a page of tournament results, with the added bonus of the kind of hipster detachment that tries to make you feel like less because you had the audacity to feel something.

IN 2011 online magazine Grantland staked the $10K entrance free for Colson Whitehead to play the WSOP, competing against 6,865 other entrants vying for millions and poker glory. It was a far cry from his usual $5 game where “catching up with friends took precedence over pulverizing your opponents.” With six weeks to get in poker shape for the big game, this is his story.

Author Whitehead is a recipient of the MacArthur, the Guggenheim and the Whiting. He's a lecturer at Princeton, a graduate of Harvard (where he meets and road trips with Darren Aronosfsky and hangs with the founder of The Source magazine) and a successful novelist so his everyman schlub hitting the felt reads a bit forced. Still, his observations bring back memories of playing Vegas tournaments. Still, it's a long form magazine article, maybe stretched a bit too far to make it a book.