As Rothstein: The Life, Times, and Murder of the Criminal Genius Who Fixed the 1919 World Series came to a close, I struggled with what I had just read. Mainly, I struggled with the idea that anyone could read David Pietrusza’s book and not find it terminally boring. When I finally turned to the last page, my thought wasn’t about Arnold Rothstein or any of the events or characters within this tome. Rather, it was a feeling of release from the suffocating boredom of Pietrusza’s writing.
On his own, Rothstein is an interesting character. There is in both Rothstein the man and the contents of Rothstein: The Life, Times, and Murder of the Criminal Genius Who Fixed the 1919 World Series more than enough to craft a good, compelling read. Unfortunately, there’s not much beneath the surface of Pietrusza’s effort. I’m not sure how many different ways an author can declare a murder to be a highly compelling one, yet the words put to paper paint a rote and yawn-inducing who cares? It does not matter whether Rothstein should be interesting or whether the characters he surrounded himself with should be good for a biographical lark. What matters is that they are presented in Rothstein: The Life, Times, and Murder of the Criminal Genius Who Fixed the 1919 World Series in a decidedly meandering fashion, where the mundane is so much the focus that, even though reading while walking, I struggled to stay awake.
For my money, the gravest sin an author can commit is to take an interesting topic and churn out a boring effort. I can handle a poorly written work that is interesting and/or exciting. Once a book loses my interest, it feels more like a chore than an enjoyable experience. The meandering “I have to touch on every aspect of this story” approach that Pietrusza takes is wholly unsatisfying. There are too many characters who are given far too many pages of rumination, who don’t really matter to the grander story of Arnold Rothstein. This meandering all over the place, yet steeped in minutiae, tale-telling is tiring, and, you guessed it, boring.
There’s very little about baseball in Rothstein: The Life, Times, and Murder of the Criminal Genius Who Fixed the 1919 World Series, but it does have a section on the 1919 World Series. Still, I read a lot about many different things; I certainly don’t need a book to be focused on baseball for me to enjoy what it has to offer. Pietrusza’s effort could have been about nothing but baseball, and I still would have been bored out of my mind.
Lead image courtesy of Carroll & Graf
