Hustlers, Beats, and Others

by Ned Polsky

Ranging from pool hustling to pornography, this book analyzes deviant branches of American life, dispels misconceptions about them, and throws new light on sociological theory and method. Each chapter radically dissents from one or more mainstream opinions about deviance. The first chapter examines the alleged causes for the decline of American poolrooms and finds them wanting, traces the rise and fall of poolrooms to historical changes in America's social structure, and cogently dissects the recent poolroom revival. The second chapter, reports a field study of a deviant occupation, pool hustling, describing the hustler's work situation and career from recruitment to retirement. In revealing how pool hustlers, although dedicated wholly to a vocation that merely breaks unenforced gambling laws, frequently supplement their income by means of outright felonies, the author develops a new theory of "crime as moonlighting." The third chapter sharply criticizes our criminology textbooks for avoiding the study of uncaught adult criminals in their natural environments. It demonstrates such research to be both necessary and practical with career felons as well as moonlighters. The author describes field techniques he has used with career felons, offers new findings gleaned by means of these techniques, and answers moral objections to such research. The forth chapter presents the first genuinely empirical study of the beat delinquent sub-culture, in which the author corrects some journalistic views such as that most beats are exhibitionists and some sociological ones such as that "retreatist" drug-users can meet neither legitimate nor criminal success norms. The final chapter, on the sociology of pornography, holds that the courts are wrong to claim that naturalistic erotic art is non-pornographic, and wronger still to claim that hard-core pornography is, in Mr. Justice Brennan's words, "utterly without redeeming social importance." The author's unusual blend of empirical, theoretical, and methodological contributions to the study of deviance is enlivened by a witty yet disputatious style, for Mr. Polsky believes that polemical scholarship improves the quality of intellectual life by forcing genteel discussion to become genuine debate.

Genres: Nonfiction

218 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1969

Reviews

[Paul · Rating 3 out of 5]

While obviously dated, this book still has insights to provide, as well as a certain stylistic charm. And how many academics-cum-pool-hustlers ever bothered to write up their ethnographic insights?

I can't pretend to know anything about the sociology of deviance beyond what I've gleaned from Goffman & Foucault, but it seems safe to assume this is no longer cutting edge research. Ergo, much of this is now probably best read as history (both social and intellectual) rather than sociological or anthropological research per se.

As Polsky himself notes, the book is a bit of a grab-bag, not a monograph. Two of the five chapters report field research, one (on pool/billiards hustlers) using participant-observer methodology and the other (on the Greenwich Village 'Beat' scene) using the older 'detached observer' method. Another chapter (on poolrooms) is an exercise in historical sociology.

A chapter on the sociology of pornography is a theoretical exercise aimed at preparing some conceptual ground for an area that had barely been the subject of any research whatsoever in 1966, when Polsky wrote it (an indication of the taboo nature of the subject in the social sciences of the time is that Polsky first developed his thoughts for a panel on 'Pornography and Literature' with Hubert Selby!).

Finally, there is a chapter about criminology research methods that directly addresses shortcomings in the criminology textbooks of the day. This chapter was surprisingly interesting, I thought, because it touches on the moral questions surrounding field research with criminals (To what extent is a researcher implicated in the crimes she or he witnesses? How best to deal with the tension between a sense of oneself as a researcher and as a citizen?).

Polsky's writing is quite clear throughout, remarkably free of professional argot and citation anxiety. He seems to have fashioned himself as a two-fisted brawler in the academic atmosphere of the time, which has its merits in this clean style.

I found myself wondering throughout how Polsky's insights, presuppositions, and blind spots would strike the anthropologist or sociologist who came of age in the era of reflexive suspicion of method. For that reason, I think this is probably also useful as an object of intellectual history, e.g., by some latter-day Dorothy Ross working on the history of American social science. Altogether, an enjoyable if dated visit to a field far from my own.

[Carey · Rating 4 out of 5]

Some good material on pool players, hustlers and pool halls. Plenty of text on other 'seedy' types, which I skipped over so I can't comment much on that part. Perhaps the grain of knowledge that most people are searching for here who have come to this book from a love of pool is why pool and pool halls suffered such a precipitous decline after WWII or so. The explanation that Polsky provides is that pool halls disappeared as a unique bachelor culture disappeared. Think "Bowling Alone" but for a very very specific demographic: single heterosexual men. That's who made up (and probably still make up) the principal customer base most pool halls depended upon. After WWII, GIs came home, settled down, got married, moved to the burbs, etc, etc. Not as many nights out with the boys, not as much loose cash flowing around big stateside military deployment areas like there were during the war, people are becoming more disconnected via the intro of the television and the calling of the suburbs. There was a running joke during the Depression era that went something like this: "Pool hall burns down: 500 men left homeless." There's certainly no truth left in that statement nowadays.

[Zane Shavon · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting.