Risky Business: People, Pastimes, Poker and Books - Softcover

Alvarez, Al

3.33

6 ratings by Goodreads

9780747593119: Risky Business: People, Pastimes, Poker and Books

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0747593116 ISBN 13: 9780747593119

Publisher: Bloomsbury Pub Ltd, 2009

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For more than 50 years, Al Alvarez has been best known as a literary critic with a knack for producing profound and eloquent analysis of writers and their craft. Along the way, he has also been a passionate amateur of risky pursuits—among them poker, mountaineering, and flying in airplanes—which he has written about with rare depth, liveliness, and perception. This broad-reaching collection of essays brings together some of his most notable treatises on such risky topics as polar expeditions and poker championships as well as some of his most trenchant literary criticism covering such authors as Sylvia Plath, Alice Munro, Norman Mailer, and Jean Rhys. Incisive and grandly written, this is a fascinating compilation of work from a unique man of letters.

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About the Author:

Al Alvarez is a poet, novelist, literary critic, and author of many highly praised non-fiction books, among them Feeding the Rat, Poker, The Savage God, and Where Did It All Go Right? He is also a contributor to The New Yorker and The New York Review of Books and perhaps the only published poet ever to participate in the World Series of Poker. His book about the series, The Biggest Game in Town, has become a cult classic.

Review:

'In a book this good, in the company of a mind this judicious and fine, the reader is left wanting more' Daily Telegraph 'Essays about everything from risk, poker and exploration, to Philip Roth, Edward Lear and Jean Rhys' Scotsman 'Word- and pitch-perfect ... unalloyed Alvarez' The Times 'Marvellous ... clear, unpretentious, insightful' Observer

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