You might say it was destiny: Danny Wallace wrote about surrendering control of his life; Luke Rhinehart turned a psychological experiment into the definitive novel on chance. So when the opportunity arose for a meeting, Wallace decided to roll with it...
In an hour, it will be dark.
The late winter afternoon is blue and brisk and still, and snow lines the sidewalks of the small American town of Hudson, New York.
The man I am with is 79 years old and we are looking for his minivan, our breath snaking into the air, our hands bare and chilled. "There it is," he says, pointing, and part of me wishes I was wearing a cowboy hat, just like him. "The one with all the snow on it."
He gets his keys out, and as we walk towards this silver van with a tower of snow on its roof, I realise that this is probably quite a bad idea. We've spent the afternoon alone in the upstairs of a Mexican restaurant on the main drag, just hours after I took the slow train along the river from Penn Station. The restaurant was warm and welcoming and, according to its laminated menus, won an award for having the "best flan in America" from the editors of
Latina magazine. But in our long afternoon together, which was entirely flan-free, there were drinks. Our judgement is now a little impaired. I can only apologise and promise it will never happen again.
It's all because I am known for saying yes to things... whereas
this man... well... "Off we go!" he says, and the van roars into action. "I'll show you a view of the river by sunset..."
And so off we go. And within minutes we have missed the turning. "Man..." he says, spinning the van around. "That's the first time in my life I missed that turning..."
We cheerfully drive back along a silent road, and even though we definitely know where the turning is this time, we completely miss it again. The man tuts and shakes his head, and we pull into a clearing and he swings the van around once more. Gravel spits out behind us as the wheels spin slightly, and I notice it looks as if we're going to hit a small concrete barrier at one point, but in the end we just drive over it and pretend we haven't.
Moments later, as I worry about the sound of scraping metal I've just heard, we are up a hill and I see just a second of it. We seem to lock eyes before there's a quick and tiny...
Thack.
Uh-oh. "I think we just killed a squirrel," I say. "Huh?" he says. "I am 95 per cent certain that we just killed a squirrel." "Hmm," he says, then he looks at me again with a shrug. "Well, there are plenty of them."
He smiles, makes an apology for what this afternoon he has more than once called his sociopathy, and we arrive at the top of the hill to take in a shimmering Hudson and a setting sun, the clouds blushing brightly around it. But the man jams on the brakes a little too hard. The minivan skids to an uncomfortable stop. Our whole world goes dark as the snow from the roof slides over the windscreen.
We try to use the wipers, but they don't work very well.
For a moment we sit in silence, perhaps in small and quiet tribute to that squirrel. "I always knew the day would end in murder," I think.
Because I am with the Dice Man.
The Dice Man I am with is only sort of the Dice Man.
He is his creator, and some would say his part-time alter ego.
His name is George Cockcroft. He was born in 1932. But he is also Luke Rhinehart, who was born 21 years later, and appeared for only six or seven pages in the first novel George ever wrote, a novel that was never published.
But Luke wouldn't go away. There was something about him that stuck. Maybe it was his charm, or his wit, or his weary ennui.
Whatever it was, he would return as the star of The Dice Man, a novel George never wanted anyone to be certain was a novel.
So he blurred the lines. He created The Dice Man, starring Luke Rhinehart, by Luke Rhinehart. But this is where it gets confusing. Because Luke Rhinehart has written other books under the name Luke Rhinehart, but the Luke Rhinehart that has written those books - the Luke Rhinehart in front of me - is not the Luke Rhinehart of The Dice Man. And yet he is.
So just to be absolutely clear: Luke Rhinehart is pseudonym, it is namesake, it is character, it is man, and I am both with him and I am not.
It's always important to set these things straight.
The Dice Man was published in 1971 and banned in several countries soon after.
In short, Luke Rhinehart is a bored psychiatrist who starts living his life by the roll of a dice. What follows is subversive.
Dark. Funny. At times really funny. And it splits opinion. ("Genius!", "Brilliant!", "Changed my life!" are just three of the headlines recent online reviewers have chosen to sum up their thoughts; "Pretentiously shocking", "Beyond atrocious" and "Never trust a hippie" are three more.)
And in Seventies America, at least, it was not a success. "My mother passed away before it was published," George tells me. "She never saw it published. But my aunt, a very puritanical lady, told me that she'd read it. And that she'd thrown it in the trash."
