The Poker Table Becomes a Literary Muse

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From The Wall Street Journal:

Debut novelist Caroline Hulse gets inside the minds of her characters not by working long days at a desk, but by putting in late nights at a poker table.

Ms. Hulse applies lessons about human nature she has gleaned from the game in “The Adults,” a comedy-suspense novel out Nov. 27 featuring squabbling ex-spouses and their significant others jammed into the same vacation house at the holidays.

“People are at their very worst when they’re under pressure,” said the writer whose live tournament poker earnings tally more than $30,000. “It’s the same thing at the poker table.”

Some novelists like Ms. Hulse play poker partly for research. Where there’s “tilt,” the poker term for players who let their emotions rule them, there’s drama. It’s particularly instructive for women writers to watch how men behave when they have a lot to lose.

“I’ve learned a lot about playing against men in the last 10 years,” said Gale Massey, whose debut title “The Girl from Blind River,” a suspense novel featuring a poker-playing heroine, came out in July. “They have particular tactics they’ll use to try and intimidate you. Some are just as nice as your big brother. Or they’ll stare you down or stare at your chest or be condescending.”

In Ms. Massey’s novel, men also play power games at the poker table. The 61-year-old author from St. Petersburg, Fla., got the idea for her novel during a game when a young player puffed up her chest and made a big bet against her. Ms. Massey won the hand, but her opponent stuck in her imagination and inspired her book’s heroine.

Writing a book itself is a gamble. Authors can only hope their hours of work will pay off some day. The nerve required to play the long game is familiar to poker players.

“I thought to myself, ‘If I can walk into ballrooms of mostly men and think I can be the last person standing, I can write a little story,’” said Helen Ellis, whose short-story collection “American Housewife” came out in 2016. “I’d send a story out to 20 places, 19 would reject it, it would go to another place and I’d win.”

Eager to remain a mystery at the poker table, Ms. Ellis keeps her writing life quiet and tells her opponents only that she’s a housewife. The 48-year-old New Yorker, who speaks with the gentle lilt of her native Alabama, has totaled more than $120,600 in live tournament winnings, according to the poker database the Hendon Mob.

This spring, Ms. Ellis debuts her first essay collection, “Southern Lady Code.” She got the book deal with almost no experience in this nonfiction format. “I bluffed my way into an essay collection,” she said. Given all the lying she does at the poker table, writing confessional pieces has been a welcome change.

Novelist M. J. Hyland has been nicknamed “The Stare Machine” by opponents at her local casino in Manchester, England. The 50-year-old writer whose works include the Man Booker finalist “Carry Me Down” said she is not too proud to duck under the table to observe jiggling legs.

“The kind of fiction I write is about sending depth charges down into the inner workings of the human mind and laying bare what makes people tick,” she said. “I think I’m good at knowing what people do next, why they do what they do and why they make the mistakes they make.”

Link to the rest at The Wall Street Journal

1 thought on “The Poker Table Becomes a Literary Muse”

  1. To a writer ‘anything’ can become a literary muse.

    A picture is worth a thousand words they say, the right one might launch a story.

    A song may tell the tale of how they got there – or where they’re heading.

    The smell of a bakery and the frown of a cook might make one wonder how they might show someone their displeasure.

    Isn’t there a famous picture of dogs sitting around a poker table? I wonder what conversations they might be having … 😉

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