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editor
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 Posted: Fri Aug 27, 2004 3:07 pm Post subject: The Horses |
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WELCOME!
The Horses:
A Year at the Races
Reflections on Horses, Humans, Love, Money and Luck
Hardcover
By Jane Smiley
| Quote: | | I decided right then that the whole history of racing must mean something, and the whole history of racing had been, not about fabulous races and great equine personalities, but about two simpler things -- who won and who backed the winner. When, in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, English landowners and horse breeders came to realize that they couldn't afford their sport if they were to just pass around a few plates as trophies, they understood that what they really needed, like all capitalists, was an infusion of funds from outside, and so racing, bookmaking, and crowds of working-class men converged to become the sport as we know it. (From Chapter Seven, Betting Interest, p. 116) |
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| Posted: Tue Sep 07, 2004 1:41 pm Post subject: |
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Play the Piano Drunk like a Percussion Instrument Until the Fingers Begin to Bleed a Bit
Paperback
By Charles Bukowski
| Quote: | boxing matches and the racetracks
are where the guts are extracted and
rubbed into the cement
into the substance and stink of
being...
no rules
but a hint:
watch for the lead right
and the last flash of the
tote.
From horse and fist, p. 108-109. |
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editor
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| Posted: Fri Sep 24, 2004 8:10 am Post subject: |
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Mockingbird Wish Me Luck
Paperback
By Charles Bukowski
One for my baby, one more for the road; one more from Buk:
From the world's greatest loser at p. 14:
| Quote: | he used to sell papers in front:
"Get your winners! Get rich on a dime!"
and about the 3rd or 4th race
you'd see him rolling in on his rotten board
with roller skates underneath.
he'd propel himself along on his hands;
he just had small stumps for legs
and the rims of the skate wheels were worn off.
you could see inside the wheels and they would wobble
something awful
shooting and flashing
imperialistic sparks!
he moved faster than anybody, rolled cigarette dangling,
you could hear him coming
"god o mighty, what was that?" the new ones asked.
he was the world's greatest loser
but he never gave up
wheeling toward the 2 dollar window screaming:
"IT'S THE 4 HORSE, YOU FOOLS! HOW THE HELL YA
GONNA BEAT THE
4?"
up on the board the 4 would be reading
60 to one.
I never heard him pick a winner. |
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editor
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| Posted: Fri Sep 24, 2004 8:51 am Post subject: |
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The Buk on Luck:
The Bukowski/Purdy Letters 1964-1974
A Decade of Dialogue
Paperback
Edited by Seamus Cooney
A small blue paperback dedicated to Canda Post and the U.S. Mail, featuring side-splitting correspondence between one of our favorite Frostbacks, Al Purdy, and Buk, occasionally illustrated with Buk's childlike drawings, which his estate will probably find some way to market posthumously. What we'd like to see is a photo of Buk's basement or wherever it is that his widow, Linda Lee, continues to unearth new seams of his poetry. In the meantime, here is Buk on luck at p. 44 from a letter dated March 2, 1965:
| Quote: | | No, I don't have much luck on trains. Coming up from Del Mar there was this light negress with the gold tooth in the center. She was at the bar and 4 or 5 monkies were buying her drinks and fawning. I could never do much with the horses at Del Mar and it's a long trip down and longer back, dusty cheap train smelling of shit and dead bodies and losers, and nothing to do but drink drink drink, and I walked up to the trainbar and I said, "That'll be all, men, I'm taking over now!" They backed off. I took over. We had 3 or 4 drinks at the bar and then I moved her down to my seat to suck on my pint of scotch, and I [had] been drinking all day, and I am staring at the gold tooth, talking, and laying on my wallet so she can't get it, and next thing I'm out, real amature, I awaken and we're in the station and the gold tooth is gone, and I reach real quick for the wallet, but I'd held onto that, but the pint was gone and the sick lights of L.A. shone in on me thru the flyfucked window. I'm glad you have more luck. Now, wait, why should I be glad you have more luck? That don't dip my cock into any living gash, does it? well. |
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editor
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| Posted: Mon Oct 25, 2004 11:52 am Post subject: |
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Ring for Jeeves
Hardcover
By P.G. Wodehouse
| Quote: | The waiter, who had slipped out to make a quick telephone call, cambe back into the coffee room of the Goose and Gherkin wearing the starry-eyed look of a man who has just learned that he has backed a long-priced winner. He yearned to share his happiness with someone, and the only possible confidant was the woman at the table near the door, who was having a small gin and tonic and whiling away the time by reading a book of spiritualistic interest. He decided to tell her the good news.
