Pocket Kings

January 9, 2012
The anti-hero of Heller’s third novel (after Funnymen) is Frank Dixon, a resentful schlub who’s failed at everything he’s puts his mind to: athletics, painting, and, most recently, writing. Stuck in a midlife crisis, Frank finds Internet poker and discovers that he has some talent after all. He immerses himself in a virtual community where he makes friends and potential lovers, all while winning money unstoppably. As he alienates people in the real world—from his wife to his literary agent—he delves further into his online relationships and begins to lose himself to his addiction. As “Chip Zero,” he builds a fortune, but his success breeds resentment, and one player in particular plots revenge to get his money back. The obnoxious narrator, his endless failures, and the instant messaging all grow tiresome, but Heller should be commended for creating a thoroughly repellent character whose story is captivating, even compulsive, reading. While the book has the gritty, unpleasant feel of a novel by Chuck Palahniuk or Sam Lipsyte—another futile diatribe against the barrenness of 21st-century American (male) life—it’s a well-crafted and entertaining satire on the world of modern publishing, as well as the perverse artificiality of the Internet. The prose equivalent of nails on a chalkboard, Heller still manages to make the reader laugh and rage at more or less the same time. Agent: Matthew Elblonk, the Creative Culture.