| In Michaels' third Nachman story, we learn that the UCLA mathematician enjoys attending horse races -- apparently his only emotional outlet besides his mathematics research. There is discussion of the question of how much the outcome of the race depends on unpredictable chance events. Nachman believes that he has a statistics based system -- although it is not well formulated and is achieved largely subconsciously -- for selecting the winner which would work most of the time. Usually, he does not make his bets based on the system since he is not interested in money, but offers its advice to his troubled friend, a minister who is attending the race with his young daughter while his wife is in the hospital.
This story was published in Partisan Review 3/ 1999 VOL. LXVI NO. 3 and can be found in the collection Collected Stories of Leonard Michaels which appeared shortly after the author's death.
In addition, Arion Press published The Nachman Stories in a separate and very expensive book. |
