Just Finished Reading: The Color of Money by Walter Tevis (FP: 1984) [236pp] 

It seems to be all over for ‘Fast’ Eddie Felson (Paul Newman in the movie ‘adaptation’). The fame he achieved in his youth has mostly vanished, his wife has divorced him and the pool-hall business he had been steadily losing interest in has had to be sold off. Only his memories of the pool circuit remain and maybe, just maybe that could be his way out, his way back to the big time. Tracking down his most famous opponent, the great Minnesota Fats, he proposes a set of televised rematches in the hope that, even in his fifties, he can jump start his career in a new age. Eddie isn’t really happy with the money he’s offered but just playing pool again, the hustling for dollars, is enough to awaken the drive, the need, to win.  

To be honest this wasn’t the book I thought it was! For some reason I thought it was about Poker – rather than Pool. I guess I was thinking of both another book and another movie. I also confess that I’ve never seen the movie adaptation and, by the looks of a brief glance at the synopsis at IMdb, seeing it wouldn’t have ruined the seemingly very different book. Overall, the narrative is one of loss, regret and the desire to be recognised. Eddie, now middle–aged, both wants and has the opportunity to relive his past glories but learns some valuable lessons along the way – like talent isn’t enough and practice, constant practice, is a vital ingredient. So far, so good. Eddie, however, finds training boring (at least initially) and suffers from a sense of entitlement. To be honest in many ways he’s not a nice person and I honestly didn’t warm to him very much. He certainly has talent and a keen mind but his only real focus in life (or rather foci) is winning and money – but mostly money. His girlfriend, likewise, is generally unlikable. Recently divorced from a comfortable but boring marriage, the achievements she wants seem to be too much effort. She pushes Eddie to succeed (almost in her stead) but then resents the fact that he does so. The word I’d use to describe her is ‘toxic’, although Eddie seems to like her enough to keep her around. Whenever I read something, I much prefer it if at least some (or just one!) of the characters are either likable or interesting. Unfortunately, here neither of the main characters had either of those qualities and most of the secondary characters were generally of the disposable kind. Overall, this wasn’t a badly written book. But I did find I needed more effort than I thought I would to finish it. Possibly this is simply because the pool tournaments didn’t really interest me all that much. I always enjoyed playing pool (mostly during my university years) but I never even considered watching semi-pros playing it as entertaining. So, reading about it didn’t really float my boat. One last thing: I wouldn’t have called this a Classic mostly for the fact that I think it’s far too modern (and, frankly, not good enough to be called one) but as it’s part of the publisher's Modern Classic series I’m going to have to. Hopefully my other book by this author will be more my ‘thing’. Reasonable.

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