Book Review : Paolo Iacovelli - The King of Video Poker (2024)
Five years ago, Todd Phillips' movie Joker generated a minor moral panic prior to its release. The character had already been revisited in the abysmal Suicide Squad three years prior, but somehow the idea of a movie dedicated to Joker made people fear it would generate an army of desperate anarchists akin to Aurora Theatre shooter James Holmes. It did not happen and Phillips' ended up having a responsible take on the character, but moral panics happen so fast nowadays. We take art very seriously, for better or worse.
Given that I was both intrigued and repulsed by the idea of a novel inspired by the perpetrator of the 2017 Las Vegas shooting Stephen Paddock, The King of Video Poker was a mandatory reading for me. I live for stories which surf that invisible line of good taste.
In The King of Video Poker, a nameless narrator lives parallel lives as an emotionally unavailable dad in Mesquite, Nevada and as a high stakes video poker gambler in Vegas. The precarious balance of his life is throw out of whack when he learns the passing of golf legend Arnold Palmer, who was a personal hero of his. Adrift, he’s trying to hold on to anything that could provide meaning in his life, only to be met with hostility and indifference. Not that he was being of value to anyone or even self-aware, mind you.
So, the elephant in the room here is Don DeLillo. His influence is all over The King of Video Poker, which is a great thing because he's one of my favorite authors. Paolo Iacovelli explores the how reality shapes the violent man who in his turn shapes reality to his image, just like DeLillo does. Symbolic violence turns into real violence who’s becoming symbolized through the novel again. There's no conspiracy like there is in most DeLillo novels, but it feels like it to his paranoid protagonist with a fleeting sense of reality.
Another important aspect of this novel is the use of the setting-as-a-character. It’s one of the best, most efficient example of how it can work in a novel. The protagonist of The King of Video Poker is a self-serving asshole seeking validation in everything single self-destructive thing he does, but his environment is working fiercely at denying him that. From random people just getting in his way to the Wynn concierge subtle, but growing hostility towards him, the world reflects his own self-centeredness to him.
Arnold Palmer symbolizes an anchor in the shapeshifting chaos of Las Vegas. A static and moral past with a clear social hierarchy. It’s the disrespect of this hierarchy by people who are exactly the same as him that set him off on his self-destructive path. Call it bleak, call it nihilistic if you want, The King of Video Poker is a sobering (aaaand pretty entertaining) look into the utter dysfunction of our social structures. Paolo Iacovelli is not moralizing by any means. There’s an anthropological candor to his storytelling.
I don’t think there’s any negative karma to reading The King of Video Poker. At least, not more than there is to reading any of Don DeLillo’s novels. It’s an exploration of the birth of inexplicable violence. You know how we’re always struck with wordless terror whenever a mass shooting appear and we dismiss it as a random act of evil of someone with too much access to guns? Well, The King of Video Poker is trying to look beyond that and its observations are interesting if… you’re looking to think beyond banalities.
*
The King of Video Poker is a solid novel. It’s quite short, but dense and magnetic. You’re not going to breeze through it in a single setting unless you’re willing to dedicate your day to it. It’s also quite courageous by Paolo Iacovelli to explore real world violence with such emotional detachment. It makes The King of Video Poker an uncomfortable read, but in the best possible way. It’s a solid a debut novel as it can get. It’s for a certain type of cerebral readers who can manage the absence of morality in storytelling, but it’s great.
The King of Video Poker is coming out on July 9. You can pre-ordrer it here.