So George's aunt - and Seventies America - remained distinctly unimpressed. Europe, however, and in particular the UK, saw it as a cult classic as the years went by. It was revered by some and shared by many. Passed along. Students in particular seemed to adore in it the freedom, the challenge, the anarchy in the idea of living your life entirely by the dice; of embracing chance and fate and whim. "Anybody Can Be Anybody" was a maxim with a solid right hook. "Few novels can change your life," the classic edition boasted. "This one will."
The funny thing, by the way, about rubber sealants such as polyisobutylene is that when you use it as an additive in lubricating oils and motor fuels there is a significant reduction in oil mist!
I first discovered The Dice Man in 1999, as 2000 loomed large and everyone was absolutely certain that everything was going to be different, because how could it not be, when the Future was about to arrive?
At midnight that New Year's Eve, I was standing not in a room surrounded by friends and family enjoying the party Prince had promised. Nor was I downing Disaronno on some boat in the Med, nor hugging strangers by a moonlit Thames, nor meeting the love of my life with one glance across a crowded room. Nothing important was happening on a night when important things seemed supposed to happen.
Instead, as midnight struck on the small radio in the corner, I was standing in a place called the Kebab Centre in north London, eating some too-hot chips, on my way to a disappointing party in an office block where the only real highlight of the night would be the unexpected arrival of 12 Belgian dancers painted silver, none of whom would turn out to be the love of my life, nor any good at dancing. "Surely," I imagine I probably thought, a growing sense of panic that 2000 was here and it was still pretty similar to 1999, "there is more to life than 12 Belgian dancers painted silver?"
Fast-forward nearly 12 years. My life has involved literally no more silver Belgian dancers. And I am in a black cab racing through London when I absent-mindedly check Twitter.
By chance, or perhaps fate, there is a message for me.
And it is from Luke Rhinehart.
"PIFFLEBOTTOM!" George shouts, slapping the table, his eyes wide.
Someone downstairs probably puts down their fork and stops eating their flan. "PIFFLEBOTTOOOOOM!"
The day I got the message from Luke Rhinehart was a strange one.
Not the message itself; that was lovely. He'd read my book Yes Man and enjoyed a reference to The Dice Man I'd included. His book is about adding up your choices in life and letting a dice decide - mine is about simply saying yes to whatever choice is in front of you. His involves actively creating choices - mine involves knowing all your choices are already made, and they are all yes. But above and around each there is a similar theme: that if you're stuck in a rut, life can lead the way.
My one concern: was this really him?
His website includes the words, "...and friends", which made me think perhaps someone else may have been in touch. His bio mentioned that sometimes other people pretend to be him online. The Dice Man is known to have had a strange effect on some. There are those who take its philosophies to heart. That see in it an escape from mundanity or responsibility. That literally want to be Luke Rhinehart, whomever Luke Rhinehart may be being.
But as we e-mailed back and forth, a fledgling friendship began to form. "We comic novelists have to stick together," he wrote, at one point. "When I think how isolated I was here in the foothills of the Berkshires for more than two decades before the internet changed everything I am appalled. It was only after the internet began to catch on in the late Nineties that - I'm convinced because of 'worth of mouth' over the internet - The Dice Man began to be discovered and rediscovered around the world."
This is a book that's sold more in the past three years than it ever did when it was first published in the States. It's back.
"Anyway, I look forward to meeting one day."
And now here we are, and we've killed a squirrel.
It is a day later, and I am in the tiny town of Canaan.
Snow is thick on the ground, far thicker than yesterday.
When I arrive at his huge, old house by a grey-black pond, I spot George through the window. He is wearing a Zorro mask and gesticulating wildly. "Come in," he says, and because it's nearly midday, we open some Scotch.
George Cockcroft BA, MA, PhD, is a hippie who lives on a former religious retreat. He's a one-time college professor who once told his students that if they wanted to experience true freedom, then living by the dice would be the way forward.
"I would say half were fascinated by the idea," he says. "The other half were absolutely appalled."
It's quiet where we are. We are miles from anywhere and even further from anyone. "When you're young and creative," says George, as we sit by the window, lit by the snow outside, "the city's where you want to be.