"I don't know if you would care to know, madam," he said, in a voice that throbbed with emotion, "but Whistler's Mother won the Oaks."
The woman looked up, regarding him with large, dark, soulful eyes as if he had been something recently assembled from ectoplasm.
"The what?"
"The Oaks, madam."
"And what are the Oaks?"
It seemed incredible to the waiter that there should be anyone in England who could ask such a question, but he had already gathered that the lady was an American lady, and American ladies, he knew, are often ignorant of the fundamental facts of life. He had once met one who had wanted to know what a football pool was.
"It's an annual horse race, madam, reserved for fillies. By which I mean that it comes off once a year and the male sex isn't allowed to compete. It's run at Epsom Downs the day before the Derby, of which you have no doubt heard."
"Yes, I have heard of the Derby. It is your big race over here, is it not?"
"Yes, madam. What is sometimes termed a classic. The Oaks is run the day before it, though in previous years the day after. By which I mean," said the waiter, hoping he was not being too abstruse, "it used to be run the day following the Derby, but now they've changed it."
"And Whistler's Mother won this race you call the Oaks?"
"Yes, madam. By a couple of lengths. I was on five bob."
"I see. Well, that's fine, isn't it? Will you bring me another gin and tonic?" (p. 1) |
Tophole, that, and now re-published by Overlook Press as a cheery, little hardcover with a splendidly if anonymously illustrated cover.
One wonders, by and by, how a flutter-favoring Plum might have counselled the House of Lords today on Britain's new gaming initiative, though we can't help speculating based on the title tune of his hit musical co-written with Cole Porter: click here. Listen here.
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editor
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| Posted: Mon Nov 29, 2004 5:02 pm Post subject: |
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W.C. Fields
Hardcover
By James Curtis
Another well-written biography to put us off its subject indefinitely:
| Quote: | Fields approached the institution of marriage with the same youthful intensity he applied to his work. He was a passionate, excitable, temperamental man, and weeks of separation had sharpened his devotion to his wife. They conceived a child in Australia, and he became wildly jealous -- often to the point of violence -- over the slightest attention paid her, however innocently, by another man. Nearly a decade of juggling had strengthened him, and, like his father, he found himself repeatedly in trouble over hothead altercations. In Berlin, he slugged a Prussian officer after hearing an anti-American remark and was thrown in jail for it. In London, a bobby shoved himn into a muddy gutter and got soaked as well. In Paris, two gendarmes were blackjacking an acrobat, Fields waded in, and was jailed for his trouble. Now, in Sydney, Hattie's mere presence occasioned two of the most serious eruptions.
"My husband," she said flatly, "was a coward. He liked to bully people -- waiters particularly -- and it didn't matter whether they had been mean to him or not. But he couldn't take a chance on his hands; they were as important to him as the hands of a pianist. So he had a special cane, and it became part of him on stage and off." The cane had a gold head and was heavily weighted. In Sydney, he used it at the racetrack to beat up the grandson of Lord Byron, who had spoken to Hattie when she bet a pound on Lord Cardigan against the favorite, Little Nell, and won. Overhearing an innocent remark, Fields came unhinged and had to be pulled off the man. (-- pg. 64) |
Yikes. We prefer the much less onerous:
W.C. Fields Comedy Collection
DVD
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editor
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| Posted: Mon Dec 27, 2004 6:04 pm Post subject: |
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Hey Rube
Hardcover
By Hunter S. Thompson
| Quote: | That game was not my only gambling experience of the weekend. I also bet heavily on the Kentucky Derby & suffered huge losses.
