Book Review: A Gambler's Anatomy, by Jonathan Lethem

I can't remember if I started playing backgammon because I started reading A Gambler's Anatomy, or if I picked up A Gambler's Anatomy because I had started playing backgammon. In any event, the book is a novel about a professional backgammon player who travels around the world looking for "whales" to swindle out of their money. Not a bad premise for a book, right? A unique one at the very least.

Jonathan Lethem writes intelligent fiction, what I suppose you might call "literature." And yet what really is literature and where does the line fall between literature and genre fiction? If a book is about spacemen using laser guns, and it's emotionally moving and teaches you something about life, does that qualify as literature? On the other hand, if a book is exquisitely well-written, about a middle-aged professor having a mid-life crisis, praised by everyone in the literary establishment, but does nothing to move you...is that literature?

What makes Jonathan Lethem, in my opinion, a writer of actual literature -- and one of the greatest living writers in the English language -- is his ability to write engaging, living prose while also dealing with the higher emotions in human life such as love, sadness, hope, nostalgia, identity, etc. and still writing an entertaining book or story.

Frankly, the plot of A Gambler's Anatomy doesn't seem to amount to much, in spite of the fact that things actually happen, interesting things. It's one of those books in which the means justify the end. The characters are so interesting, especially when placed in opposition to each other, as they are in this book, that it almost doesn't matter what is happening, you're along for the ride.

The main character, for example, Alexander Bruno, is so complex, so lovably pompous, that simply being inside his head was an adventure. The ability to make someone's inner thought processes engaging for 250 pages is not something to be found everywhere. And it's very likely that this type of writing turns some people off; however, for those whom it strikes a chord, the book will be a source of almost mystical fascination.

Alexander Bruno, a good-looking, elegant, man-of-the-world who started out from meager beginnings in Berkeley, California, has a long fall-from-grace when he encounters a string of bad luck and is abandoned by his mentor and financial backer, Edgar Falk. Alone and with no other recourse, he is forced to turn to his childhood acquaintance, Keith Stolarsky, who is like the polar opposite of Alexander Bruno: vulgar, base, unrefined, and an extremely rich business man in their childhood neighborhood in Berkeley. What happens from there is too much to get into and I wouldn't want to spoil the bizarre plot anyway. One thing is for sure, you won't guess where any of it is leading.

If what fiction is supposed to do -- like any form of entertainment -- is ultimately to take you outside yourself into another and more fascinating world, then on that level A Gambler's Anatomy is a success. With such a grandiose main character as a professional backgammon player, I'd have expected (hoped) the plot would end up with him in a casino in Monte Carlo or something, or at least to have had a more "grand" resolution than the one that happened. I'd also have liked to see more actual backgammon being played, there really is only one full description of a backgammon game, although there are references throughout the book.

I can't say that reading this book is absolutely necessary or that it will make you a better person or whatever. I can say, however, that if you want to be in-the-know concerning contemporary literature, you need to read some Jonathan Lethem, and this book is a pretty good entry point. Furthermore, I an conclusively say that Jonathan Lethem's writing will make you a better writer.

Fun fact: I actually met Jonathan Lethem years ago when I was in graduate school for creative writing, at Butler University. He was giving readings from his book Dissident Gardens, which was just out or due out soon, and he and a few of the students all went out for dinner afterward. This story doesn't go anywhere...sorry. He was super interesting and fun to talk to though. Read something by him!