Book : The Hustler - Tevis, Walter

-Titulo Original : The Hustler

-Fabricante :

Vintage

-Descripcion Original:

The legendary novel from the bestselling author of The Queens Gambit about an ambitious pool shark who discovers what it takes to make the big time. The basis for the acclaimed film starring Paul Newman.To the strangers he plays in darkened pool halls, at first “Fast” Eddie Felson seems like a sloppy pool player with bright eyes and an extraordinary grin. But when real money is on the line, they see that Eddie is a hustler of the first order. But Eddie’s got ambitions and wants to quit his two-bit hustling for the big time. And when he sets his sights on Minnesota Fats, the best pool player in the country, he knows this match will be a true test of his skill-and he knows he can win. But what Eddie doesn’t know is that the game of pool isn’t all about skill. It’s about guts and stamina, and, above all, character. Review If Hemingway had the passion for pool that he had for bullfighting, his hero might have been Eddie Felson. -TimeA fine, swift, wanton, offbeat novel.” -The New York Times About the Author WALTER TEVIS is the author of The Hustler, The Man Who Fell to Earth, Mockingbird, The Steps of the Sun, The Queen’s Gambit, The Color of Money, and the short story collection Far from Home. The Man Who Fell to Earth was the basis for a major motion picture starring David Bowie. The Hustler and The Color of Money were also adapted for film, The Queen’s Gambit was the basis of the Emmy Award-winning Netflix series and The Man Who Fell to Earth is the basis of the Showtime series. Tevis died in 1984. Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved. 1Henry, black and stooped, unlocked the door with a key on a large metal ring. He had just come up in the elevator. It was nine o’clock in the morning. The door was a massive thing, a great ornate slab of oak, stained once to look like mahogany, ebony now from sixty years of smoke and dirt. He pushed the door open, shoved the door stop in place with his lame foot, and limped in.There was no need to turn the lights on, for in the morning the three huge windows along the side wall faced the rising sun. Outside of them was much daylight, much of downtown Chicago. Henry pulled the cord that parted the heavy draperies and these gathered in grimy elegance to the edges of the windows. Outside was a panorama of gray buildings; between them, patches of a virginal blue sky. Then he opened the windows, a few inches from the bottom. Air puffed abruptly and small eddies of dust and the aftermaths of four-hour-old cigarette smoke whirled and then began to dissipate. Always by afternoon the draperies would be drawn tight, the windows shut; only in the morning was the tobaccoed air exchanged for fresh.A poolroom in the morning is a strange place. It has stages; a daily metamorphosis, a shedding of patterned skins. Now, at 9 a.m., it could have been a large church, still, sun coming through stained windows, wrapped into itself, the great tables’ timeless and massive mahogany, their green cloths discreetly hidden by gray oilcloth covers. The fat brass spittoons were lined along both walls between the tall chairs with seats of honest and enduring leather, rump-polished to an antique gloss, and, above all, the high, arched ceiling with its four great chandeliers and its many-paned skylight-for this was the top floor of an ancient and venerable building which, squat and ugly, sat in eight-story insignificance in downtown Chicago. The huge room, with the viewers’ chairs, high-backed, grouped reverently around each of the twenty-two tables, could have been a sanctuary, a shabby cathedral.But later, when the rack boys and the cashier came in, when the overhead fans were turned on and when Gordon, the manager, would play music on his radio, then the room would adopt the quality that is peculiar to the daytime life of those places which are only genuinely alive at night-the mid-morning quality of night clubs, of bars, and of poolrooms everywhe