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A review by gardnerhere
A Gambler's Anatomy by Jonathan Lethem
3.0
Lethem's mostly playing here, and that's fine by me. I'm not sure this adds up to all that much, but it was a perfectly diverting audiobook. The surgery scenes, the backgammon scenes, the flipping sliders scenes--they all work. But in the end we're left with not so much. Alexander Bruno--the "psychic" and busted backgammon gambling protagonist--is the blot, the exposed checker in a gammon game awaiting the hammer, and it comes from most directions. He imagines control over his life (like he largely imagines his psychic powers), but the truth is that he floats about, blown by the spitty wind of wealthy men whose motives range from financial exploitation to petty revenge and oneupmanship.
By novel's end, he's had his face ripped off and incited a riot in Berkeley, but he doesn't seem to have learned much on the journey. He snags a clutch of Dude "Abide" shirts on the way and, again, imagines himself as a mysterious zen-like figure, but the truth is he's still a blot, less abiding than bidden.
The novel ends on an up note--Bruno in control at the poker table, wielding his psychic powers to bilk a dim-witted American who unironically dubs himself "The Titanic"--but the reader sees through the "win". That's just Bruno being Bruno, getting swatted about by the wealthy exploiters who have been moving him about the board at whim, covering him or leaving him exposed as the dice dictate, unperturbed by any of the very real dangers he might face.
And here we perhaps are at a common Lethem theme. The rich eat; the rest get eaten. The theme seems to take the novel over, discarding several other potential avenues. I'm not certain that this is the best arrangement to explore the theme, but it's a theme Lethem can rarely ignore.
By novel's end, he's had his face ripped off and incited a riot in Berkeley, but he doesn't seem to have learned much on the journey. He snags a clutch of Dude "Abide" shirts on the way and, again, imagines himself as a mysterious zen-like figure, but the truth is he's still a blot, less abiding than bidden.
The novel ends on an up note--Bruno in control at the poker table, wielding his psychic powers to bilk a dim-witted American who unironically dubs himself "The Titanic"--but the reader sees through the "win". That's just Bruno being Bruno, getting swatted about by the wealthy exploiters who have been moving him about the board at whim, covering him or leaving him exposed as the dice dictate, unperturbed by any of the very real dangers he might face.
And here we perhaps are at a common Lethem theme. The rich eat; the rest get eaten. The theme seems to take the novel over, discarding several other potential avenues. I'm not certain that this is the best arrangement to explore the theme, but it's a theme Lethem can rarely ignore.