Positively Fifth Street: Murderers, Cheetahs, and Binion's World Series of Poker (Hardcover)

Jim McManus, 49-year-old novelist, poet, teacher, and sometime journalist on assignment in Las Vegas for Harper's Magazine takes part of his $4,000 retainer and buys into a satellite tournament hoping to win a pass to play in the big one, the $10,000 buy-in no limit hold'em event that annually decides the world championship of poker. Not coincidentally he is also covering the trial of Sandy Murphy, a saucy, skanky Vegas lap dancer and her linebacker beau Rick Tabish who are accused of the murder of Ted Binion, brother of Becky Behnen, host of the tournament, and one of the sons of Benny Binion, the long time owner of the sponsoring Horseshoe casino.

What results is a suberb example of a genre that I call "participatory journalism," the sort of thing the made George Plimpton, Gay Talese, Hunter S. Thompson and some other very fine writers famous. What happens in participatory journalism is the journalist himself joins in the action and becomes part of the story. Because of McManus's cleverness with the pasteboards (actually they're made of plastic of course), his discipline, and because he did indeed get lucky a time or two on Positively Fifth Street, his experience became more than just part of the story. As he covers the trial and the World Series of poker from the inside, he focuses intimately--sometimes perhaps too intimately--on himself and what it was like, first person singular, to play the kind of high stakes poker that most of us can only dream about. And to win. Not all the marbles but enough of them to pay off the mortgage and, as he says, maybe pay for a semester of college for a daughter in 2016.

Reading this book--*living* this book, I might say, because it is such a vivid and engaging romp through some things and a part of the world that I know very well--was an adrenaline pumping and humbling experience for me, poker player and writer myself. I was dazzled at times by the sheer energy of his prose, at the worldly-wise (and wise-acre) metaphors, references and striking allusions that jump off the page as adroitly expressed and appropriately placed as notes in a symphony--a modern symphony with discordance and harmony splashed out with wild and sardonic energy. Or maybe I should say, Jim McManus writes like a poet with an ear for the vernacular and an eye for the kill.

He begins with an informed imagination on just how handcuffed Ted Binion was "burked" to death with girlfriend Sandy Murphy naked on his chest and big boy Rick Tabish forcing a turkey baster full of heroin and Xanax down his throat while holding the millionaire's nose shut. Not a pretty way to die. Now enter the journalist, perhaps a bit like Jackson Browne's "The Pretender," no longer young and strong, in fact a little strung out on pills and booze and cigs, but a forty-nine year-old still in charge of himself, with a second family and some bills to pay, some temptations to resist, some oats to sow, a man torn between the irresponsible machinations of "Bad Jim" and the socially and domestically appropriate behaviors of "Good Jim," a guy who calls his young wife at least once a day while managing to interview nearly naked lap dancers at their place of work on his lap without losing his...composure.

But what McManus does best is weave an exciting account of how he played cards, what his opponents were like, how he behaved and covered the stories, and how made the right calls and the right lay downs and especially how he sat on his hands when he needed to and nursed his stack so that was able to arrive, against some very stiff odds and against some very good players, at the final table. He highlights several of the pivotal pots during his nearly miraculous run by telling us what cards he held, what cards his opponents held, what flopped, what the turn card was, and especially what hit the felt on fifth street. He gets it all right and crystal clear and he reveals his bad reads and questionable plays as well as his good ones. He shows the camaraderie and the competition among the players and does it all in such a vivid manner that we feel we are there with him. Along the way he quotes from Dante and Edward O. Wilson, Dostoevski and Jared Diamond, etc. on human nature past and present.

He does get a little self-indulgent at times (although personally I think he has license) and some readers might want to skip the digressions into his youth and flash past some of the mini book reviews and philosophic arias and just stay with the story. It's one of the best I've ever read and captures a culture, and a time and a place, as only a master of the craft could.