Hartford and Billiards
(excerpt from a Mark Twain biography)

The billiard-room became his headquarters. He received his callers there and impressed them into the game. If they could play, well and good; if they could not play, so much the better -- he could beat them extravagantly, and he took a huge delight in such conquests.    Read more...

(Citation: Paine, Albert Bigelow. Mark Twain: A Biography (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1912; BoondocksNet Edition, 2001)

Mark Twain Anecdote While attending a billiard tourney on the evening of April 24, 1906, Mr. Twain was called on to speak. He told this story: THE game of billiards has destroyed my naturally sweet disposition. Once, when I was an underpaid reporter in Virginia City, whenever I wished to play billiards I went out to look for an easy mark. One day a stranger came to town and opened a billiard parlor. I looked him over casually. When he proposed a game, I answered, "All right." "Just knock the balls around a little so that I can get your gait," he said; and when I had done so, he remarked: "I will be perfectly fair with you. I'll play you left-handed." I felt hurt, for he was cross-eyed, freckled, and had red hair, and I determined to teach him a lesson. He won first shot, ran out, took my half-dollar, and all I got was the opportunity to chalk my cue. "If you can play like that with your left hand," I said, "I'd like to see you play with your right." "I can't," he said. "I'm left-handed."

 
The Hustler
a novel by Walter Tevis

Henry, black and stooped, unlocked the door with a key on a large metal ring. He had just come up in the elevator. It was nine o'clock in the morning. The door was a massive thing, a great ornate slab of oak, stained once to look like mahogany, ebony now from sixty years of smoke and dirt. He pushed the door open, shoved the door stop in place with his lame foot, and limped in.

There was no need to turn the lights on, for in the morning the three huge windows along the side wall faced the rising sun...    Read more from a 9 page excerpt...

Buy the Book, The Hustler, Now

 
The Color of Money
Walter Tevis's sequel to The Hustler

Where it faced the highway, the Sunburst was just another motel, but behind the main building sat a cluster of a half-dozen concrete cottages with tiny rock gardens. Condominiums. It was on one of the Keys, the one just below Largo. Driving down from the Miami airport, Ed had pictured a resort hotel with terraces and tennis courts, but this was old-fashioned. He parked beside a crimson hibiscus and got out into the Florida heat. Number 4 was the one across the gravel road, with a clear view of the ocean. It was late in the afternoon and the light from the sky was intense.

Just as he came up, the screen door opened and a hugely fat man stepped out...   Read more from a 9 page excerpt...

Buy the Book, The Color of Money, Now

 
Mordecai Richler on Snooker
by Mordecai Richler

Round the corner from Baron Byng, on St. Laurence Boulevard (The Main, in Montreal parlance), lay the Rachel Pool Hall, my deliverance from classes in geometry and intermediate algebra, both of which confounded me. Beginning snooker players at the Rachel were obliged to apprentice on the last of four tables, lest we miscue and rip the baize cloth. The faded baize on the humiliating last table no longer mattered. It had already been mended here and there with black tape. There were sticky Coca-Cola stains and cigarette burns. Imitating the more seasoned players, I learned to select a number of cues from the wall rack, ostentatiously rolling them on the table until I settled on one that wasn't hopelessly warped. If my opponent managed a difficult pot, I would bang my cue butt three times on the floor, just like the other Rachel habitués.   Read more...

 
Visions of Cody
by Jack Kerouac

AROUND THE POOLHALLS OF DENVER during World War II a strange looking boy began to be noticeable to the characters who frequented the places afternoon and night and even to the casual visitors who dropped in for a game of snooker after supper when all the tables were busy in an atmosphere of smoke and great excitement and a continual parade passed in the alley from the backdoor of one poolroom on Glenarm Street to the backdoor of another--a boy called Cody Pomeray, the son of a Larimer Street wino.   Here's another excerpt...

 
The Truth About Van Gogh's The Night Cafe
by Ace Toscano

While shooting the breeze in a local poolhall, I recently caught wind of a fiction currently circulating regarding Van Gogh's painting The Night Café (The Night Cafe in the Place Lamartine in Arles, 1888), a painting popular with pool players because its composition includes a rendering of a pool table. Obviously the creation of some student of inebriation who figured the turbulent life of Vincent Van Gogh wanted embellishment, this fiction began "Van Gogh had a brother who was a drunk and hung out in that bar."   Read the complete story...

 
Fat Man of Pool
By Jim Murray

(Editor's note: This column originally appeared in the Los Angeles Times on August 29, 1962.)
DU QUOIN, ILL. - The fat man drummed his fingers on the table and his eyes darted around the room. Ordinarily, Rudolph Walter Wanderone wouldn't spot a person he didn't know because everyone from Dog Walk to the north to Crab Orchard on the south knows the fat man.

You'd know him, too, if he looked more like Jackie Gleason from the neck-up. Right? The Hustler from the movie of the same name. Minnesota Fats, alias New York Fats.   Finish the article...

 
How to play THREE-CUSHION BILLIARDS
By Willie Hoppe

(Webmaster's Note: This article originally appeared in Popular Mechanics in 1942)

Three cushioned Billiards addicts live longer than other people. Like chess players, they concentrate so hard on their game that they forget about business, OPA, shortages and other worries. They learn to relax and enjoy themselves.

An estimated 10,000,000 persons play billiards and a high percentage prefers the three-cushioned variety, which is definitely a game of science. Mathematics, particularly geometry, enters into it. But don't let that frighten you if you are thinking about learning the game. I've known many men who play an excellent game, yet they never studied mathematics.   Finish the article...

 
A Hustler Teaches the Boys A Lesson
By Professor Smith

He was an older man. That’s not to say he was old. But older than the average crowd, and with completely gray hair and mustache. He was wearing army fatigue trousers and a faded denim shirt. He had been sitting at the bar for several hours. He spoke when spoken to but otherwise minded his own business..whatever that was.. Considering the time he had been sitting on the end stool, it would have been expected he would have been at least half drunk. In reality he had finished only three beers in the time he had been in the Lake House.   Read the complete story...

 
The Kid Who Beat Mosconi
Another Pool Story by Ace Toscano

Frankie Cimino had grown up in Teasdale's Billiard Academy, a popular upstate N.Y. haunt. By age sixteen, he had ascended to the upper strata of local players. A cocky, swaggering, slick-stroking phenom, his finest moment had come in 1963 when, in a straight pool exhibition, he had whipped the legendary Willie Mosconi by running 114 balls and out.  Read the complete story...

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