Word Freak: Heartbreak, Triumph, Genius, and Obssession in the World of Competitive
Scrabble Players
by Stefan Fatsis
A book review by Mike Waugh
If librarians are bibliophiles, then it stands to reason that many will, by extension, also be lovers of words. But what happens when this love affair descends into obsession?
In Word Freak, Fatsis starts off as a mild-mannered run-of-the-mill sports and business reporter for the Wall Street Journal and NPR. But when he decides to write a book on the world of competitive Scrabble players, he succumbs to the common pitfall of ethnographers and colonial magistrates: he goes native (which anagrams into VAINEST EGO). As his fascination with the game grows, so does his personal involvement--so much so that he decides to make his quest to reach expert status the book's guiding premise. The "gonzo journalism" approach makes the book less like a straight journalistic account and more like Hunter Thompson's Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. If you take out all the drugs and replace them with Scrabble words, the parallels between the two books are uncanny.
For example, Fatsis' life begins to fall into dysfunctionalism. He starts hanging out with the dropouts who play Scrabble in New York's Washington Square Park. He begins attending wild anagramming parties. Soon, Fatsis is taking a leave of absence from the Wall Street Journal in order to play Scrabble full time.
Fatsis befriends a band of Scrabble misfits. There's Joel Sherman, a top player who claims that his gastro-intenstinal problems prevent him from holding a steady job (thus earning mimself the moniker "G.I. Joel"). After winning a national championship, G.I. Joel states, "This basically validates my existence."
Then there's Matt Graham, a vitamin popping stand-up comedian who loves to bet on games, and his friend Marlon Hill, an unemployed trash-talking African American. Joe Edley is a three-time Scrabble Champion practices yoga and uses the principles of Zen Buddhism in order to prepare for games. There's even Scrabble players who play in English, but can't speak it. Fatsis also makes a pilgrimage to the home of Alfred Butts, the inventor of Scrabble.
The characters are memorable enough to carry the story through more esoteric passages (such as the details of how the official Scrabble dictionaries came to be). In one intriguing coincidence, Fatsis happens to talk with a homeless person outside of an airport. He discovers that the disheveled shell of a man is a former Scrabble expert. Luckily for Fatsis, he achieves his goal of achieving expert status within a year and thus is able to return to a life of normalcy before being overwhelmed.
Posted by Mike Waugh at October 3, 2004 09:38 PM | TrackBackHey, I just finished reading Word Freak last month.
Fatsis did a great job immersing himself in the world of Scrabble. He covered just about every topic you could imagine -- history, game design, strategy, study, tournament play, even a tour of the Hasbro factory.
It's a guidebook to becoming a serious Scrabble player as well as a dire warning of what that entails.
Right now he's even pictured on the front page of the National Scrabble Association's website... confirming his status as a major celebrity among Scrabble players.
Also, you can see pictures, current rankings, and game by game breakdowns of many of the players Fatsis wrote about in the list of registered players in this year's National Scrabble Championships.
Which prompts me to ask, why are there no Scrabble tournament player action figures or trading cards?
Posted by: Robert, Waugh the Younger at October 4, 2004 06:07 PMThat would be great. Imagine: a Joel Sherman doll that has burps and gurgles bile when you push its stomach. A Joe Edley in a night-watchman's uniform clutching an OSPD, doing the lotus position. A Marlon Hill doll with an African medallion and a clenched fist. A Matt Graham with a backpack full of vitamin bottles.
Actually, I'm pretty sad because I missed the Championships that were played on ESPN. I knew about it, but forgot.
Also, be on the look out for the movie Word Wars. Some obscure cable channel has been playing reruns of it and it may be even more entertaining than Word Freak, because you can see the very same people in action. In fact, the similarities are uncanny. It's almost as if Fatsis wrote the screenplay. But I guess that's the nature of non-fiction.
Posted by: Mike Waugh at October 4, 2004 10:35 PM