Adam Resnick with Todd Gold. Bust: How I Gambled and Lost a Fortune, Brought Down a Bank–and Lived to Pay for It. New York: William Morrow, 2007.
Another day, another review of what seems to be a burgeoning genre–the problem gambling memoir. Like Burt Dragin’s Six to Five Against, Bust is a story of a problem gambler’s downfall and quest for redemption.
There are key differences, though. While Dragin never got in too far over his head, Resnick lost about $8 million in one incredible session at the Hammond Horseshoe. And where Dragin used his journalistic skills–and genuine intellectual curiosity–to plumb the literary depths in search of a answer to the simple question, “Why do people gamble too much,” Resnick, who thanks the word “fuck” in his acknowledgments and cops to Howard Stern’s Private Parts being the only book he’d read cover to cover prior to 2004, just talks about gambling and losing, gambling and winning, and gambling and losing some more.
That’s pretty much the book in a nutshell. There’s a little bit of introspection, but not much that would verge on soul-searching. Resnick thinks that his OCD is to blame for his compulsion to gamble–and he may be right–and thinks that if he’d had a stronger father for a role model, or hadn’t been surrounded by enablers, he might have straigtened up before bottoming out.
He’s probably right about that. Resnick makes it clear that, early on, he can get what he wants by dint of his charisma and charm, and it’s clear that for a guy who’s read a total of one book before 2004 to swing a big press book deal for a memoir takes some fast talking.
That might be the book’s biggest problem. Resnick isn’t an immediately sympathetic protagonist: he’s a guy who by his own admission gambled irresponsibly and bought a house and car he couldn’t afford, squandering six-figure paydays from his deal-making business career. It’s not the sort of thing that’s going to make your average working stiff say, “Wow–that could happen to me.” That’s not to say that the reader won’t feel a certain amount of sympathy for Resnick and (to a greater degree) his family as they read about some of his lows, but, as he insists, he alone is responsible for his predicament.
Gambling and losing is a pretty bad experience, but watching someone gambling and losing is an even worse one. Trust me–given my experience in casino surveillance, I’ve spent more hours than I care to remember watching people win and lose. And in my experience watching other people gambling was profoundly, soul-suckingly boring. Granted, I was doing it on a small TV monitor with no sound, but the thrill of gambling just isn’t vicarious–watching someone else gamble and lose $1 million doesn’t make for entertainment. So reading about Resnick’s string of losses can be a little hard, particularly beacuse he’s losing progressively more as the book goes on. You might want to reach in and scream, “Stop gambling already!” but as a passive reader, you can’t. It’s very similar to being in surveillance, actually, in that regard. Don’t expect to feel the highs of big wins, just the tedium of endless cards being turned and the continuing drumbeat of steady losses.
In that sense, the book brilliantly captures the gambling treadmill–Resnick goes from bookies to blackjack trying not only to chase his losses, but for a thrill that can’t be described and doesn’t translate well to the written word.
Following in that vein, the book’s biggest asset is its honesty. I described Resnick as a fast talker, and I’d sure think twice about lending him money, but it’s clear that frankly admitted his deceptions and his underlying gambling problem is therapeutic for him. Sometimes this honesty is painful. For example, an email that Resnick sends to his friends and family after being indicted o federal bank frraud and conspiracy charges, shows his mindset better than much of the book. “I want you all to know,” he writes, “that I am cognizant of the impact my current situation has on all of you….I will do my best to mitigate the preceding in any may possible.” It’s pretty sad that this kind of corporate boardroom talk intrudes on Resnick’s confessional letter, but I think it shows a lot about his worldview.
That said, those who’d like to lay the blame for Resnick’s gambling problems at others’ feet will be taken aback by his almost jealous declaration that he, and only he, is to blame. He doesn’t get much out of 12-step programs, but doesn’t bash those who do, though it’s clear that his own brand of absolution and treatment requires a very supportive group of family and friends and some deep pockets.
All in all, Bust is a useful document for those who want to see how gambling problems can lead some people to incredibly bad decisions (or is it the other way around), but it’s no literary tour-de-force. Maybe if Resnick had gone to classes during his undergraduate career (he seems rather proud of his having skated by with minimal effort and a smattering of fraud while in college), he might have had a baseline to judge his own story against–what would he think of Dostoyevksy’s The Gambler? I think that a man who lost $8.6 million in a single round of gambling might have something to say about that classic that the rest of us could learn from.