Walter Tevis (The Queen's Gambit etc.)

[Mobbd]

A few years ago, I read Mockingbird and The Man Who Fell to Earth. I really, really enjoyed them both. Just good, clear, imaginative (but not convoluted) storytelling. Both novels stand out in my memory unusually well.

Yesterday, I impulsively picked up The Queen's Gambit from a special chess display in my local library. The Netflix version (which I largely enjoyed) was very faithful to the novel so it feels like I've read it before, which is an unusual experience for me in that I don't generally read something I've seen the film version of (or else the film version is notably different). Specific lines are as identical as they are memorable: "I don't understand about chess clocks."

Anyway, one observation I have at this point is how Beth Hamon's arc in the The Queen's Gambit closely parallels that of Thomas Jerome Newton in The Man Who Fell to Earth. They are both extraordinarily talented outsider individuals who almost willfully go to waste. Tevis must have had a thing for the perverse beauty of the destroyed masterpiece or something.

Any other Tevis-likers here? Anyone read any of these books or any of his others?

[Dayraven]

Tevis must have had a thing for the perverse beauty of the destroyed masterpiece or something.

I suspect there was more than a little reflection of his own alcoholism involved.

He also wrote The Hustler and The Color of Money, if that's not too obvious to point out, and one more SF novel, The Steps of the Sun. There's an ebook, Far From Home, that collects his shorter SF, which are more throwaway than the novels.