Books.org participates in affiliate programs including Bookshop.org and the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program. We may earn a commission from qualifying purchases made through links on this page, at no additional cost to you.
Overview
Double Down is a true story, a terrifying roller-coaster ride deep into the heart of two men, and into the world of floating Gulf Coast casinos. When both of their parents died within a short time of each other, the writers Frederick and Steven Barthelme, both professors of English in Mississippi, inherited a goodly sum of money. What followed was a binge during which they gambled away their entire fortune-and more. And then, in a cruel twist of fate, they were charged with cheating at the tables.
Told with a mixture of sadness and wry humor, and with a compelling look at the physical aura of gambling-the feel of the cards, the smell of the crowd, the sounds of the tables-Double Down is a reflection on the lure of challenging the odds, the attraction of stepping into the void. A cautionary tale (the brothers were eventually exonerated), it is a book that, once read, will never be forgotten.
Synopsis
"So each night began. One of us would pick up the other and we'd make the drive into the Mississippi night, headed for a place where everything was different."
Within a year and a half, Frederick and Steven Barthelme had lost both of their parents, less than a decade after their brother Donald had died. Their exacting father had been a prominent modernist architect in Houston; their mother, the architect of this family of seven, which she "invented, shaped, guided, and protected."
"We were on our own in a remarkable new way," the Barthelmes write, "and we were not ready." What followed was a several-year escapade during which the two brothers lost close to a quarter of a million dollars in the garish gambling boats off the Mississippi coast. They played to enter that land of possibility that is addiction. Then, in a bizarre twist, the brothers were charged with violating state gambling laws, fingerprinted, and thrown into the surreal world of grand juries, prison visits, and felony prosecution. Double Down is the sometimes wryly told, often heartbreaking story of how they got into this predicament and the role played by the loss of their parents. It is also a reflection on the pull and power of illusions, the way they work on us when we are not careful.
Chicago Tribune
Double Down is a good gambling story, maybe worth every penny the Barthelmes lost.
Editorials
Chicago Tribune
Double Down is a good gambling story, maybe worth every penny the Barthelmes lost.Publishers Weekly -
In the legal system, whoever tells the best story wins. But when two "workaday English teachers"--who happen to be the writers Frederick Barthelme (Bob the Gambler) and Steven Barthelme (And He Tells the Horse the Whole Story)--gamble away their $250,000 inheritance in a few years and are indicted for conspiracy to defraud the casino where they were regulars, the tale they have to tell is far more richly complicated--and haunting--than any their lawyer could present. Their narrative seductively juxtaposes the stark loss of their parents, their family's "psychological arithmetic" and the "miraculous multiplication" of winning at the blackjack tables, moving fluently between an account of the brothers' fall into addiction and their memories of a family life that was like "a lovely old-fashioned movie with snappy dialogue and surprising developments, high drama and low comedy, heroes and villains, wit and beauty and regret." By turns dazzlingly canny and achingly abject, the Barthelmes, who write in a single voice, lure the reader into the intimacy of their self-deception. Intoxicated by their brinksmanship and their clever comebacks, readers will hope against hope they'll fight their way back from staggering losses. In retrospect, the brothers' gaming philosophy--"We would have been willing to win, but we were content to lose"--was sustaining in the casino's mirror world where "money isn't money," although, as the authors wryly observe, it crumbled when they were awaiting a legal verdict. (Nov.) FYI: Filed a few weeks after the publication of Bob the Gambler in 1997, the charges against the brothers were dismissed by the Mississippi State Circuit Court in August 1999. Copyright 1999 Cahners Business Information.Library Journal
At first, this dark memoir seems like a simple confessional about how two fiftyish writer-academics lost a quarter-million-dollar inheritance in the late-night world of Mississippi riverboat casinos. (In 1997, the brothers were charged with cheating a Mississippi casino and still await trial.) As book-smart gamblers, the Barthelmes indulge in overtipping and betting ludicrous amounts; they are smarter-than-thou, which is their downfall. Perhaps some readers will see the deaths of the Barthelmes' parents as sufficient cause for their fall from grace; faced with real pain, the brothers prove inept at problem solving. But the gambling, compulsiveness, and midlife boredom predate their parents' deaths; and the gambling snowballed because of their new-found money, which the brothers burn out of resentment of their Napoleonic father. Beautifully evoking the gamblers' addiction, their mesmerizing account is best read as a novel Camus might have imagined, with the writer/protagonists as their own lost characters. A work of high art; enthusiastically recommended. [Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 7/99.]--Marty Soven, Woodside, NY Copyright 1999 Cahners Business Information.Francine Prose
What gives their beautifully written book its power are the same gifts that distinguish the Barthelmes' fiction: their intelligence, their eye for detail, and their wry bemusement at the unlucky, unlikely hands that life so often deals.—Elle Magazine
Robert R. Harris
To double down in blackjack is to double your original bet before taking a hit, or a third card. Usually you want to double down when your first two cards total eleven and the dealer is showing, say, a five or a six; in this case, the odds can actually be with you, and the chance of really having fun is greatly increased. For the Barthelmes the phrase also suggests the dual downward spirals they suffered in losing so much money and their parents in a short span of time. They relate both stories in a style so seamless that it's hard to tell you are reading a collaboration. The narrative voice varies from the first-person plural to the third person to the second person, and it's never jarring and almost always absorbing.—The New York Times Book Review
Tom DeHaven
Superb...It's a brutally candid, unflattering self portrait of two successful middle-aged men who managed, somehow, to sail through their adulthood behaving like "overage children"...Double Down is also an unsentimental, even edgy meditiation on the loss of one's parents and the often crazy-making trauma of being orphaned in mid-life.Entertainment Weekly