Rick Harsch's THE MANIFOLD DESTINY OF EDDIE VEGAS

Did you ever wonder what kind of books our culture would have to enjoy if, instead of ho-hum Europe, the Old World, James Joyce had spent his expat years in the United States? Specifically the western United States? Specifically specifically the years when this part of the world still mostly belonged to its indigenous inhabitants and there were no railroads or interstate highways or even JC Penneys? Which, sure, that means Joyce would have needed access to a time machine, but I'm already deep in the realm of counterfactual conjecture here, so, why not?

But so anyway, did you ever wonder that? Because I think I have the answer. So, did you? Wonder that? No?

Oh dear. 

Well, anyway, I want to tell you about Rick Harsch's The Manifold Destiny of Eddie Vegas, a book that I've already mentioned twice on this here blog, which I was insanely excited to read while awaiting my copy but, yes, also dreading a bit because it's another maximalist  chonk of a novel that is only available in print. Meaning yep, another On-Dead-Tree-Despite-The-Pain read for Your Humble Blogger.

I first learned of the existence of this novel, of author Rick Harsch, and of the cult publishing phenomenon, corona/samizdat, when I saw a few BookTube videos about Philip Freedenberg's and Jeff Walton's America and the Cult of the Cactus Boots: A Diagnostic, which, on the most pathetic level of reality at least, is about what happens to a writer and illustrator while they are waiting for a copy of The Manifold Destiny of Eddie Vegas to get shipped to them from faraway Slovenia.

Which means I was expecting another heavy dose of crazy, extremely post-modern meta-fictional shenanigans. But that's not quite what I got.

Not that I am in any way disappointed by what I did get. Far from it!

Because this is not the quintessential American experience, for that is too grand a theme. This perhaps is the quintessential endangered American experience. Canada, Mexico, the entire south - that will define the American experience over time. This will all be seen as excrescence, rude corruption of being hyper-aware, vapid, utterly disconnected from enduring life. This America, this United States of, has been making last stands from the beginning, practicing the last stand until they get it right and finally can indeed stand for the last time. No, this scene here, this man and his undershirt oiling his gun before a silent television, this scene has nearly been perfected to extinction.

The Manifold Destiny of Eddie Vegas is a much more conventional narrative, more in the vein of, say, Cryptonomicon than of America and the Cult of the Cactus Boots or any of the other, weirder fare I tend to favor. Like Cryptonomicon, the narrative is more or less divided into two sections, taking place in different eras of history. We get a lot of background on some of one of our main characters' ancestors, who had colorful and thrilling adventures in the USA's frontier/Old West period (and one of whom was an Indigenous woman) in one narrative, while the other traces that character's, Donnie Garvin's, travels with his brand-new best friend, Drake Fondling, in early 21st century Europe and the United States, while also following a bit of Donnie's father's efforts to catch up with the duo. And since a decent amount of the novel takes place in and around good old Las Vegas, there's also more than a little bit of a more grounded/mundane Last Call here, too.

There now, I've mentioned two of my favorite, most fun reads of all time, so that must mean that Eddie Vegas* is fun, too, right? Well, yes and no. As I said, the narrative is pretty straightforward, even mundane, for all that at one point one of Eddie's ancestors gets lifted into the air and bodily flung at a grizzly bear, whether as a weapon or as a distraction doesn't really matter, and somehow survives to become one of Eddie's ancestors. But what one really reads this novel, and, I suspect, most of Harsch's work for, is the over-the-top wordplay. I have a lot of examples of this, and the text includes several lists that other reviewers have correctly categorized as "Rabelasian", but here are some passages that I marked with my little book darts (one of the pleasures I'd almost forgotten of reading a physical book that I own is using these cunning little tools) and then more or less just flipped to at random.

For instance, raw recruits looked at him and thought "Sure is rough out thar"; Douglas Stompett, Chief Factor and father figure for future factoti for a fee (fie!) (Foe of fumblers) and Friends of the Hudson's Bay Company...

And

On the walls of the spaces where the politics of his parents and their friends were diminished by upright plastered scorn were thematic reproductions, a Chinese room, a surrealist room, an impressionist room -- What of a childhood that renders Dali trite? a Dalit rite? a trolley ride, a trollop's rights, a flop all right, a polite oversight, a maggot white, a dollop bright, a scallop of shite, a pallette of, a mallet of... on the fucking head...

And

The Sick Man of Europe was such a healthy metaphor, diseased body parts still being sold off a century later, the moribund fellow fascinating in his decrepitude, shrinking as they do like healthy verdure under a too intense dry sun, the regimen of the new model of health was ignored until it was too late, the doctors all gone psychotic like any Freudian subject over-thrilled with the death of the other.

That last passage is from a whole chapter of profoundly insightful musings Harsch attributes to the character of Ethel Gravel, another of Eddie's formidable female forebears (I couldn't resist), a woman of profound historical imagination whom one might fear is going to waste in a still-backwater-ish Reno, Nevada of the early 20th century, but whose business acumen, general intelligence and indomitable will have assured her descendants' the kind of start in life that will allow sons to become dilettante scribes and professors who marry improbably named poets and have children whose own potential seems poised to be harnessed to ridiculous business ventures by heirs to mercenary company fortunes and oh, you just have to read this book to see all of the unlikely but compelling goings on. I haven't even begun to describe the compelling small figure of Nordgaard, or of Setif, or of Hermione, or of...

But as this all comes to an end, what The Manifold Destiny of Eddie Vegas is really about is just plain old love, especially that between a son and a father, against whose relationship the entire world has seemed to conspire but who have chosen to care about each other anyway, to share their thoughts and feelings in the least toxic example of masculinity I've encountered in this sort-of-genre of maximalist "Brodernism." Even if the hundreds of pages preceding the novel's satisfying denouement weren't as entertaining as they are, it would all be worth it just to enjoy this at the end. Bravo, Mr. Harsch. I'm already looking forward to my next read from you.

*Eddie Vegas is the name a character assumes in the novel, but we don't know which character takes on this alias until about halfway through. This adds the pleasing note of ambiguity that perfects many a book, in my opinion.