The Derby is not my favorite sporting event of the year, despite my deep Kentucky roots & my natural lust for gambling. I have had more truly heinous experiences linked to Churchill Downs than any other venue. And I can tell you, for sure, that Derby week in Louisville is a white-knuckle orgy of Booze & Sex & Violence that, 99 times out of 100, swamps anybody who goes near it in a hurricane of Fear, Pain, & Stupefying Disasters that will haunt them for the rest of their lives.
The behavior of the crowd at Churchill Downs is like 100,000 vicious Hyenas going berserk all at once in a space about the size of a 777 jet or the White House lawn. Going to the Derby in person is worse than volunteering to join General Pickett's famous Charge at Gettysburg, and just about as much Fun...Take my world for it folks: I have done it nine or 10 times in a row, and I still have recurring nightmares about it that cause me to wake up sweating & screaming like some kind of pig being beaten alive by meat bats.
My memories of the Derby are extremely clear & far too obscene to describe here in any detail. Some involve jails, insane asylums, Rape trials, wife beatings, police brutality, and private graveyards filled with victims of tragic medical experiments worse thant anything the Marquis de Sade was ever accused of.
I went to one Derby party where two teenage girls were deliberately set on fire & tortured by drunken rich people, who then hurled their bodies off a cliff above the Ohio River & laughed about it later. The girls' families were told by local authorities that their daughters had "run away with a gang of horse gamblers from Turkey who loaded them up with gin and told them they were going to Hollywood to get famous."
Things like that happen every year when the Derby comes to town. People "go out to the track," as they like to say in Louisville, and simply disappear into thin air. Some return a few years later with horrible disfigurementx & no memory at all of what happened. Others end up in "hospitals down South" and are never mentioned again by people who knew them. (-- pgs. 68-69) |
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editor
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Posts: 2940
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| Posted: Sun Jan 09, 2005 2:31 pm Post subject: |
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Montreal Stories
Paperback
By Mavis Gallant
Click here for cover art and review .
Frostbacks still claim Mavis Gallant as one of our own, though she has hardly set foot here since her successful escape to Paris some time ago. This 2004 collection of stories edited by Russell Banks serves as yet another masterful, if painful, reminder of why that is.
| Quote: | | The heat of the day and the strain of events had pushed him off his rocker. There was no other explanation. Or maybe he believed he was some kind of bilingual marvel, a real work of art, standing there in his undertaker suit, wearing that dopey hat. Nora's father knew more about anything than he did, any day. He had information about local politics and the private dealings of men who were honored and admired, had their pictures in the Gazette and the Star. He could shake hands with anybody you cared to mention; could tell, just by looking at another man, what that man was worth. When he went to Blue Bonnets, the racetrack, a fantastic private intuition told him where to put his money. He often came home singing, his hat on the back of his head...(From The Felton Child at p. 17). |
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| Posted: Sun Jan 16, 2005 1:41 pm Post subject: |
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The Lemon Table
Hardcover
By Julian Barnes
| Quote: | | I don't want to give the impression that food is the only thing he's ever been interested in. He used to follow the news, and always had his opinions. His convictions. He liked horse-racing, though he was never a betting man: twice a year, the Derby and the National, that was enough for him, couldn't even get him to have a flutter on the Oaks or the St. Leger. Very controlled, you see; careful. And he'd read biographies, especially of people in show business, and we travelled, and he liked dancing. But all that's gone now, you see. And he doesn't like food anymore; not to eat, anyway. I make him purees in the blender. I won't buy the tinned stuff. He can't have alcohol, of course, that would over-excite him. He likes cocoa, and warm milk. Not too hot, it mustn't boil, just warmed to body temperature. (From Appetite at p. 193). |
Oh, the indignities summoned at this sixth stage of the Seven Stages of Man.
