"I have a good poker face because I am half-dead inside. My particular combo of slack features, negligible affect, and soulless gaze had helped my game ever since I started playing 20 years ago, when I was ignorant of pot odds and M-theory and three-betting, and it gave me a boost as I collected my trove of lore, game by game, hand by hand. It had not helped me human relationships-wise over the years, but surely I am not alone here — anyone whose peculiar mix of genetic material and formative experiences had resulted in a near-expressionless mask could relate. Nature giveth, taketh, etc. You make the best of the hand you're dealt."
As the World Series of Poker comes to a climax tonight on ESPN, it is both amusing and instructive to visit Colson Whitehead's July 2011 article in Grantland about training for the event. Whitehead visited the Writers Institute November 1st.
Tuesday, November 8, 2011
Colson Whitehead and the World Series of Poker
Thursday, October 27, 2011
Colson Whitehead, Best Literary Twitter Account
In December 2010, the annual Village Voice Web Awards honored Colson Whitehead, who visits Tuesday 11/1, with the distinction of "Best Literary Twitter Account":
"Writers tend to use Twitter for self-promotion. Colson Whitehead uses it to express self-loathing. There are his failures as a parent ("The kid, as she repeatedly drives my fist into my face: 'Why are you punching yourself?' Me: 'I want to feel something' "). There are his struggles with depression ("Oh, look: my despair is crowning. So glad I'm here. To think they used to stand outside in the waiting room with cigars")...." More.
Whitehead established himself as a hip critic of popular media (TV, music, etc.) in the Voice before he turned his energies and talents to fiction.
To celebrate the publication of Zone One, the Voice is currently paying tribute with some excerpts from Whitehead's music reviews on the paper's blog.
Wednesday, October 26, 2011
Inspired by Horror Movies
Colson Whitehead, who visits the Writers Institute on November 1st to talk about his new zombie horror novel, Zone One, participated in a lengthy interview that appeared in last week's issue of The Atlantic.
Asked about the distinction between literary and horror fiction, Whitehead says:
"I was inspired to become a writer by horror movies and science fiction. The fantastic effects of magic realism, Garcia Marquez, the crazy, absurd landscapes of Beckett—to me, they're just variations on the fantasy books I grew up on. Waiting for Godot takes place on a weird asteroid heading towards the sun, that's how I see it. It's not a real place—it's a fantastic place. So what makes it different from a small planet in outer space? What makes it different from a post-apocalyptic landscape? Not much in my mind." More.
