vega.org.uk has some nice videos thanks for the link.

I read Hoffman's book some time ago and found it interesting but a tad repetitious. A Google for the Atlantic Monthly article reveals a much tighter piece of writing. The video gives me a voice to put to the writing.

Video at 12:58 or so

"This is a man who had no home... all his possessions fit into one small suitcase and some plastic bag that he had from some shopping store in Budapest"

There is a core of sadness there. 2nd world war was rough on a whole generation of Europeans, and the writer George Perec exhibited similar frenetic activity and the use of arcane games to fend things off? Erdos's chosen game field was more useful of course.