FROM BROADWAY TO BOMBAY: Marty Reisman (1930-2012)

In the late 1990s I worked at a small used bookshop on Fourth Avenue. A lot of unusual printed matter passed through the stacks. One time a writer for the Village Voice sold us his book collection, which included a copy of The Money Player: The Confessions of America’s Greatest Table Tennis Champion and Hustler (1974), by Marty Reisman.

Naturally, I took the book home and read it. I wasn’t that good at ping-pong but always enjoyed the leisurely workout and kerplockety-plock. Reading The Money Player, I learned that table tennis had once served the performance art of a Manhattan toff and postmodernist swashbuckler.