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editor
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| Posted: Mon Feb 07, 2005 10:01 am Post subject: |
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Kiss, Kiss
Eleven fine new short stories
by the author of Someone Like You
By Roald Dahl
| Quote: | | Mr. Dahl was was born in 1916 in Wales of Norwegian parents, and lives in England with his actress wife Patricia Neal and their four children. His interests include the growing of old-fashioned or species roses, collecting eighteenth-century furniture, buying and selling paintings, drinking wine, and betting on horses. (From the back cover of our copy, a rather bedraggled member of the 13th printing in 1988). |
Our favorite in this collection is, of course, Parson's Pleasure, in which a rather grasping sort of vicar is outdone by a couple of yokels.
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| Posted: Sat Mar 12, 2005 11:54 am Post subject: |
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The Big Sleep
Based on Raymond Chandler's
classic tale.
DVD
Poor Boge, all that climbing up on apple crates so Slim wouldn't have to gaze longingly into his navel, yet no one laughed harder at the arrangement than the man himself. Here they are in this 1946 adaptation of Raymond Chandler's story with Bogart as the quintessential P.I, Phillip Marlowe, and Slim as the wealthy socialite who enjoys an occasional afternoon at the races:
| Quote: | Mrs. Rutledge: Tell me, what do you usually do when you're not working?
Marlowe: Mmm, play the horses, fool around...
Mrs. R: No women?
M: Wellllll, I'm generally working on something most of the time.
Mrs. R.: Could that be stretched to include me?
M: Oh, I like you. I've told you that before.
Mrs. R.: I like hearing you say it. But you didin't do much about it.
M: Welllll, neither did you.
Mrs. R.: Well...Speaking of horses, I like to play them myself...but I like to see them work out a little first, see if they're front runners or come from behind. Find out what their hole card is, what makes them run.
M: Find out mine?
Mrs. R.: I think so. |
| Quote: | The Big Sleep
A Philip Marlowe mystery by
the master, Raymond Chandler
Narrated very nicely by
U.S. actor Elliott Gould
Audio CD
Gould is the perfect reader for this hard-boiled, tough-guy characterization typical of Chandler. |
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editor
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| Posted: Mon Mar 28, 2005 1:39 pm Post subject: |
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Smithsonian
Magazine Subscription
Saving the Raja's Horse
By Jason Overdorf
June, 2004
| Quote: | To blunt the objection that shipping Kelly's handful of Marwaris to the United States would deplete the gene pool, Kelly and Dundlod started breeding top-quality horses in Rajasthan. In 1999, they joined others in founding the Indigenous Horse Society of India, the only national body of its kind, to work with the government on conservation-related programs, raise awareness about the Marwari and encourage breeders to adopt more modern methods. By 2000, the pair had won the 100-kilometer endurance race at the national equestrian games, convinced the Equestrian Federation of India to sanction the first national show for indigenous horses and produced a coffee-table book -- Marwari: Legend of the Indian Horse -- that remains the most complete study of the breed in English. Along the way, Kelly travelled to so many auctions and horse festivals in remote towns across the Punjab and Rajasthan that the Mirasi caste of horse traders began calling her ghorawalli: the horsewoman.
