This blisteringly satirical comparison of two obsessions—writing and gambling—masquerades as the memoir of Frank Dixon, a self-described loser. Frank, as “Chip Zero,” takes a cab, with the meter running, from New York to Vegas, along with two fellow losers nicknamed "Toll House Cookie" and "Second Gunman." Narrator William Roberts inhabits the other characters in the same way that he inhabits the protagonist—with an unerring sense of ironic poise. The story gives Roberts a large canvas onto which he paints the many colorful and hilarious heartaches of an unforgettable character. Roberts is so convincing, and the text so full of opportunity, that by the time Dixon says, "Listener, it's all true, every word," one wants to hear Roberts speak them all again. J.L. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award © AudioFile 2012, Portland, Maine
Pocket Kings
Narrated by William Roberts
Ted HellerUnabridged — 12 hours, 38 minutes
Pocket Kings
Narrated by William Roberts
Ted HellerUnabridged — 12 hours, 38 minutes
Audiobook (Digital)
Free with a B&N Audiobooks Subscription | Cancel Anytime
Already Subscribed?
Sign in to Your BN.com Account
Related collections and offers
FREE
with a B&N Audiobooks Subscription
Overview
Editorial Reviews
Though [Frank] Dixon is psychologically in a lineage that runs from [Frederick] Exley to the unapologetically misanthropic Sam Lipsyte, Pocket Kings is, stylistically, in much closer conversation with movies and TV shows like Greenberg, Young Adult and Curb Your Enthusiasm that feature irascible and highly unlikable protagonists. Heller is facile with structure and plot, and his sentences and paragraphs are clear and often vivid…but his truly standout talent…is for comically depicting our most awkward and disgraceful inner states, mainly in the form of rants.
—The New York Times Book Review
Ted Heller's brazen, often hilarious and always disturbing new novel…is a hybrid love letter and suicide note to 21st-century publishing…What seem[s] at first to be a smart if limited satire about publishing and online gambling becomes an illuminating and fully realized story about identity and reputation in the digital age. At its best, Pocket Kings explores authentic existence and the desperate extremes to which a man will go to be recognized in an industry that he, like so many others, despises and loves.
—The Washington Post
Struggling writer Frank Dixon takes to online gambling as a means of supplementing his rather stagnant income, but forgets that in the gaming world he shouldn’t cross the wrong people. Narrator William Roberts delivers a stellar turn as Dixon—a man so easily carried away by the prospect of free money that he loses himself and his life in the process. Roberts all but transforms himself into Dixon in this audio edition, sinking deeper and deeper until the point of no return. The highs are as genuine as the lowest of the lows for Dixon, and Roberts manages to paint a realistic portrayal of a man who stands to lose everything he has—including his life. As Dixon, Roberts’s tone is stern yet frustrated. But as luck abounds, Roberts adjusts accordingly to capture a man on the rebound, who believes his dreams might not be that unattainable after all. Of course, luck has to run out at some point, and when it does, Roberts captures the moment perfectly. An Algonquin paperback. (Mar.)
The anti-hero of Heller’s third novel (after Funnymen) is Frank Dixon, a resentful schlub who’s failed at everything he’s puts his mind to: athletics, painting, and, most recently, writing. Stuck in a midlife crisis, Frank finds Internet poker and discovers that he has some talent after all. He immerses himself in a virtual community where he makes friends and potential lovers, all while winning money unstoppably. As he alienates people in the real world—from his wife to his literary agent—he delves further into his online relationships and begins to lose himself to his addiction. As “Chip Zero,” he builds a fortune, but his success breeds resentment, and one player in particular plots revenge to get his money back. The obnoxious narrator, his endless failures, and the instant messaging all grow tiresome, but Heller should be commended for creating a thoroughly repellent character whose story is captivating, even compulsive, reading. While the book has the gritty, unpleasant feel of a novel by Chuck Palahniuk or Sam Lipsyte—another futile diatribe against the barrenness of 21st-century American (male) life—it’s a well-crafted and entertaining satire on the world of modern publishing, as well as the perverse artificiality of the Internet. The prose equivalent of nails on a chalkboard, Heller still manages to make the reader laugh and rage at more or less the same time. Agent: Matthew Elblonk, the Creative Culture. (Mar.)
