The Monthly … and the article Walsh didn’t want published …
The morality of gambling
Nick Feik, the editor of the Monthly, asked me to write an essay for his esteemed rag. Now I’m a bit pissed off at the Monthly, so initially I didn’t really want to do it. I’m a bit pissed off because Richard Flanagan did a piece on Mona (my museum, and the only reason anyone asks me to write anything) and me for the New Yorker. It ended up in the Monthly as well, and I didn’t want it to, for at least two reasons: I felt that I had already committed to another writer for a Monthly piece, and I didn’t like Richard’s piece at all. They contacted me before running it, and I told them I didn’t want it printed, but it went to press anyway. Our respective interests were not aligned. I thought, “I’ll never write for those bastards.” At the time they had no interest in me writing for them, and a huge commitment to Richard Flanagan. Now Nick asks me to write, and I’m too flattered to say no.
Anyway, the two potential subjects he offered were “luck in the Lucky Country” and “gambling and compulsion”. By touching on these subjects only peripherally, and forcing the process into the essay (“David, can I take that paragraph about the Monthly and me out of your essay?” “Fuck off, Nick.” You’re welcome! – Ed.), I can exact a small vengeance, while simultaneously showing what can happen when one acts without fear of consequences. Nick has skin in the game, but I can flense him. Of course, he might not print the essay, but survivorship bias, that elegant construct that ensures that we only factor in events that happen, protects me from the ravages of not being printed. Either no one knows Nick got his way or everyone knows I got mine.
Preamble over …
Read the rest, The Monthly here
Richard Flanagan’s Monthly article: The Gambler: At home with David Walsh
David Walsh, The Monthly
