Confessions of an Ivy League Bookie

Fülszöveg

'With the style and gusto of a 1990s Dámon Runyon. Peter Alsón paints a vivid portrait of a New York demi-monde which is much wiser - and more enriching - to visit via his Confessions. ' Anthony Holdén Peter Alsón is having an early mid-life crisis: he's a thirty-three-year-old Harvard graduate who has run out of prospects. He can't seem to finish that növel; he and his girlfriend, Anna, have decided to call it quits; and worse, he's fiat broke. So when Peter meets Michael, another Ivy Leaguer who's making a killing as a bookie, he does what any enterprising guy would do: he enters a life of crime by joining a New York bookmaking operation and finds himself working for such colourful characters as Monkey and Steak Knife. Peter Alson's memoir is a true tale of love and the vig! Situated on the margin of New York's Yuppie community, his people are only faintly reminiscent of the characters in Jay Mclnerney's and Bret Easton Ellis's early works, but Alson's achievement is to limn the... Tovább

Fülszöveg

'With the style and gusto of a 1990s Dámon Runyon. Peter Alsón paints a vivid portrait of a New York demi-monde which is much wiser - and more enriching - to visit via his Confessions. ' Anthony Holdén Peter Alsón is having an early mid-life crisis: he's a thirty-three-year-old Harvard graduate who has run out of prospects. He can't seem to finish that növel; he and his girlfriend, Anna, have decided to call it quits; and worse, he's fiat broke. So when Peter meets Michael, another Ivy Leaguer who's making a killing as a bookie, he does what any enterprising guy would do: he enters a life of crime by joining a New York bookmaking operation and finds himself working for such colourful characters as Monkey and Steak Knife. Peter Alson's memoir is a true tale of love and the vig! Situated on the margin of New York's Yuppie community, his people are only faintly reminiscent of the characters in Jay Mclnerney's and Bret Easton Ellis's early works, but Alson's achievement is to limn the spiritual pain of a well-educated Yuppie who is now on his uppers. This he does as no one has before. So, his confessional becomes one of those few books which captures a generation. Since I am Peter Alson's uncle, I will probably be accused of nepotism, but to hell with that - I would stand by the first paragraph even if he were your nephew. Literature is thicker than blood.' Norman Mailer 'Alsón grapples with his conscience, his fears of arrest, his embarrassment at enjoying 'success' outside the law and he telis it with candour. Being a clerk in a bookie joint isn't that different from a job at Goldman Sachs - it just pays more.' ni h ISBN 1-85702-497-4 llllllllllllllllllllllllllllll Vissza