Heller’s novel about a failed writer offers an unlikable protagonist, vivid writing and a comic depiction of our most disgraceful inner states.”—The New York Times Book Review, Editor’s Choice list
“Highly entertaining . . . Pocket Kings is, in spirit, the comical sequel to Frederick Exley’s Fan’s Notes, the classic and psychologically tragic depiction of machismo mediocrity.”—The New York Times Book Review
“Ted Heller’s brazen, often hilarious and always disturbing new novel, Pocket Kings, is a hybrid love letter and suicide note to 21st-century publishing . . . What seemed at first to be a smart if limited satire about publishing and online gambling becomes an illuminating and fully realized story about identity and reputation in the digital age. At its best, Pocket Kings explores authentic existence and the desperate extremes to which a man will go to be recognized in an industry that he, like so many others, despises and loves.”—The Washington Post
“[A] recklessly funny, sparky satire of our obsession with the virtual world.”—Vanity Fair
“Pocket Kings is the kind of reading fun that offers nutritional value and not just empty calories. Ted Heller’s third novel is a satirical, charming literary ride.”—Buffalo News
“A poignant, funny satire ... Heller’s prose is razor sharp and his cultural reference points are spot on. In fact it’s all so believable that you have to wonder about Mr. Heller’s own online poker credentials. Watch out for him at the virtual tables.”—CultureMob
“Heller (Slab Rat, Funnymen) seems to have inherited the satire gene from his father, Joseph.”—New York Post"The pace is fast, the plot twisty, and the satire bites viciously."—Library Journal
"Laugh-out-loud funny . . . There is a certain Everyman quality to Frank, whose hopes gradually fade away but whose self-deprecating humor helps carry him through his midlife angst and denial of addiction; you want to wish him well."—Booklist
“A well-crafted and entertaining satire.”—Publishers Weekly
Narrator William Roberts inhabits the other characters in the same way that he inhabits the protagonist—with an unerring sense of ironic poise. The story gives Roberts a large canvas onto which he paints the many colorful and hilarious heartaches of an unforgettable character.”
—AudioFile [Earphones Award Winner]
This hilarious dosing of satire and black humor nails both the delusions of wannabe writers, and also the giddy hopes of those who think ‘something for nothing’ is a worthy—or even possible—American dream. Narrator William Roberts . . . gives a Royal Flush performance in creating the character of Dixon, displaying a versatile range of emotions and accents guided by an overall sense of timing and arc.”
—Audiobooks Today
A well-crafted and entertaining satire on the world of modern publishing, as well as the perverse artificiality of the Internet. . . . Heller still manages to make the reader laugh and rage at more or less the same time.”
—Publishers Weekly
When a writer unfortunately named Franklin W. Dixon (think Hardy Boys) begins to play online poker, his life takes a strange turn. His two published books have received little attention, and he cannot find a publisher for the third; however, hiding behind the moniker Chip Zero, he finds both competitive and social success online. As he becomes addicted to easy money, virtual voyeurism, and online relationships, his real-world ambitions and marriage come tragically, but humorously, apart; his wife can't understand him, critics and other writers shun him, and his agent hides from him. The failure to connect in his real life sends Dixon on two raucous, raunchy road trips to connect with Internet friends and lovers and to revive his writing career. VERDICT The pace is fast, the plot twisty, and the satire bites viciously as Heller (Slab Rat; Funnymen) takes gleeful chunks out of the publishing world, Internet culture, and the poker craze, all the while addressing serious questions about the nature of success and reality. Thoroughly unlikable yet somehow sympathetic, Dixon is a comic protagonist for the digital age, and this novel is good, angry fun.—Neil Hollands, Williamsburg Regional Lib., VA
Product Details
| BN ID: | 2940171333393 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | HighBridge Company |
| Publication date: | 03/27/2012 |
| Edition description: | Unabridged |
Read an Excerpt
POCKET KINGS
a novelBy Ted Heller
ALGONQUIN BOOKS OF CHAPEL HILL
Copyright © 2012 Ted HellerAll right reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-56512-620-6
Chapter One
Welcome to Purgatory
It is a cold and harrowing morning in the life of a man the day he wakes up, looks at himself in the mirror, and finally realizes that he is not, has never been, nor will ever be George Clooney. A magnificent, eternal ideal had been floating out there; it was a paragon of the perfect human being this man had wanted to become. He wanted to look like him, act like him, talk and think like him. He wanted to be him and shed the creaky body, cranky soul, and unexciting past of the man he was. And now he realizes: it isn't happening and it's not going to — Damn it, I am just going to go on being me.
Perfection will not only forever elude this broken man; it won't even get close enough to tickle his bald spot, pinch his love handles, or tug on his double chin. If he were as much as half-perfect, he wouldn't be here; he wouldn't be looking at his reflection in his smudged bathroom mirror, wishing with all his might that he were someone else. And it's too late: it won't ever happen. He knows it now. Excellence, courage, wit, grace, confidence ... they've all slipped away. The luminous spirit of the ideal man has fled the scene and isn't coming back. It's all over now, Baby Blue. James Bond is long gone, my friend. You will never play centerfield for the Yankees, you will never be Tiger Woods or Spider-Man, you won't win an Oscar and own a large yacht and sleep with famous women. The closest you'll ever get to being Jimi Hendrix or Eddie Van Halen is playing Guitar Hero. You've always been you and will always be you and now there's nothing left to do but ride Life's Moving Sidewalk Unto Death.