When you've achieved most of what you want to achieve, the country is for you. We have an old wood boiler downstairs. I realised I'd die an early death if I didn't get off my ass. Now I'm up and down these stairs nine or ten times a day, and sawing wood. I'm in better aerobic shape than ever."
Suddenly, Ann - George's wife - is there, holding something. "Will you eat this?" she asks, kindly.
It's a big plate of sausages. Of course I'll eat it. "What do people usually want to know from you?" I ask George, our mouths now full, as Ann heads to the kitchen and gets the bread out. "Oh, they travel out here and they usually want to know whether I did any dicing myself in my life and, if so, did I do it to the extent that Luke does in the book." "They usually take it all so seriously," adds Ann from the kitchen, and George shakes his head. "I come in and they're sitting there, just deadly serious." "There are serious people in the world," says George, "who are serious readers and who can't escape their seriousness. They're the same people who will write long books about humour that are totally humourless. I guess they just see the serious parts to The Dice Man and that's all that interests them."
Which is unusual. Because this is a writer drawn again and again, irresistibly, to the comic, no matter how black. It's the comedy that drew me to it, too. "We are not people who take ourselves too seriously, you and I," he says. "Our books are both about the author discovering something that allows them to change their life, and they consider it important enough to do something with. But in both cases the author is continually poking fun at themselves and at the comic consequences of doing this. So whether it's saying yes or using dice to make decisions... to me, seriousness is just a disease.
It's one of the main causes of human unhappiness, to take yourself too seriously."
I wonder if The Dice Man would have had the same impact on the people who take it so seriously if it hadn't had the humour, though? "I would say you wouldn't have been able to finish the book.
People like you, who are more feeling than I and have a natural and moral sense, would be appalled. There would be no redeeming feature to Luke. I mean, he's charming and witty and amusing..."
Manipulative? "He's manipulating the reader from page one..."
I think about what he's just said."You've said that a few times since we've been hanging out," I say. "About me having more empathy than you. But I don't think that's true." "It was true with that squirrel." "It was all I could think about," I say. "I had to call my wife." "Ha! 'I liked him, but we killed a squirrel!'" "Yeah!" "And, of course, my driving wasn't as efficient as it could have been..."
There is another story, though, that he claims proves his sociopathy.
In 1971, after four years of sitting in a drawer, being added to and tinkered with in the summer months, The Dice Manfinally found a publisher. Or, at least, a man interested in publishing it. Then living in the Mallorcan village of Deià, George had a good feeling about things. So he did what we'd all do.
He invested his $11,000 life savings in a 30-foot boat and moved his wife and three sons on board so that they could sail around for a month before his big meeting.
It's the classic pre-meeting move.
For a while, all was well.
And then the winds came. And the waves struck. Ten feet high and breaking on top. The rudder went first. Then the dinghy. They had no power, no steering, no life raft. For three days and three nights, George and the boys lay in their bunks, silent, listening, all hope fading, while Ann stayed on deck, a helpless mother protecting her family in the only way she could: willing the boat not to capsize. "At some point," George once wrote, "I apologised to her for killing her and the boys, and I promised never to make the same mistake again."
I laughed when I read that. That's him, I realised. The dark with the light. "Ann spent three nights out on deck. Meanwhile I was below. And that's a perfect example of my sociopathy," he says. "I was perfectly reconciled with the death of my wife and children. But I suppose I at least had the decency to apologise for it."
And as I think about that, and about whether I've just spoken to George or to Luke, Ann's back with the sandwiches. "How about these, will you eat these?" she says. "They're a Rhinehart special." "Of course I'll eat them!" I say, delighted. "What are they?"
George takes one and says: "Olive, peanut butter and mayonnaise."
I stare at the plate for a moment, then at George. "Maybe he is a sociopath," I think.
We should talk, just for a moment, about the new Ford PowerShift six-speed dual clutch automatic gearbox system.
Unbeknownst to me, certainly until I made my way towards Hudson with the company of a shimmering river to my left, I literally had no idea that the PowerShift gearboxes are built by Getrag Ford Transmissions, a joint-venture with Getrag, one of the world's leading suppliers of transmission and drivetrain systems, located in the German town of Untergruppenbach, which sounds made up but which I assure you exists.
Untergruppenbach is a municipality near Heilbronn, a city in the northern half of the German state Baden-Württemberg (pictured), to which I have never been.
