(Original recording made in 1999)
24 years ago the New York Times published this short article about two brothers, Frederick and Steven Barthelme:
August 9, 1999
Frederick and Steven Barthelme, the two Mississippi writers who have shared an obsession for blackjack tables in the gambling palaces that straddle their state's Gulf Coast, now have a happy ending in the latest chapter of their personal lives.
Last week a Mississippi State Circuit Court judge dismissed charges against the two brothers, who had been accused of conspiring with a casino dealer to cheat at blackjack. The brothers hail from a family of writers and are both writing professors at the University of Southern Mississippi, in Hattiesburg. The charges against them were compelling in part because they came only weeks after the publication in 1997 of ''Bob the Gambler,'' a well-received novel by Frederick Barthelme, who has written 11 books and whose prose has been compared to that of Ernest Hemingway.
''We're delighted that the case is done with,'' Frederick Barthelme, 55, said yesterday in a telephone interview from his Hattiesburg home. ''If they had carefully studied their evidence in a timely way, then they would have never brought the indictment.''
His brother, Steven, 52, said the case had been hurtful. ''We've spent two years of being threatened with prosecution and jail,'' he said, also in a telephone interview from his home in Hattiesburg.
The brothers went on to publish this joint memoir about their adventures in the casinos. I recorded this interview with them shortly after their legal ordeals had finally ended.
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