Queen of Spades
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University of Tennessee, Knoxville TRACE: Tennessee Research and Creative Exchange Doctoral Dissertations Graduate School 5-2016 Queen of Spades Michael Shou-Yung Shum University of Tennessee - Knoxville, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://trace.tennessee.edu/utk_graddiss Part of the Creative Writing Commons Recommended Citation Shum, Michael Shou-Yung, "Queen of Spades. " PhD diss., University of Tennessee, 2016. https://trace.tennessee.edu/utk_graddiss/3665 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate School at TRACE: Tennessee Research and Creative Exchange. It has been accepted for inclusion in Doctoral Dissertations by an authorized administrator of TRACE: Tennessee Research and Creative Exchange. For more information, please contact [email protected]. To the Graduate Council: I am submitting herewith a dissertation written by Michael Shou-Yung Shum entitled "Queen of Spades." I have examined the final electronic copy of this dissertation for form and content and recommend that it be accepted in partial fulfillment of the equirr ements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, with a major in English. Michael Knight, Major Professor We have read this dissertation and recommend its acceptance: Margaret Dean, Alisa Schoenbach, Mary Papke, Stephen Blackwell Accepted for the Council: Carolyn R. Hodges Vice Provost and Dean of the Graduate School (Original signatures are on file with official studentecor r ds.) Queen of Spades A Dissertation Presented for the Doctor of Philosophy Degree The University of Tennessee, Knoxville Michael Shou-Yung Shum May 2016 Copyright © 2016 by Michael Shou-Yung Shum All rights reserved. ii ABSTRACT Semblance—or parody—is, of course, the operative word when considering a text that strives to be subversive of both form (the “anti- realism” of minor literature) and social function. Regarding the latter, as stated before, my goal in the text is the reverse of the traditional moral fable’s: implanting a desire in readers to experience firsthand the world of risk as a means to live in a more vital way, outside the text, whether through gambling or another form of chance-taking. Uncertainty is troubling, unsettling, but it is also mysterious and enlivening—this is what gamblers, acolytes at the altar of luck, understand in the final analysis. iii TABLE OF CONTENTS Critical Introduction ............................................................................................ 1 Quietude & Flow .............................................................................................. 1 The Black Part of the Flame ........................................................................... 2 The Exceptional Players .................................................................................. 3 Goodness .......................................................................................................... 4 Gambling Style ................................................................................................ 5 The Dreaming Organ ....................................................................................... 7 Prologue—Compulsions ...................................................................................... 9 The Royal Casino ............................................................................................... 11 The Audition .................................................................................................. 12 Chan’s First Night ......................................................................................... 15 The 13 Rules of Faro ...................................................................................... 18 Chimsky Makes a Bet .................................................................................... 20 The Referral ................................................................................................... 24 Spur of the Moment ....................................................................................... 27 Homework ...................................................................................................... 31 The Oblong Box .............................................................................................. 38 Off the Hook ................................................................................................... 41 The Painted Man ........................................................................................... 46 The Lottery ..................................................................................................... 49 Snoqualmie ........................................................................................................ 56 Changing Room .............................................................................................. 57 A Mysterious Caller ....................................................................................... 60 Hair & Now .................................................................................................... 64 Two Conversations ......................................................................................... 68 The Unwanted Houseguest ........................................................................... 72 Sandman ........................................................................................................ 79 Barbara Makes a Bet ..................................................................................... 83 Thanksgiving Dinner ..................................................................................... 86 Dealer’s Choice ............................................................................................... 91 High Limit Salon ............................................................................................... 97 Body & Soul .................................................................................................... 98 Another Audition ......................................................................................... 102 Fugue ............................................................................................................ 107 The Trouble with Dimsberg......................................................................... 110 13,000 Years ................................................................................................. 113 The Sacking of Chimsky .............................................................................. 120 An Understanding is Reached ..................................................................... 125 Cursed .......................................................................................................... 131 The Changing of the Card ........................................................................... 135 iv Epilogue—A New Set-Up ................................................................................ 143 List of References ............................................................................................ 146 Vita ................................................................................................................... 148 v CRITICAL INTRODUCTION There are few persons, even among the calmest thinkers, who have not occasionally been startled into a vague yet thrilling half-credence in the supernatural, by coincidences of so seemingly marvellous a character that, as mere coincidences, the intellect has been unable to receive them. Such sentiments … are seldom thoroughly stifled unless by reference to the doctrine of chance, or, as it is technically termed, the Calculus of Probabilities. Now this Calculus is, in its essence, purely mathematical; and thus we have the anomaly of the most rigidly exact in science applied to the shadow and spirituality of the most intangible in speculation. (Poe 198-9, emphases his) There’s no room for doubt now: intelligence must apprehend chance if it’s to limit itself to its own domain … [C]hance is an object of human ecstasy, because it’s the opposite of a response to the desire to know. (Bataille 45, emphasis mine) Quietude & Flow For the practiced gamblers rendered in Queen of Spades, chance can feel profoundly and convincingly intuitive. At particular times, characters believe they can sense its fluidity, its rhythms and ebbs, its flow, as Barbara does when she is sweating her Election bet in Book Two. A crude way to measure and assess the movement of chance is offered to the characters in the text through casino gambling: Blackjack, Craps, Roulette, etc. serve as primitive forms of digitization, in which one’s experience of chance’s flow is distilled into a series of unmistakable, discordant notes: win, lose, win, lose, win, win, lose, lose, lose, etc. It is perhaps one of the critical social functions of these hallowed (yet obscene) institutions—many of which, such as the Aviation Club de France in Paris, are as ancient and revered as civic monuments—to enable so-called “acolytes of the green felt” to practice and develop their senses of feel and intuition, psychic territory which for the most part remains vast and untapped outside a casino’s walls. Most of the characters rendered in the text, even the minor “regulars” that populate the Royal Casino on a daily basis, can hear these jarring notes of luck. To willingly ignore them seems folly—but few are able to detect the rich texture of melody underneath. The history of gambling, however, is punctuated by the breathless accounts of those who could harness this sensitivity,