Cards on the Table

Abstract

Timothy Nolan reviews Peter Alson’s Game Ball and Other Essays, a wide-ranging anthology that collects memoir, journalism, and fiction produced across four decades of Alson’s career. Nolan characterizes the volume as an uneven but often compelling scrapbook, unified less by form than by Alson’s recurring fascination with risk, authenticity, and self-knowledge. The review gives particular attention to Alson’s nonfiction essays on gambling culture—especially professional poker—as sustained metaphors for survival, judgment, and moral exposure, praising their observational acuity and narrative tension. Nolan also examines essays on professional wrestling, journalism, and American spectacle, alongside Alson’s short fiction, which he identifies as among the strongest work in the collection. At the same time, the review offers candid critique of the anthology’s weaker autobiographical pieces, dated cultural references, and editorial excesses. The essay concludes by situating Game Ball and Other Essays as a flawed but revealing portrait of a writer at his best when observing others at the edge of risk, and at his weakest when turning that scrutiny inward.