Word: toperoff
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Dates: during 1969-1969
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CRAZY OVER HORSES, by Sam Toperoff. "Horses, horses, horses, crazy over horses," the old song goes. Not quite as repetitive but equally obsessed, the zealous author has transformed a lifelong weakness for the ponies into an oddly winning novel-memoir...
CRAZY OVER HORSES, by Sam Toperoff. "Horses, horses, horses, crazy over horses," the old song goes. Less repetitive but equally obsessed, the author has transformed a lifelong weakness for the ponies into an oddly winning novel-memoir...
...CRAYV tiVER HORSES, by Sam Toperoff. "Horses, horses, horses, crazy over horses," the old song goes. Less repetitive but equally obsessed, the author has transformed a lifelong weakness for the ponies into an oddly winning novel-memoir...
...Toperoff suffers through it all-setting out each morning in the delusion that he is a god who will ordain the outcome of the race, often going home at night a broken peasant, cursing the fates. In effect, he becomes existential man, laughing at his own rueful destiny. When Mulligan dies, he makes Toperoff promise to bet all his meager savings in one last post-mortem race. It is his horseplayer's fitting, feckless (not to mention luckless) bid for immortality...
...Toperoff comes to another conclusion. Though no true horseplayer ever truly reforms, his passion for wagering eventually is spent. He ends up buying an old pony-as a personal companion. "Today I discovered an old pile of Lucky's manure," he writes. "It was turning back to grass. And I saw it was a miracle." Somehow this becomes a touching ending to a delightful book. An alternate epitaph might be the horseplayers' eternal lament, "I shoulda...