Randomness
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<blockquote>Hurstwood watched awhile, and then, seeing an interesting game, joined in. As before, it went easy for awhile, he winning a few times and cheering up, losing a few pots and growing more interested and determined on that account. At last the fascinating game took a strong hold on him. He enjoyed its risks and ventured on a trifling hand to bluff the company and secure a fair stake. (374)</blockquote> | <blockquote>Hurstwood watched awhile, and then, seeing an interesting game, joined in. As before, it went easy for awhile, he winning a few times and cheering up, losing a few pots and growing more interested and determined on that account. At last the fascinating game took a strong hold on him. He enjoyed its risks and ventured on a trifling hand to bluff the company and secure a fair stake. (374)</blockquote> | ||
| − | What is intriguing about Dreiser's account is that it is only when Hurstwood's good fortune wavers that his interest in the game grows and he begins to enjoy it. Losing a few hands makes a winning streak all that much more thrilling. "A series of lucky rolls gives me more pleasure than a man who does not gamble can have over a period of several years," Edouard Gourdon stated in one sexually-charged extract in the ''Arcades Project''. "These joys," he continued, "vivid and scorching as lightning, are too rapid-fire to become distasteful, and too diverse to become boring. I live a hundred lives in one" (498 [O4a]). | + | What is intriguing about Dreiser's account is that it is only when Hurstwood's good fortune wavers that his interest in the game grows, and he begins to enjoy it. Losing a few hands makes a winning streak all that much more thrilling. "A series of lucky rolls gives me more pleasure than a man who does not gamble can have over a period of several years," Edouard Gourdon stated in one sexually-charged extract in the ''Arcades Project''. "These joys," he continued, "vivid and scorching as lightning, are too rapid-fire to become distasteful, and too diverse to become boring. I live a hundred lives in one" (498 [O4a]). |
Unlike the early, purely malevolent associations of randomess described in the beginning of this chapter, randomness here involves the masochistic interplay between pleasure and pain. As well, there is a monumental compression of time: a hundred lives in one. Anatole France calls gambling "the art of producing in a second the changes that Destiny ordinarily effects only in the course of many hours or even many years" (498 [O4A]). Benjamin himself declares that "the greater the component of chance in a game, the more speedily it elapses" (512 [O12a,2]). In other words, time accelerates during the high stakes game of chance. Waiting, boredom, monotony -- these frustrations disappear as "time spills from his [the gambler's] every pore" (107 [D3,4]). | Unlike the early, purely malevolent associations of randomess described in the beginning of this chapter, randomness here involves the masochistic interplay between pleasure and pain. As well, there is a monumental compression of time: a hundred lives in one. Anatole France calls gambling "the art of producing in a second the changes that Destiny ordinarily effects only in the course of many hours or even many years" (498 [O4A]). Benjamin himself declares that "the greater the component of chance in a game, the more speedily it elapses" (512 [O12a,2]). In other words, time accelerates during the high stakes game of chance. Waiting, boredom, monotony -- these frustrations disappear as "time spills from his [the gambler's] every pore" (107 [D3,4]). | ||
