Word Freak: Heartbreak, Triumph, Genius, and Obsession in the World of Competitive ScrabblePlayers
by Stefan Fatsis
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Book Summary Information
Author: Stefan FatsisEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2002-07-30
ISBN: 0142002267
Number of pages: 416
Publisher: Penguin (Non-Classics)
Book Reviews of Word Freak: Heartbreak, Triumph, Genius, and Obsession in the World of Competitive ScrabblePlayers
Book Review: A "Paper Lion" of the logophiles
Summary: 4 Stars
A friend loaned me this book about the time we were attempting to create an intraoffice Scrabble tournament (and she was in the process of proving how very much better she is than I am at this game). The most obvious thing Stefan Fatsis' skilled reporting demonstrates is the vast gulf that exists between casual players like us and the handful of top players for whom the game can be a time-consuming, even life-consuming, obsession.
It's a world that's hard for me to understand, in part because my competitive gene is relatively underdeveloped. What makes "Word Freak" particularly interesting, however, is watching the author himself slowly transforming from outsider into one of the inner, obsessive corps of championship-level players. Unlike, say, "Wild and Outside: How a Renegade Minor League Revived the Spirit of Baseball in America's Heartland," in which Fatsis was able to retain reportorial objectivity, here he becomes part of his story -- "new journalism," of a sort, and Fatsis makes several references to George Plimpton and his sojourn in the NFL.
On the whole, "Word Freak" is a fairly remarkable piece of writing -- part memoir, part history, part nature journal. The author paints memorable pictures of his central characters, one that made me want to look them up and see how they're doing (or even if some of them are still alive) five years after the fact. Equally memorable is his portrayal of himself, and his ability to retain a certain distance from the change he's undergoing while, at the same time, experiencing it fully. For the reader, the ride can be simultaneously entertaining and disturbing as we see Scrabble as both a game and a mania. It's a combination that makes for a book most readers, I'd expect, won't soon forget ... particularly since so many of us probably have a Scrabble set of our own gathering dust in a bookshelf or closet.
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