The Gambler Page #2

I'll be f***ed if I'll be a mid-list

novelist getting good reviews

from the people I give good reviews to.

Let's have a look at Dexter. Dexter!

An ordinary-looking young man

with a what?

Size 40 jacket, regular features,

and decent dentition,

is the second-ranked

collegiate tennis player

in the United States of America.

How did that come about, Dexter?

You come from a tennis family?

Well, I mean,

I started playing

five years ago in high school

'cause the tennis guys

have the best weed.

After you started tennis, how long was it

before you were better than everybody?

Before I was better than everybody,

or before I knew it?

What happened when you noticed

you were naturally

better than everybody?

I...

I got interested in the game.

That is an IQ break point,

brother. Right there!

Do you remember Machiavelli?

That would have been in September.

Man.

I can remember September.

All right.

Is it the game, brother, or the money?

Virtu or fama? Fame or virtue?

What are you after?

Don't go modest on me.

What do you want?

Both.

You got ambitious, yeah?

I realised, as I learned about the game,

that I was in reach of...

In reach of...

In reach of...

Highest level?

Highest level, yeah.

Highest level.

But it's still a gamble, isn't it?

Look, I'm a literature teacher.

I can't write well enough to bother,

or I just don't bother, whichever.

Whichever it is, there'll be

no apotheosis around here.

There'll be no "Vae, puto, deus fio!"

around here.

That's what Emperor Vespasian

said on his deathbed,

"Dear me, I think I'm becoming a god."

But do you know who does write

at the highest level?

When most of us and even I...

Even I write barely adequately?

Do you know who it is?

In this room. Who is it?

Don't give me that look.

No, no, no, no, no.

It isn't the one who talks the most.

You're an NPR host, tops.

Okay?

The literary person in here

is Miss Phillips.

She's the least obstreperous

in this room,

the quietest,

and the only one

who can have a real career at letters.

Some of you can have one perceptually.

Only she can have one in reality.

She is better at writing

than our U.S. presently

amateur number two

is at tennis.

Yet she chooses to hide,

or just blend in with the rest of you.

Why?

Why is that, Miss Phillips?

I...

Being in the middle

is the safest place to be.

Where do you come from?

- Ohio.

- Ohio.

Parents are geniuses, by any chance?

Filthy rich?

No.

Well, your dad wasn't

the Earl of Oxford, was he?

No.

No?

How old were you when you read?

I was two.

Two? Well, that's early.

That's prodigious.

Any advantages? Literary home life?

Who's your father?

Well...

He worked in a factory.

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