Originally appeared
in the artsfuse.org 4/20/13
Fred Waitzkin The Dream Merchant
Fred Waitzkin The Dream Merchant
Early on in this irresistible novel, Jim, its main
character, informs the narrator that: "The greatest thrill for a gambler.
. . is losing a fortune and bottoming out." Bottoming out may be a strange
way to get your kicks, definitely not everyone's idea of a good time, but Jim,
over the course of his long life — we wave goodbye to him when he's eighty —
makes a habit of it, nose-diving repeatedly, touching bottom and resurfacing.
For him: "Having nothing, starting again, unhampered, is so much sweeter
than standing pat and being mediocre."
There's no danger of Jim standing pat or being mediocre. He
wouldn't know how, in his trajectory from impoverished boyhood on a farm in
Canada, where he kept his family from hunger by learning the language of cows
in order to track them and bring them home, to his career in the Brazilian
Amazon, where he amasses a fortune, neither his first nor his last, heading up
a gold rush.