Some writers get very annoyed when a book early in their career remains the one everyone seems to talk about and still view as their best work. Walter Tevis didn’t suffer from that pre-se. He wrote a genre classic in The Man Who Fell to Earth and The Hustler before the years of teaching and drinking took over. Until 1976 when David Bowie starred in the TMWFTE movie the Hustler was the one major success in his career. A classic novel and film starring Paul Newman is not bad for an autobiographical novel.
As a Philip K Dick devotee, the most interesting thing about Tevis for me is he did the thing PKD chased his whole life. Mainstream success. I have not yet read all of PKD’s main street novels but as I read The Hustler I thought a lot about why Tevis who grew up reading the same pulps, first published in the same pulps broke out with a mainstream book. Why?
The first thing you notice as a reader of Tevis is precision. Probably the reason I connect with him is he doesn’t mess around. Every single word is there for an exact reason. No fluff, no messing around. The Hustler has more atmosphere, and character, and looks at the human condition in 220 pages than most literary novels written by MFA grads with four times the length.
Tevis was an English professor and during the nearly 20-year period when he was too drunk and frustrated to write he kept teaching. I imagine as an editor or teacher that he had a brutal red pen. All of his novels are inspired by his life. I reviewed his genre debut earlier in the month and found it to be inspired by his drinking and feeling of being an outsider in Kentucky where he spent his teenage years. A subject he returned to in Queen’s Gambit. The competitive and outsider nature weaved together in that novel something most of you will know as that novel became a hit Netflix series.
The Hustler is the most autobiographical novel Walter Tevis wrote. He has said in interviews that before he settled down to go to college he tried He got wrapped up in the life in poolhalls. How good he was at Hustling and how much is made up is hard to tell, but one of the things that makes the Hustler a great novel is Tevis's training and skill as a Sci-fi writer that really helped to make the world of the late 50s poolhalls feel real to this reader 70 or so years later.
“The heavy undercurrent of voices, the clicking of many balls, the soft cursing and the dry laughter, the banging of cue sticks on the floor.”
The story Of Fast Eddie Felson a pool hall hustler from the west coast who just showed up in Chicago with the goal of playing Minnesota Fats (played by Jackie Gleason in the movie) the greatest hustler of all time. Eddie is a stand-in for Tevis who grew up until he was 10 years old in San Francisco. He dealt with a serious culture shock when he his family moved to Lexington Kentucky. There he became an outsider a theme he dealt with more directly in his novel The Man Who Fell to Earth. He had a summer where he was sick and spent a year pouring himself into pulp science fiction.
As he got older he discovered the poolhalls. If it is The Hustler or Queen’s Gambit you can tell Tevis is a competitive guy. He also writes very effectively about the competitive spirit. The winning and losing, the competitive spirit is one of the things that drives the narrative. Once Eddie locks into a battle Tevis doesn’t waste time on each move but sweeps you along with the sweaty desperate feel of 48 hours in a row of battle at the pool table. He makes it feel important or cosmic like the nature of the universe hinges on that table.
“To beat the other man. To beat him as utterly, as completely as possible: This was the deep and abiding meaning of the game of pool. And, it seemed to Eddie in that minute of thought, it was the meaning of more than the game of pool, more than the five-by-ten-foot microcosm of ambition and desire. It seemed to him as if all men must know this because it is in every meeting and every act.”
The first time Eddie matches up with Minnesota Fats they both win and lose, but Fats is cool, and effortless. Eddie is a tired hungry, sweaty mess. The feeling of this is something Tevis makes so real you can smell the room.
“When the bottles hit they tinkled and jangled noisily; but Eddie did not hear them because of the overriding - yet distant, detached, far-off - the sound of his own screaming.”
Fast Eddie wants to win so bad that during that forty-eight-hour marathon he forgets to drink, eat or sleep. The worst thing is he loses Charlie, the buddy he came to Chicago with. It is interesting how Charlie drops out of the novel. In an excellent moment of character writing, Eddie has a moment when Charlie occurs to him. Eddie is left to wonder what happened to his old friend. He and the reader have to wonder at that moment. I don’t want to spoil that aspect but I found that moment to be quietly heartbreaking.
Fast Eddie is driven to win at pool but he is a loser in life. Another great moment happens after he is recruited by a bank-roller Bert who takes him on the road to Hustle. He has to leave Sarah the woman he was shacking up with in Chicago. Eddie took her out to dinner before telling her he was leaving, he thinks he’ll come back but Sarah knows it is probably over. Eddie wasn’t sure, he gets to Lexington and gets involved with a prostitute, although he didn’t realize this was happening at first. It is the next morning that the thought of Sarah and settling down goes through his mind.
“He looked at his watch. A quarter of twelve. He would probably be having coffee with her now if he were home. Home? What in the hell did that mean- He didn’t have any home. But the idea stayed with him for several minutes, the idea of a house somewhere and Sarah, doing whatever women are supposed to do in houses.”
This is the moment when I realized Fast Eddie Felson was just as much an outsider as Thomas Netwon in TMWFTE. The very idea that he could settle down and have a normal life was laughable to him. He had not defeated Minnesota Fats after all. His ticket is the relationship that is most important to him Bert. The bank-roller, the man who used to own a restaurant with Minnesota Fats. The guy who would fork over the cash win or lose. Bert is his guru even though he can’t teach Eddie anything about playing pool. He teaches Eddie to win.
“You drop that load too when you find yourself an excuse. Then, afterward, all you got to do is learn to feel sorry for yourself—and lots of people learn to get their kicks that way. It’s one of the best indoor sports, feeling sorry.” Bert’s face broke into an active grin. “A sport enjoyed by all. Especially the born losers.”
The Hustler is a journey. It feels longer than it is. It feels more important than the events it is based on. It feels so many things you can’t help but realize why it is a classic. Masterpiece, sure. It is not timeless, it shows some warts of the era, but nothing that makes it unreadable. I was a big fan although I personally like his science fiction more. Mockingbird to me is still the Tevis masterwork.
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