In these harsh terrible seconds, the truth slowly twists into him like a corkscrew, and in the mirror he sees the lights going out, one by one, on his future.
I have been that man, looking into the mirror. I have heard the strains of "Taps" tooting mournfully out of the bathroom faucet. And in short, I was terrified.
The lights were going out and I had to do something — I had to find something, anything, no matter what — to prevent everything from going dark.
Then I found poker, fortune, glory, and for the first time in my life, self-confidence, and suddenly the world was bright again.
* * *
I want to go home. Where it's warm and cozy and where I am, I hope, still loved.
But I can't. I'm no longer welcome there even though I, of course, was the one who sprang for the fuzzy welcome mat. (How cruel is that?) So here I am in Purgatory.
It has finally stopped snowing, but it's still freezing out, and if the furniture inside the Purgatory Inn had teeth, they would be chattering. In all my life I've never seen so much snow. White as far as the eye can see. Snow covering hills, trees, roads, fields, and whatever the hell else out there that it's covering. Underneath that rolling furry blanket of white and silver are many more sheets of it.
This motel has ten rooms but right now I'm the only guest, so mine is the only light on. From the dark, empty road outside, my one light might make it look as if something nefarious is going on, but inside there's nothing more sinister than a humming laptop, a moldy carpet, a lot of faded plaid, and sitting on the rickety night table alongside a plastic glass ("Sanitized for Your Protection") of Scotch, two autographed paperback books, both written by Frank W. Dixon.
Any minute now Wolverine Mommy, my cherished long-distance friend, will be joining me here. She and I have never met. Not in the flesh at least. She had no idea I was coming out to her frosty Michigan oblivion, but here I am.
I want to go home. I miss my wife and it's killing me and I want her back. With all my heart and soul I do.
This is what all my newfound self-confidence has wrought?
The motel TV is on and I'm flipping between March Madness and the usual catastrophes on CNN and paying no attention to any of it. In two or three days I am planning to drive back down to the Detroit airport, if my rented Hyundai Cilantro doesn't crumble on me, and return to my normal life, which has shattered into, yes ... A Million Little Pieces. Where I'll go from here, nobody has any idea.
It's past six-thirty. Wolve told me she'd be here at six. Her husband teaches history at the local high school and loves to hunt and hopefully he won't pop in on us with an Elmer Fudd cap and a 12-gauge Winchester over/under. (I assume she hasn't told him I'm here.) She has three young boys and sometimes, when I'm playing poker with her on-line, I swear I can hear them running, yowling and knocking over things in the background.
Hell, Michigan, would have been a better name for this desolate place, but that was already taken. Only a person in transit from one nowhere to another would ever find out that such a town even existed. I had to leave New York quickly, and it is a measure of how far America's 711,653rd most popular novelist has fallen that the Purgatory Inn is the best I can do for refuge. But there wasn't anywhere else to go except to a clinic. And I'm not ready for that.
The problem isn't that I've hit rock bottom. The problem is that I haven't.
A few hours ago I turned on my laptop and played poker for about an hour and a half. Thanks to four miracle 3s, I finished ahead. (It was terrific: a cocky guy named Element Lad thought he had a sure winner with a club flush; while he gloated, I quietly showed him my quad 3s ... he was crushed.) Then I saw Wolverine Mommy log on and joined her at her table. "Guess where I am?" I IM'ed her. "Where?" she said. "In Purgatory," I told her, knowing she wouldn't believe me, " just a few miles away at the Purgatory Inn!" She said, "No way ... you're kidding me," and I said: "Wolve, I swear to God I'm really, really here. Any way you could come over soon?" She won $300 with two Jacks and, after I swore on my parents' graves I was actually here, she told me: "Okay, I think I can be there at 6 but this better not be a prank."
There's a knock on the door now ... it could either be the good-natured Sikh proprietor, who has suddenly remembered he owns and operates a motel, or Norman Bates. Or it could be ...
"It's Wolve!" I hear from outside.
I turn off the TV, get up, open the door. I see that she has bright red shoulder-length hair and is wearing a navy goose-down parka and Timberland boots. She's about thirty pounds overweight, and, no, she's not Miss Upper Peninsula but then I'm no Mr. Teaneck, New Jersey, either.
"I can't believe this!" she says, shaking her head of all its disbelief and snow. "You're really you?"