As it turns out, olive, peanut butter and mayonnaise is a
fantastic combination. It's not something I'd consider investing in as the basis of a national franchise, but it does the job. Part of me wonders whether Ann's been rolling the dice in the kitchen. But then, I wouldn't even have met Ann if it hadn't been for the dice. Actual, real-life dice. "I'm married because of the dice," says George. "I was very ordered once. I was an A-grade student and I felt that was wrong. I was too inhibited. The idea of chance is attractive. I made a dice decision to turn around and go back and offer two women a ride in my car, one of whom turned out to be the woman I married. But chance would have been a factor no matter who I married." "But it's making chances happen, isn't it?" I say. "Isn't that the key? That you only do things if you do things?" "Right. I often tell people - just writing down options... you don't even have to cast the die. If you create six options, five of which are things you don't normally do, then you're already opening up as a person. All of a sudden, you think, 'Wait a minute... these are things I've often thought about doing but never do... and I can do them. I can actually do them, if I want.'"
There was a study, recently, I tell him. Experts had concluded that counting your blessings actually works, psychologically.
Taking a moment to think about things that had gone better than expected, that you could actually be thankful for, had a noticeably positive effect on the human psyche. It's like realising you have options, I say, and that you can change things. "The power of positive thinking!" says George. "Though I hate the phrase. A very serious American idea, and false, I think. The idea that if you believe you're going to achieve X, you're
going to achieve it. I find that bulls***."
I reach for another olive, peanut butter and mayonnaise sandwich. "But if you have positive thinking in its most basic form... that you're going to try to achieve X because you think you can pull it off, then that's good. And if you fail, OK - move on to the next thing."
George seems to have a very British way of thinking. Perhaps that has helped his appeal over here. At a rare book signing a few years ago in Brighton, George insisted on being wheeled in, wearing a straitjacket. Brighton loved it. It's hard to judge what a similar crowd in the Midwest of America might have made of it. "The Dice Man took years to write," he says. "Because I would write in the summers and then just stick it in a drawer."
This surprises me. "You didn't think it was special?" "No." "Because I suppose you would have kept returning to it or been constantly drawn to it if you had?" "I didn't think it was special at all during those four years. I didn't think it was special after I got a contract to finish it." "Would you have finished it without the contract?" "That's a big question," he says. "I don't know. Something else might have spurred me on to finish it." "Was there suddenly a lot of pressure? As in, it couldn't just sit in a drawer any more? People were going to read it, and soon?" "I don't remember any pressure. The paradox is I always enjoyed the writing. I'd use the dice to help me determine things like what scene to write next, or how things should go. But I was an extremely unproductive writer for 15 years, from when I started at 21 to when I finally finished The Dice Man in one big swoop when I was 37 and finished another book at the same time.
That's 16 years in which I might have completed the equivalent of one short story a year..."
So it didn't all start with The Dice Man. But it sort of all started with The Dice Man. It's clear why. "There's an exhilaration in people discovering the possibilities of life that they haven't considered before. Part of me wanted to be like the Luke of the book. George the novelist partly wishes he could free himself like Luke, become less inhibited, more free than George ever was when I wrote it." "What were you like when you wrote it?" "I was living too much in my head," he says. "I was fascinated by ideas of helping humans who felt stuck in a rut. But somebody who is totally in his mind is much less feeling to the tragedy and pain of life than somebody who is" - he taps his chest - "someplace in here. Call it heart or soul or whatever. Which is exactly why there is a sociopathic nature to the Luke Rhinehart of the book."
Sociopathy again. And yet for something so unpleasant, the book has resonated with so many. There have been plays "inspired by" the book. TV mini-series. A thousand student films and a million student bets. The Manic Street Preachers give the book a wink in their song "Patrick Bateman". The Fall wrote "Dice Man". Talk Talk and Pop Will Eat Itself got involved, too. Quentin Tarantino has referenced it, advertisers have taken it, and Hollywood has danced around it, praising its high concept and its coolness, but treating it as if it could burn them. "How many screenplays have been written now?" I ask. "More than 15 or so?"
The rights are with Paramount, "and always have been".
