‘The Dice Man’ is a novel that in most possible universes would not have been finished and never published. But chance, ever busy, created a series of accidents in 1969-70 in Deia, Mallorca, which allowed a 222-page manuscript written over four years by an un-ambitious, unpublished 37-year-old college professor to be discovered and finished.
George Cockcroft a US College professor brought a group of students to Deia to be in the same zone as Robert Graves. Art and literature were the subjects studied, and Deia the experience in 1969 Mallorca.
At the time he was working on a story which would change his life. His novel was ‘The Dice Man’, the story of a psychiatrist who experiments with making life decisions based on the roll of a dice.
Luke Rhinehart was the name change as he pushed the manuscript out via friends (by the roll of the dice) he had made in Deia.
The course continued, plus his own family life in Deia. It was an idyllic summer by the sea with mis-adventures galore, including nearly drowning his whole family on their ill equipped boat.
The roll of the dice determined whether they should go back to the US or stay longer in Mallorca, the island they had found their connection to. ‘The Dice Man’ was accepted, published and at that point Luke Reinhardt’s live changed from a struggling academic and writer to being an overnight success.
The dice had begun rolling while he was a Human of Mallorca, and thereafter he credited his change of fortunes to being in tune with the creativity of the Island. He was a very successful Human of Mallorca.
The Dice Man has a cult following to this day and many pilgrims visit Deia to see where it all started. Luke Rhinehart died on 6th November 2020. His memory and all those dice choices live on, in a new generation.
Photo by Evening Standard/Hulton Archive/Getty Images
