After making friends with a boy he met at the tables, he played every day into the night, and then they would relax with a game of chase late into the night.Īs a seventeen-year-old, Walter Tevis got into the Navy and would spend seventeen months in Okinawa. He would also spend some of his time watching gamblers put big money at risk at the Phoenix Hotel. Tevis finally found comfort in pool and spent much of his time at the Lexington poolrooms. He had to endure beatings from other boys and found little in Lexington that he liked. Talking to the “San Francisco Examiner,” he asserted that living in Kentucky was so surreal he often thought he was an alien. He was brought up by very strict parents though his father was an alcoholic and his mother never acknowledged that he was. Walter’s family eventually remembered their son and sent for him though his ticket was paid for by a family friend. He was given phenobarbital and he so loved it and has said it was what would later make him a drunk. Just like his lead character Beth Harmon, he was drugged at the home so that he would be kept subdued and calm. While he was at the home, he learned that his parents had moved to Lexington, Kentucky effectively abandoning him. As a nine-year-old, he had a Sydenham’s chorea and rheumatic heart diagnosis and for a year he lived in a convalescent home. Born in 1928, he was seven years old when he learned how to play chess. Walter Tevis is a bestselling literary fiction and science fiction author from San Francisco.
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