Poker Laureates of Poker: Part Three, James MCManus
No other way to say it. This guy is all over the map. Like AL Alvarez (Part One) and Anthony Holden (Part Two), this is another way of saying that he writes about a lot of different things. James McManus is a Chicago-based poet and novelist who wrote the classic, Positively Fifth Street, about making it to the final table of the 2000 World Series of Poker in Las Vegas. Like Alvarez, his life is an open book. He even characterizes himself as sometimes being “Good Jim” and sometimes being “Bad Jim.” In Physical: An American Checkup (2006), he talks about the hidden places (his hidden places) where doctors wearing latex gloves put their fingers to a lap dance (here’s where Bad Jim appears) in a strip joint (his wife forgave him) after almost winning the World Series of Poker. There is an article in Esquire about his daughter’s battle with juvenile diabetes, “Please Stand By While the Age of Miracles Is Briefly Suspended: How the President is Trying to Kill My Daughter,” and in Physical, a recounting of his son’s suicide at the age of 22. McManus is a tenured professor of English at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. He is the author of four novels, including Going to the Sun, which won the Carl Sandburg Award in 1996 and two books of poetry including Great America, with references to everything from NutraSweet jingles to "Leave It to Beaver" (a typically bawdy reference, in the latter case). Publishers Weekly says this about several of his selections from Great America: “The middle-aged narrator of ‘Smash and Scatteration,’ having displayed his sexy and forthright fiancee Linda Krajacik (" 'Yo, tell me about it, Mr. Premature / Ejaculation,' she snaps, whapping a palm with a fist"), goes on in ‘Wisconsin,’ another piece, to ogle the body of nubile teenager Katie Krajacik, who plays ‘center field on my daughter Mairead's fast-pitch softball team.’ Should we sort it out, leave it alone or call the police?” Positively Fifth Street tells of his assignment from Harper’s to cover the 2000 World Series of Poker in Las Vegas. Time Magazine called Fifth Street "irresistible . . . the writer's equivalent of a royal flush." McManus parlayed his advance from the magazine into a seat at the final table of the championship event and came close to winning the damn thing before being knocked out in fifth place by a rabbi, Steve Kaufman, from Cincinnati. He describes Kaufman, with a nod to Dante, as, "The Satanic Prince of Noodges who forked me down into the pitch." McManus pocketed $250,000 and after the lap dance and exorbitant tips, paid down the mortgage on his house. Kaufman, who won $500,000, bought a condo in Vegas. When they meet, as they sometimes do at poker tournaments, McManus asks, “How is my property in Vegas?” The professor combines his love of poker and love of teaching in a unique course that he began in 1997, "The Literature and History of Poker." The course ends with an in-class Texas Hold ‘em tournament. He has a book in the works on the history of the game. He is also writing a novel about Vegas, poker, and terrorism. How much poetry is he writing these days? “I write maybe one verse poem a year now. But I feel that when you are writing narrative fiction or nonfiction you don’t stop writing poetry. The poetic elements of language, rhythm and sound and sentence structure and so on are still there. I feel that I haven’t stopped writing poetry just because I’m writing narrative nonfiction.” How is it that these three writers (Alvarez in Part One, Holden in Part Two), who write about many things, have nailed the culture of poker when hundreds of “poker writers” have not? They have romanticized it and talked about the humanity of the poker players. McManus just put his finger on it when he said you are still writing poetry even when writing nonfiction, as in Bigger Game, Big Deal and Fifth Street. Each of these has brought poetry to poker. Poetry, poker. What’s the difference? (c) 2006 Murphy James
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