 First edition | |
| Author | Paul Auster |
|---|---|
| Language | English |
| Genre | Mystery novel |
| Publisher | Viking Press |
Publication date | 1990 |
| Publication place | United States |
| Media type | Print (hardcover) |
| ISBN | 0-670-83535-8 |
| OCLC | 21229180 |
| 813/.54 20 | |
| LC Class | PS3551.U77 M87 1990 |
The Music of Chance (1990) is an absurdist novel by Paul Auster. [1] It was a 1991 finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction [2] and was later made into a film in 1993; Mandy Patinkin played Nashe and James Spader played Pozzi. [3]
Jim Nashe is a fireman with a two-year-old daughter and wife who has just left him. Knowing he cannot work and raise a child at the same time, he sends her to live with his sister. Six months of sporadic visits pass and Nashe realizes that his daughter, Juliet, has begun to forget him. Suddenly, the father that abandoned Nashe as a child dies, leaving his children a large amount of money. Nashe, knowing that Juliet will be happier with her aunt, pays off all of his debts, buys a Saab and pursues "a life of freedom" by spending a year driving back and forth across the country.
His fortune now squandered, Nashe picks up a hot-headed young gambler named Jack Pozzi. The two hatch a plan to fleece a couple of wealthy bachelors named Flower and Stone in a poker game. In addition to purchasing a mansion, the two eccentrics also bought ten thousand stones, from the ruins of a fifteenth-century Irish castle destroyed by Oliver Cromwell; Flower and Stone intend to use them to build a "Wailing Wall" in the meadow behind their mansion.
Flower and Stone are not the suckers Pozzi takes them for and the plan backfires. Having run out of money Nashe decides to risk everything on "a single blind turn of a card" and puts up his car as collateral against the pot. He loses and the two indenture themselves to Flower and Stone as a way to pay back their debt. They will build the wall for Flower and Stone, a meaningless wall that nobody will ever see. For the rest of the novel, Flower and Stone are conspicuously absent. Nashe shrugs this off as fifty days of exercise, but Pozzi views it as nothing less than a violation of human decency.
The two men are watched over by Calvin Murks, the millionaires' tough but amiable hired man. When Pozzi takes a swing at Murks for cracking a joke about being too smart to play cards, Murks begins wearing a gun. Pozzi sees this as proof that he is nothing but a slave.
Even after the two men have completed working off their debt, the millionaires add on the food and entertainment charges the men have accrued as a result of living at the estate. Pozzi, convinced there is no way out of the contract, escapes the meadow. Days later Nashe finds his young friend sprawled on the grass beaten into a coma. Murks claims innocence and tells Nashe he took Pozzi to a hospital. Two weeks later, Murks tells Nashe that Pozzi checked himself out of the hospital and vanished, but Nashe is convinced that his friend is dead.
Time passes, the wall grows as does Nashe's obsession with taking revenge on Murks. When Nashe has completed enough work on the wall to pay off his debt, Murks and his son-in-law Floyd take Nashe out to celebrate. Nashe beats Floyd in a game of pool, but refuses the fifty dollars he has won; Floyd accepts this, saying that he owes Nashe a favor. Soon after, the three men pile into Murks's new car (Nashe's old Saab) with the slightly more sober Nashe behind the wheel. Nashe promptly takes the car up to eighty-five miles an hour and deliberately collides, head-on into an oncoming vehicle.
The Music of Chance was referred to in David Mitchell's 1999 novel Ghostwritten , which also deals with the nature of random chance. In the novel, one character is a member of a musical collective called The Music of Chance, named "after a novel by that New York bloke".
Dialogue from the film adaptation is used in a track by Sweet Billy Pilgrim called 'Here It Begins'.
In 2009, Audible.com produced an audio version of The Music of Chance, narrated by Marc Vietor, as part of its Modern Vanguard line of audiobooks.
William Cuthbert Faulkner was an American writer. He is best known for his novels and short stories set in the fictional Yoknapatawpha County, Mississippi, a stand-in for Lafayette County where he spent most of his life. A Nobel laureate, Faulkner is one of the most celebrated writers of American literature and often is considered the greatest writer of Southern literature.
The Bonfire of the Vanities is a 1987 novel by Tom Wolfe. The story is a drama about ambition, racism, social class, politics, and greed in 1980s New York City, and centers on three main characters: WASP bond trader Sherman McCoy, Jewish assistant district attorney Larry Kramer, and British expatriate journalist Peter Fallow.
Billy Bathgate is a 1989 novel by author E. L. Doctorow that won the 1989 National Book Critics Circle award for fiction for 1990, the 1990 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction, the 1990 William Dean Howells Medal, and was the runner-up for the 1990 Pulitzer Prize and the 1989 National Book Award. The book was dedicated to Jason Epstein.
Rounders is a 1998 American drama film about the underground world of high-stakes poker, directed by John Dahl and starring Matt Damon and Edward Norton. The story follows two friends who need to win at high-stakes poker to quickly pay off a large debt. The term rounder refers to a person traveling around from city to city seeking high-stakes card games.
