David McCumber's "Off The Rail"

[skip100]

I'm reading this book now and it's striking how many familiar names are in there. Overall, it's a far more professional, better-written version of the typical compendium of hustler tall tales. No one comes out smelling like a rose but that's kind of the point of the story!

 

[couldnthinkof01]

I'm reading this book now and it's striking how many familiar names are in there. Overall, it's a far more professional, better-written version of the typical compendium of hustler tall tales. No one comes out smelling like a rose but that's kind of the point of the story!

One of the very best. Well written and it just sounds like so much fun.
What better way to make a living than to take a few
bucks, grab a guy who plays decent, and head
into the great unknown for a few months.
I have reread it a few times.

 

[Black-Balled]

really?

a- if it was true, it was true.
2: who cares what anybody else thinks about a married couple's relationship more than the 2 in it? Especially if you aare one of the 2.
Firstly, yes: 14 yrs I been thinking about this.

It's been over a decade since I've read the book, so I should probably go back to it. But the book affected a friend of mine whose husband was mentioned in the book. He was mentioned on a gambling story and showing up with a woman. Only that wasn't the current wife and when she was reminded "that she was in the book", during a tournament she was playing in at the time, and she became petrified and dumped her last match to go home to the cheating husband because they had "made up" for a while.

Sorry, but I probably will still always have a little animosity towards the author for allowing that "discovery" in his book. I really wish I had written him a note when that incident happened. She knew he was cheating on her, but didn't want it in print. I just knew I felt so bad about the way she exited the tournament and the pool scene after that. She just up and quit.

Barbara

 

[Bob Jewett]

... Firstly, yes: 14 yrs I been thinking about this.

In which time Barbara seems to have left the building.

As for the book, it was entertaining but the problem for me is that I saw a lot of the players in this area a lot differently than McCumber did. But as has been mentioned above, he has a poetic license.

 

[mikepage]

In which time Barbara seems to have left the building.

As for the book, it was entertaining but the problem for me is that I saw a lot of the players in this area a lot differently than McCumber did. But as has been mentioned above, he has a poetic license.

It IS well written, imo.

 

[evergruven]

It IS well written, imo.

great book- one of the first "pool books" I really got into

fun story- first time I read it, I was in the middle of the book, telling my league operator about it at the 'hall
she'd read it, too, and our admiration for "playing" was shared
mentioned how I was at the chapter where some kid named robb saez was doing his thing, keeping the grass freshly coiffed
she looked at me and smiled, and motioned with her eyes across the room to the big tables
and who was there but robb, hisself!
trip, huh?
so I walked over, and told him the story about the story
he smiled, was kind enough to share a moment, and signed my book
aka "robbin hood":thumbup:

 

[pt109]

I have a little grudge about the book....although I enjoyed reading it.
Annigoni played 9- ball with Mario Morra ( Johnny’s father) in Toronto and got beat pretty good.
Mario wore oversize glasses at the time....and had a very snookerish style....
...they felt Mario got very lucky....and called him the Fly.
I met the author a little later and asked him “If you think Mario got lucky, why did you leave
town?
Since then, Annigoni has also absconded with a lot of league money...I heard no reports
that he made it right.

 

[AtLarge]

This seems like another good opportunity for me to repost something from several years ago:

... I have posted the following passage a few times now, but maybe some new eyes will see it here. It's the best thing I've ever read about the appeal of the game of pool (or billiards). Beauty ... heart ... renewal -- it's all there in two brief paragraphs.

Playing Off The Rail, by David McCumber, Random House, 1996, pages 276-277. It is presented as the author's thoughts while watching a masterfully played 9-ball match.

"Tony broke, and made two balls, and I could see the table unfold in my mind, and I knew he could see it even better, and would run it. As he made the shots I was overpowered by the beauty of this game, at once immutably logical, governed by physical inevitabilities, and at the same time infinitely poetic and varied. This game at its best, as it was being played before me, had the transcendent power of a Handel chorus.

I thought about what an impressive mental exercise it was for Tony, after a miserable session against an unremarkable player two hours earlier, to reinvent himself so completely. It was a question of heart, a gathering of everything stored inside a man, a refusal to fall after stumbling. It was a very rare thing for a player to take such advantage of the game's intrinsic quality of renewal, the fresh start with each match, each rack, each shot. Nothing pharmaceutical could ever exceed the jolt of bliss that comes with the self-mastery that sort of play entails: knowing the ball is going in, knowing the cue ball is going to stop precisely where you willed it to, knowing that the next shot is going in too. I thought of Willie Hoppe, running an astonishing twenty-five billiards in an exhibition in 1918, seeing all those rails and angles and spins and caroms in his head like presents waiting to be opened. It was no accident that Hoppe was the most disciplined and controlled player of his era. Power over the cue ball, over the object ball, is power over ourselves. It is the sweetest irony that pool has gathered the reputation of being a game for louts and idlers, when, to be played well, it demands such incredible discipline of movement, of thinking, of emotion."​