By interesting India's equestrian community in the horse through shows, competitions and exhibitions, Kelly and Dundlod influenced the market and breeding practices. But even more significant was their effort to conjure up a studbook. Without bothering to trace the breed's foundation sire, which, if possible at all, would have involved years of poring over documents and interviewing horse traders, they began registering those prime Marwari specimens whose immediate sires and dams could be identified. When, in 1997, they finally convinced the government to lift the ban on exports, prices began to jump. |
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editor
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| Posted: Thu Mar 31, 2005 10:10 am Post subject: |
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Charles Bukowski
Twayne's United States Authors Series
Hardcover
By Gay Brewer
Quels volumes Buk's critics speak now that he's dead and can't poke them hard in their lifeless chests or dead eyes. Listen to this:
| Quote: | Despite Bukowski's desire to escape professional identification, the time at the track, mostly spent wandering or waiting, is aptly comparable to the writer's life. "Time is made to be wasted" (War, 40) he informs us, and, moreover, the interim allows him to think "of all the rotten jobs and how glad I had been to have them" (War, 42)...
The racetrack offers enough dislocation and randomness that Bukowski can be constantly working as he surrenders to external and internal stimuli. The author's predilection for writing in front of windows or in busy environments reveals a similar process. "I like interruptions, as long as they're natural and aren't total and continuous" (Wennersten, 51). As "Horsemeat" powerfully demonstrates, the track is a location that simultaneously allows Bukowski to escape and to practice his craft, to gather material, to comment implicitly as social critic, to define and refine his relationship with society, and, nine times each day, to test his aesthetic of luck, gamble, grace and style against long odds. Winning is most worthwhile when you beat the favorite.
and when your figures
select only one horse,
it is a very curious and
magic feeling, of course,
and you learn to apply
the same simplicity to other areas of existence (War, 62)
(From Later Poems at pgs. 133-134). |
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editor
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| Posted: Mon Apr 04, 2005 11:01 am Post subject: |
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The Second Rumpole Omnibus
Paperback
By John Mortimer
| Quote: | Rumpole's Last Case
CD Audio
Narrated by Aussie thespian Leo McKern
Aussie McKern so embraced Mortimer's star barrister that the text, audio and image become one. Rumpled baritone McKern would have been a legendary Lear. |
| Quote: | Rumpole of the Bailey
Featuring the segment,
Rumpole's Last Case
Series 4
DVD
A classic British series set mostly in the offices of a London legal firm, with occasional visits to Rumpole's 'mansion flat presided over by She Who Must Be Obeyed, and frequent forays to Pommeroy's Wine Bar, where post mortems are cheerily conducted on the events of the day in court. Turn up the volume, though. BBC had only one microphone in those days so the sound is dreadful. |
| Quote: | As I sat in the cafe I said to myself,
They may talk as they please about what they call 'pelf',
They may sneer as they like about eating and drinking,
But I cannot help it, I cannot help thinking...
How pleasant it is to have money, heigh ho!
How pleasant it is to have money...
So pleasant it is to heave money...
The lines went through my head as I took my usual walk down Fleet Street to Ludgate Circus and then up to the Old Bailey. As I walked I could feel the comforting and unusual bulge of notes in my hip-pocket. As I marched up the back lanes to the Palais de Justice, I passed a newspaper kiosk which, I had previously noticed, seemed to mainly cater to the racing fraternity. There were a number of papers and posters showing jockeys whose memoirs were priunted and horses whose exploits were described, and I noticed that morning the advertisement for apublication entitled The Punter's Guide to the Turf which carried a story headed FOUR-HORSE WINNER FATHER OF THREE TELLS HOW HE HIT QUARTER OF A MILLION JACKPOT.
Naturally, as a successful racing man (a status I had achieved in the last ten minutes), I took a greater interest in the familiar kiosk. I had, clearly, something of a talent for the turf. The Derby one day, perhaps the Grand National the next - was it the Grand National or the Oaks? With a few winners, I thought, a fellow could live pretty high on the hog - I took a final turning and the Old Bailey hoved into view - a fellow might even be able to consider giving up the delights of slogging down the Bailey for the dubious pleasure of doing a cut-throat defence before his unpredictable Honour Judge Roger Bullingham. (From Rumpole's Last Case at p. 632) |
| Quote: | | Click on the first 360 to the right of 'THE CITY' to view a web-cam of the historic Old Bailey and environs. |
Link to this entry
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