Sanctuary is a 1931 novel by American author William Faulkner about the rape and abduction of an upper-class Mississippi college girl, Temple Drake, during the Prohibition era. The novel was Faulkner's commercial and critical breakthrough and established his literary reputation, but was controversial given its themes. It is said Faulkner claimed it was a "potboiler", written purely for profit, but this has been debated by scholars and Faulkner's own friends.
Go Down, Moses is a 1942 collection of seven related pieces of short fiction by American author William Faulkner, sometimes considered a novel. The most prominent character and unifying voice is that of Isaac McCaslin, "Uncle Ike", who will live to be an old man; "uncle to half a county and father to no one". Though originally published as a short story collection, Faulkner considered the book to be a novel in the same way The Unvanquished is considered a novel. Because of this, most editions no longer print "and other stories" in the title.
The Reivers: A Reminiscence, published in 1962, is the last novel by the American author William Faulkner. It was published a month before his death. The bestselling novel was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1963. Faulkner previously won this award for his book A Fable, making him one of only four authors to be awarded it more than once. Unlike many of his earlier works, it is a straightforward narration and eschews the complicated literary techniques of his more well-known works. It is a picaresque novel, and as such may seem uncharacteristically lighthearted given its subject matter. For these reasons, The Reivers is often ignored by Faulkner scholars or dismissed as a lesser work. He previously had referred to writing a "Golden Book of Yoknapatawpha County" with which he would finish his literary career. It is likely that The Reivers was meant to be this "Golden Book". The Reivers was adapted into a film of the same name directed by Mark Rydell and starring Steve McQueen as Boon Hogganbeck.
Jia Baoyu is the principal character in the classic 18th century Chinese novel Dream of the Red Chamber.
James Ford, better known by the alias "Sawyer" and later as "Jim LaFleur", is a fictional character on the ABC television series Lost, portrayed by Josh Holloway. Created by Jeffrey Lieber, J. J. Abrams and Damon Lindelof, he first appeared in the pilot as one of the survivors of Oceanic Flight 815 which crashed on a mysterious island, and remained one of the show's main characters.
The Wars is a 1977 novel by Timothy Findley that follows Robert Ross, a nineteen-year-old Canadian who enlists in World War I after the death of his beloved older sister in an attempt to escape both his grief and the social norms of oppressive Edwardian society. Drawn into the madness of war, Ross commits "a last desperate act to declare his commitment to life in the midst of death." Years later, a historian tries to piece together how he came to commit this act, interviewing the various people Ross interacted with.
"The Happy Wanderer" is the 19th episode of the HBO original series The Sopranos and the sixth of the show's second season. It was written by Frank Renzulli, directed by John Patterson, and originally aired on February 20, 2000.
"Bust Out" is the 23rd episode of the HBO original series The Sopranos and the 10th of the show's second season. It was written by Frank Renzulli, Robin Green, and Mitchell Burgess and directed by John Patterson, and originally aired on March 19, 2000.
Pink Floyd are an English rock band formed in London in 1965. Gaining an early following as one of the first British psychedelic groups, they were distinguished by their extended compositions, sonic experiments, philosophical lyrics, and elaborate live shows. They became a leading band of the progressive rock genre, cited by some as the greatest progressive rock band of all time.
The Music of Chance is a 1993 American drama film directed by Philip Haas. It was screened in the Un Certain Regard section at the 1993 Cannes Film Festival. It is based on the 1990 book of the same name.
Stone Cold is a crime novel by Robert B. Parker, the fourth in his Jesse Stone series.
Vladimir Aleksandrovich Antonov is a Russian convicted fraudster who operated under the guise of a banker, entrepreneur and investor. In 2007 Antonov's personal wealth was estimated at $300 million which ranked him as number 182 among Russian millionaires. In 2019 he was sentenced to a penal colony in relation to a conviction for fraud by a Russian court, and was further convicted for separate instances of fraud by a Latvian court in 2021.
North Street Capital, LP is a privately owned private equity and hedge fund firm based in Greenwich, Connecticut. The firm is run by Alex Mascioli, who founded the firm and is named after a street in town. The firm invests in leveraged buyouts and public and private equity. Mascioli is the company's Managing Partner and Chief Executive Officer.
Alex Mascioli is an American businessman and investor. He is the founder and managing partner of North Street Capital, LP which invests in leveraged buyouts and public and private equity.
"Sing Me a Song" is the seventh episode of the seventh season of the post-apocalyptic horror television series The Walking Dead, which aired on AMC on December 4, 2016. The episode was written by Angela Kang and Corey Reed, and directed by Rosemary Rodriguez.
"Hey, Hey, Rise Up!" is a song by the English rock band Pink Floyd, released on digital platforms on 8 April 2022. It is based on a 1914 Ukrainian anthem, "Oh, the Red Viburnum in the Meadow", and features vocals in Ukrainian by Andriy Khlyvnyuk of the Ukrainian band BoomBox.