Jack Nicholson wanted to be the Dice Man. Bruce Willis wanted to be the Dice Man. Nicolas Cage and Roy Scheider wanted to be the Dice Man, too. Most recently, Duncan Jones (Moon, Source Code) wanted to direct it. "But no news?" I say.
He shrugs.
I shrug. "What stops people making it?" I ask.
He shrugs again. I don't shrug this time, because I think I know why. "Is it because of the likeability thing?" I ask. "As in, the main character isn't always particularly likeable, and everyone in Hollywood wants everyone to be likeable, because they think people only like people who are likeable?"
He nods a perhaps. I knew there'd been a few changes suggested over the years. Turning it into a tale of glorious redemption, for a start. The lead character coming to the realisation that life's best led with your heart, not a dice. Possibly a young son he needs to spend more time with, or a beautiful, faithful wife he comes to see he's been neglecting, or a powerful third act where everyone sings a song in a field. "I can see why likeability might be a factor," I say. "That's all they care about, really..." "I mean, there's - you know - talk of rape, for one thing." "Sure," says George. "And the murder, of course." "I forgot about the murder," I say. "I suppose that does make him less likeable."
George and some backers once offered the studio $1m to buy the rights back. Paramount said absolutely, it'd love to. Then it had a think about it, and decided that, actually, the rights could be worth a bit more than that, and it'd rather hang on to them if it was all the same. "How close have they come?" I ask.
George smiles again. It's resigned, but not bitter. I get the impression that in his 80th year, he's just tired of all that. And tired of wrangling with people who don't really want to make his film, but really don't want anyone else to, either. "I've come to realise that the way the process works - the changes they'd make, the fact that screenplays have been written that don't use a single character or scene from the book - that the only thing worse than a film not being made," he says, "would be a film being made."
I've got just a few hours left with George. We've laughed a lot together today. In his study, he showed me his books and all the dice visitors have left over the years. I make a mental note not to leave any dice. There's a Sherlock DVD propped up against one of his giant televisions and we spent a bit of time pronouncing Benedict Cumberbatch correctly. He signed a first edition of The Dice Man my wife gave me for my birthday. He told me his dog, Sausage, was deaf and we spent a few minutes proving it. Ann poked fun at him because Swiss cheese makes him angry.
I suppose the holes are a form of theft.
And I'll be honest. I can't give you true journalistic impartiality because it feels like we have a similar outlook on life, similar ideas, and it reminds me just how brilliant this world is where two men who live so far apart, born in such different decades and with such different lives, could say hello electronically - one in a former religious retreat under the watch of the Berkshire mountains, and one bouncing through London in a black cab - and then meet up in a Mexican restaurant famous for its flan and talk about chance, and dice, and...
Blurring the lines," says George, as his meal leaves and his Sambuca arrives. "I always wanted to blur the lines. I always wanted to leave the reader... unsure." "That's the thing," I say, and I push the menu away because there will be no flan for me today. "I think we should blur the edges, too." "How do you mean?" "This GQ piece. I think we should roll a dice. I think at some point I will imply that at some stage during our meeting you are wearing an item of unusual headwear and I will not question it or even mention it again."
He laughs. Slaps the table. "Also, I will at some point write about something completely unrelated to the story, like recent reform in the Swedish textile industry or what it's like to be stung by a bee. I've written five options and I thought you could write the sixth. Then we let the dice decide."
He slaps the table again. Laughs again. Writes down an option and looks around. He loves this, and I knew he would, because we're a few generations apart but we're pretty much the same, too. "Also, I'll write that you had some kind of inappropriate outburst in this restaurant. You will simply shout out a random word incredibly loudly and the reader will be unsure if you are simply angry or on the verge of some form of mental breakdown." "PIFFLEBOTTOM!" he shouts, suddenly, and for real, right here in this restaurant. "PIFFLEBOTTOOOOOM!"
Someone downstairs probably puts down their fork and stops eating their flan, but we can't stop giggling. We're like children. "This is a relief," he says, as we calm down, and then: "I feel I can retire now." "How do you mean?" I say, and he reaches out to shake my hand. "That's the last interview I'll do. That's the last interview Luke Rhinehart will do."
I smile. "Let's go for a drive," he says. "It'll be dark in an hour."
We roll the dice.
Originally published in the March 2012 issue of British GQ.
Click here for Danny Wallace on chasing Charlie Sheen.
