Almost despite himself, Walter Tevis was an amazingly successful writer whose novels have held up very well since his death to lung cancer thirty-nine years ago. I was very slow to pick up a Walter Tevis novel for the first time, but as it turns out, when I finally did (The Queen's Gambit), I already knew more about his books than I realized thanks to several of them having been made into major films. Including The Queen's Gambit, which was adapted into a hit series by Netflix in 2020, four Tevis novels have been filmed. The other three are The Hustler, The Color of Money, and The Man Who Fell to Earth, all of which are familiar to film buffs.

Tevis's hustler, who has come to be known as "Fast Eddie," is a young man who has been working his way across the country from pool hall to pool hall so that when he makes it to Chicago he will have enough money in his pocket to challenge the big boy pool hustlers there. Eddie wants as much as anything to make a reputation for himself, and he will be pleased to learn that his reputation, and expectation of his immanent arrival, precede him to the biggest pool halls in the city.

And that's where Eddie finds his own "white whale" waiting for him in the person of the almost grotesquely fat man who is acknowledged to be the best pool player in the country, one "Minnesota Fats." Fat the man may be, but something almost miraculous happens when he picks up a pool cue and strides toward the table:

"He stepped up to the table with short, quick little steps, stepping up to it sideways, bringing his cue up into position as he did so, so that he was holding his cue, standing sideways to the table, out across his great stomach, the left hand bridge already formed, the right hand holding the butt delicately, as a violinist holds his bow - gracefully but surely...And then Fats began moving around the table, making balls, all of his former ponderousness gone now, his motions like a ballet, the steps light, sure, and rehearsed."

Walter Tevis was an artist himself, and it's passages like this one that prove it to me. His novels are character-driven tales populated by flawed people whose deepest thoughts and motivations are all on full display for the reader to absorb and judge. The Hustler, while not exactly a coming-of-age novel for the young man in question, is one in which Fast Eddie finally figures out who he is and why he is that way. It's a bumpy ride, but with a lot of coaching along the way Eddie turns himself from a loser into a winner. What a shame it is too late.

This 1959 novel was followed, finally, by a 1984 sequel that would turn out to be Tevis's last book. In 1986, The Color of Money was made into a successful movie featuring Paul Newman in a reprisal of his role as Fast Eddie from The Hustler film, and co-starring Tom Cruise as a young pool player that Eddie wants to turn into a professional hustler. ( )

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I’ve read 3 Tevis books in the last year or so, and each has been phenomenal. He’s in danger of becoming my favourite author. His style, both his prose and his storytelling, is incredibly straightforward. No tricks, no flourishes, just words and stories that flow into brain with no friction at all.
‘The Hustler’ was his first book in 1959, famously filmed with Paul Newman in the lead role as Fast Eddie, a talented young pool hustler. It’s a classic riches to rags to riches type tale of the sort that Hollywood loves. It starts with a fantastic battle between Eddie and an older champion, Minnesota Fats, which Eddie nearly wins and then loses. The rest of the book has him building himself up again from nothing for a rematch.
Just as he did later in his novel about a chess prodigy, ‘The Queen’s Gambit’, Tevis does a brilliant job of drawing tension out of the games Eddie plays, without the reader needing to understand the intricacies of pool. I ended up feeling like an expert on the game, although in sure that’s an illusion.
Despite not being a sports fan, I’m a sucker for sports stories and this is a great one. The highs and the lows of the matches, with the added zing of the danger that comes from the seedier side of pool hall hustling, make for fantastically entertaining reading.
Best of all, Eddie is a great character and one I ended up wholeheartedly rooting for. He’s a kind of Everyman of young male hubris and determination and makes the book feel more meaningful than it might have otherwise. Add to that Tevis’s gorgeously sparse prose and you have a book that I’d recommend to anyone.
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Walter Tevis was not a writer on my radar until I watched “The Queen’s Gambit”. Although I had a fake DVD of the movie “The Hustler” based on Tevis’s first novel. I bought the DVD in China circa 2003. I’m not sure I watched it right through at the time. I was fascinated by Jackie Gleason’s face but didn’t have patience for the rest of it. I was off pool at the time having played so much at the university gym and bars and never getting good at it. Watching this film a few weeks ago I was very impressed with the cast of Paul Newman, Gleason, Piper Laurie and George Scott. I then read the novel which was a good too. Tevis has a clear, straightforward style, something that's not easy to achieve. However, the movie is more gripping, Tevis’s book loses focus about three-quarters through . “The Color of Money”, is a sequel to “The Hustler” written and filmed over twenty years later. Paul Newman returns as the pool shark Fast Eddie, Tom Cruise is his young protege and Maria Mastrantonio the street smart girlfriend. It’s a much weaker movie than “The Hustler”. What happened to filmmaking in the 80s? It had deteriorated from the golden era of the 60s and 70s — but was still better than today. ( )

Read in 2012 - pre Goodreads.

Review - 11.30.17 - I really liked this book. It was intriguing and I rented the movie shortly afterward. Good stuff. ( )

Even if you've seen the movie, don't let it stop you from reading this, and Tevis's other work. I can't think of an author (not that I'm thinking too hard right now) whose novels are quite so varied (pool, science fiction of various types, and chess). ( )