On Snooker: A Brilliant Exploration of the Game and the Characters Who Play It. [Hardcover]

Mordecai Richler (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 1, 2001

The award-winning novelist--a self-confessed former "teenage poolroom hustler"--brings the enormously popular game of British snooker and its players colorfully to life.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

It is a rare sports book that can be enjoyed even by those with no serious interest in the sport itself. Mordecai Richler's On Snooker is one such work. While this form of billiards may be a marginal pastime in North America, the award-winning novelist--a self-confessed former "teenage poolroom hustler" in Montreal--brings the game and its players colorfully to life. In the early 1950s Richler relocated to London, the heart of snooker territory, to pursue his writing. Thankfully he wasn't skilled enough with the cue to derail a promising career, but he continued to indulge his other passion by following the enormously popular British snooker competitions, ultimately realizing the sport's literary potential at the end of his life (the book was published posthumously). Subtitled "The Game and the Characters Who Play It," Richler's profiles of the sport's heroes--and villains--are hugely entertaining. Such champions as Alex "The Hurricane" Higgins, Ronnie "The Rocket" O'Sullivan, and Cliff "The Grinder" Thorburn emerge with far more personality than your average professional sportsman. Of Canadian player Bill Werbeniuk (a top 10 player in the early '80s), he writes: "The UK Inland revenue allowed him to claim his legendary intake of beer as tax-deductible.... He had a nervous disorder causing trembling, a disability that could only be suppressed by a measured intake of lager, sometimes running to forty pints a day."

Snooker is the central theme here, but, like a virtuoso jazz sax player, Richler spontaneously riffs on a wide array of topics. These range from the state of the Irish economy to anti-Semitism in sports to the greed of today's athletes. In typically Richlerian style, he even jabs at icon Wayne Gretzky in a digression that castigates champions past their prime as strangers to dignity: "He will do TV promos for just about any product that will have him, except, so far, Tampax." Such is the author's mastery that the reader happily joins the game in all its dimensions without feeling the least bit snookered. --Kerry Doole

From Publishers Weekly

Renowned novelist and lifelong snooker devotee Mordechai Richler (The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz) presents On Snooker, a study of the game's history, development and major players, as well as a lively and amusing personal narrative. Richler's book covers more than a century: from snooker's 1875 inception, as a pastime for British soldiers in India, to its later naming the word is a corruption of the French word for cadet (neux), which derived from its founders' observation that they were all beginners at the game to the author's own covert teenage snooker obsession and hustling endeavors in Montreal. This sports-history-cum-memoir, part of which will be published in the New Yorker, should delight both Richler fans and game enthusiasts. ( July)
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 214 pages
• Publisher: Lyons Press; 1st edition (August 1, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1585741795
• ISBN-13: 978-1585741793
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.1 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,899,885 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A North American View of Snooker, August 17, 2001

By 

J. Michael Young (Lancaster, PA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: On Snooker: A Brilliant Exploration of the Game and the Characters Who Play It. (Hardcover)

This book will be of intense interest to snooker enthusiasts and should hold some appeal for most billiards players and all Richler fans. A lifelong snooker fanatic, Richler begins with rich anecdotes from his childhood in Montreal, reviews the early history of cue sports, then devotes several chapters to coverage of the British snooker tournament scene, with special attention paid to Stephen Hendry, Alex Higgins, Cliff Thorburn and Kirk Stevens. He concludes with a discussion of sports themes in recent fiction. Some of the quotes and anecdotes will be overly familiar to the devoted snooker follower but entertaining for the more casual reader. Richler's final work is a welcome addition to the recently sparse snooker literature.

5.0 out of 5 stars Chalk up one for Richler!!, October 27, 2003

By 

J. Guild (Toronto,Canada) - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: On Snooker: A Brilliant Exploration of the Game and the Characters Who Play It. (Hardcover)

Richler has given us a great read on snooker. It will be a long time before we see the likes of another as good on this from the viewpoint of a Canadian fan.Snooker has suffered at the hands of the establishment the same fate as Country Music,Comics,Reading and virtually all entertainment media.
Being about the same age as Richler;a lot of my youth was "mis-spent" ,but not regrettably,in the local Snooker Academy.That was where one learned early that "you paid for the lesson but the experience was for free".Richler brought back many menories to me of watching and talking with the greats during the Competitions at the CNE in Toronto in the early 80"s.At that time Alex Higgins was the character that created the fan interest and support.The establishment would just as soon he didn't exist.Perfection and dullness crept in.
Now in an effort to get the fans and money back;we are being fed 9-Ball.What the establishment never learns is that entertainment belongs to the fans;and they will make the choice of what they want and will support.

5.0 out of 5 stars A lively first person expose of memorable characters, November 10, 2001

By 

Midwest Book Review (Oregon, WI USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: On Snooker: A Brilliant Exploration of the Game and the Characters Who Play It. (Hardcover)

In On Snooker, Mordecai Richler here considers his love of the snooker game and his observations of the men and women who share his enthusiasm. Enjoy a blend of autobiography and game insights which examines snooker tables from Canada to Dublin, in a lively first person expose of memorable characters and games.