Like The Hustler, I never saw the movie of The Color of Money but I knew it was directed by Martin Scorsese and starred Tom Cruise along with Paul Newman, reprising his role as “Fast” Eddie Felson. So I looked it up on IMDB after reading this book thinking Cruise’s character was Babes Cooley, the cocky young upstart who’s Eddie’s nemesis in this book and… nope! He plays someone called “Vincent Lauria”, a character who’s not in the book at all, while Babes, and other key characters like Fats Minnesota and Arabella, are all seemingly absent and the plot is about Eddie training Vincent up as his protege. So basically: the book and the movie share a title and a main character and nothing else!
I can see why Scorsese changed things up though (and maybe the movie is good given the talent involved - I might watch it one day) as Walter Tevis’ only sequel and final book is unfortunately not great.
It starts slow with Eddie, twenty years after The Hustler, heading down to Florida to talk the retired Fats Minnesota into playing exhibition pool with him for a TV show. Eddie’s not that great as he’s basically been managing a pool hall for the last two decades and not really playing much - hmm, not exactly gripping. And that lasts for over 100 pages!
There’s a lot of meandering without any real direction. Eddie gets back into serious pool training, he meets and falls in love with an English wannabe actress, Arabella, (unsurprisingly his previous marriages didn’t last) and gets into collecting and selling folk art?! That folk art crap was so tedious and utterly pointless - the literary version of Pawn Stars years before that shite appeared on TV. Eventually he winds up at the Lake Tahoe tournament to face Babes Cooley and prove that he’s still got it at 50 over all the young up-and-comers.
The Color of Money is definitely not as exciting or snappy as The Hustler. There’s a lot of material here that could’ve been cut and not affected the story whatsoever. Part of me wonders if Tevis was writing about himself through Eddie, which in part drove him to write this book: “I’ve been in a goddamned fog for twenty years” (p.95) and “You sat on your talent for twenty years” (p.141) as references to the nearly twenty years Tevis didn’t publish anything due to his alcoholism.
Still, the writing is very strong, as always with Tevis, and the scenes where Eddie starts getting back into it, travelling to these backwater towns to hustle pool, were entertaining. Like Eddie, once Tevis finds focus, he is an enthralling storyteller. And it was a cute touch towards the end that Eddie winds up the victim of a hustle. It’s just a shame that the pacing is so leisurely - perhaps to reflect Eddie’s character who’s no longer the hungry young man he was - as the ambling storyline had me easily putting the book down frequently whereas The Hustler had me gripped almost the whole time.
This isn’t a reflection of Tevis but the edition of this book I read - the W&N Modern Classics paperback - is so riddled with typos, it’s unbelievable. It’s so unprofessionally edited, I felt embarrassed for this publisher - sort it out, W&N!
It’s definitely not as fast-paced or as inspired as The Hustler but I still enjoyed parts of The Color of Money. It’s not among Walter Tevis’ best books and I wouldn’t even say it’s worth reading to find out what happened next to these characters (the answer: not much!) if you liked The Hustler - definitely a dedicated-fans-of-the-author-only novel.
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