After I assure her that I can't help but be me, I bid her in with a gentlemanly wave of my arm.
She dances a little jig to shake loose the snow from her shoes and pants, and I close the door. Hours and hours online chatting to each other, of winning and losing money to each other, and finally we meet.
"I can't believe this, Chip!"
"Me neither."
After a minute of nice-to-finally-meet you pleasantries she sits on the bed and I ask, "So, did you tell your husband you were visiting me?"
"Uh, no. He wouldn't understand."
It isn't hard to see that she also doesn't understand. And I don't know if I do either.
"He doesn't," she says, "get our whole world. He just likes it that I win sometimes."
I tell her that Wifey has thrown me out of the house, although I don't tell her why, and that I had no place to go and so I came here. To no place.
She looks at me and I look away. What am I doing here, she's probably thinking. I know for a fact that I didn't come all the way here to be a cad, and I'm pretty sure she hasn't come to the motel tonight to be an adulteress and has come only as a friend. But still, it's awfully cold out there.
The wind wails and the motel's walls and floorboards shudder when I hand her my two novels, Plague Boy and Love: A Horror Story, neither of which I am able to think about without being overwhelmed with pride, despair, bewilderment, and rage.
She examines the books, reads my brief inscriptions to her, and starts to cry — I've had some negative reactions to my work, but nothing quite like this — then dabs at her eyes with her huge purple faux-shearling mittens.
"I'm really miserable, Chip Zero," she whimpers. "You have no idea."
"But I'm here," I tell her.
She looks up at me ... her big blue eyes are her best feature, other than her chest. Many times over the course of the last year she's told me how lonely she is, and right now, in the same way that some statues are meant to personify Perfect Beauty, Total Victory, or Absolute Piety, this woman represents Abject Loneliness.
"Are you going to leave soon? Any idea how long you'll stay?"
I tell her I have no return ticket and no plans to either go or stay. "Right now I may be the world's wealthiest homeless person," I say.
I join her on the edge of the bed, which sags, exhales, and nearly gives way when I sit. You'd think that beds in motels and hotels in the American Heartland would better tolerate the heft of large people.
"Please stay for a while, Frank," she says. "It would be nice."
It surprises me for a second, her using my real name. Hardly anyone does anymore.
I lie and say, "I don't want to go," and as soon as I hear myself say it, I realize it might not be a lie at all. Maybe, I think, I'll stay here for a week or two. Or three. It's barren, it's freezing, it's on the outermost edge of nowhere, but it's certainly endurable. And right now in my life, "endurable" doesn't sound so bad. I also think: I hope Cynthia doesn't ever find out about this!
She takes off her mittens — one drops to the dismal mintcolored carpet — and holds out a hand and I take it. I expect it to be ice cold but it's very warm.
I can stay here in this frozen-over, snow-domed limbo and start writing again. Yes, that's what I'll do! I'll write! And maybe, just maybe, my wife will take me back! There's hope!
She squeezes my hand and says, "NH."
"Huh?"
"NH, Chip."
Ah. I get it now. Nice hand.
I put my arm around her puffy North Face coat. She rests her head on my shoulder and I see a warped, dark gray reflection of us in the TV screen. What are we doing, I wonder, the four of us?
"You have no idea," she says, "how lonely I am. There's no ..." She stops to compose her thoughts. "I really love my husband, my kids are the most precious things to me in the world ... but none of this is any fun."
I squeeze her shoulder tighter and tell her everything will be all right. More than anything I wish I were sitting next to my wife, on my couch, in my apartment.
"Where does your husband think you are now?"
"At the Kohl's."
For a second, before I realize what she means, I imagine Wolverine Mommy warming her hands over a pile of glowing coals in the evening blizzard.
She looks at her watch and says, "I need to be getting back" and then puts her purple mittens back on. They're as big as lion paws. She really does have a nice face, sort of like Ellen Burstyn in her heyday but with a few extra pounds.
She wraps her goose-down arms around my neck and we hug for a half a minute and when we separate her face is quite flushed. No, it can't go any further than this. A hug or two. A kiss on the cheek. That's it. Anything more would be nuts.
I close the door and hear a car drive off, crunching through the choppy sea of snow.
This trip to Michigan — the plane fare, the car rental, the gas, the motel — is costing me about nine hundred dollars. If I stay here for a week or so, I'll be able to afford it. Easily.
All I have to do is log on and play a few hands. That'll take care of it.
Because, despite all my recent losses, somehow I still have to believe I'm a winner.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from POCKET KINGS by Ted Heller Copyright © 2012 by Ted Heller. Excerpted by permission of ALGONQUIN BOOKS OF CHAPEL HILL. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Videos
