Double Down by F. & S. Barthelme

Double Down by Frederick & Steven Barthelme chronicles two brothers' acceptance of the fever grip of gambling. While they were intoxicated by the blackjack tables and not the green felt of the poker room, they perfectly capture the rush of both in this excellently written book.

"When you're sitting at the blackjack table with some guy with a Boston accent... listening to him tell transcendently stupid snail jokes, it's a battle to believe that life is a dreary chore, designed that way by the Good Lord for some inexplicable reason. In fact, at that moment the world looks like a place of great tenderness and beauty....

In this way we understood other gamblers too. They hoped as we hoped, they knew what we knew. They were always talking about what their husbands or wives were going to do to them (a wiry little drunk checks his watch at six a.m. and says, 'She's a'ready thrown my clothes in the yard, but tha's a'right. I can change in the yard. I got to be at work at eight, and it's only a two-hour drive from here')....

A community of vice makes hypocrisy unnecessary."