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.

Louis L'Amour's THE DAYBREAKERS

The Daybreakers marks the point where the Sackett novels start to become Westerns, as Barnabas Sackett's latest round of descendants finally get tired of squabbling with lesser men in Tennessee and decide to strike out west to some farther, bluer mountains: the Rockies.

But first, New Mexico, newly added to the United States' territory and thus the target for arrogant jerk land speculators who think that the settlers of Spanish descent who have already been ranching there don't count as Americans -- don't count as people -- and so the land they've been working for a generation or three is actually up for grabs. Soon our Sackett boys, good lookin', sweet talkin' Orrin and our narrator-hero Tye ("the fastest gun alive"), meet up with the most arrogant jerk of them all, one Jonathan Pritts, whose surname should really end with a "ck" instead of "tts" if you know what I mean, but who also has a pretty blond daughter, Laura. Uh oh.

While Orrin is chasing Laura, who reminds Tye of a difficult horse he once knew, Tye meets up with a classy Spanish family, a grandfather and pretty granddaughter, Drusilla, whom Tye falls for almost as fast as Orrin fell for Laura. Uh oh again.

So conflict between the brothers seems inevitable as the Anglo newcomers and the Spanish landowners prepare to square off, but hey, these are Sacketts. And there is a lot more going on than just a land grab.

For on their way to meeting their lady loves, the Sackett boys join up with a cowboy outfit and hatch a plan to round up all the stray cattle that are wandering wild in Colorado, getting fat and juicy on mountain grass and clean water. And the leader of said outfit is an autodidact of sorts, Tom Sunday, who reads the Greek and Roman classics at night by the campfire and teaches Orrin and Tye how to read on similarly high-minded stuff that gives birth to ideas of making the West a civilized place where children can be raised safely and big D Democracy can flourish. What a guy!

Soon Orrin, already gifted with the gab and all the charisma you could care to call on, is dreaming big dreams about a future as a politician, little knowing that Tom's ambitions have always lay this way. Oops.

This is short, taut, tense story-telling at its best, but also its hokiest, which only adds to its charm. The Sackett family produce heroes of the kind that have become thoroughly unfashionable; there isn't a brooding anti-hero in the bunch. These guys are honest, forthright, capable, daring, brave, and romantic and loyal even when forces seem to conspire to drive a wedge between them. Both of them have to use their gifts of gab and gunfire to survive one fateful day when all that conflict comes to a head.

All in just 200-some pages. All because Orrin and Tye just wanted to do what these dudes did in this terrifyingly catchy but decidedly not cowboy song:

100 Books #104 - Louis L'Amour's SACKETT'S LAND

You've got to admire, or at least smile at, this founding document of the fictional Sackett dynasty, not only for its main character's, Barnabas Sackett's* minute consciousness of the fact that he is a founder of a dynasty, but for how he (again, very consciously) goes about doing so. For while, as his companion Jubain tells him early in the story "some of the great families of the world were founded with nothing but a sword and a strong right arm," Barnabas is all about establishing something other than just another coat of arms for his descendants to polish and admire and lord it over the neighbors over in Britain.

He knows there's more out there in the newly discovered Americas. And he's going to do something about that.

But first! I love that what really starts Barnabas moving towards Illustrious Ancestor status is the discovery of a small cache of ancient coins, which leads to the discovery of a small cadre of people who are devoted to acquiring and studying them. So thus L'Amour's fictional exploration of where the settlers who took over and exploited the American West came from is starting with people who are interested in exploring where they came from, all the way back to the pre-Roman Iceni.

I'm reminded a bit of Edward Rutherford, in a way, he of the 10,000 year story-line. But that's not really what L'Amour is up to. He, like Barnabas, is chiefly interested in the past as a springboard into the future; those coins Barnabas finds are worth a life-changing amount of money, which would make for a pretty interesting story right there, but it wouldn't really make for a L'Amour story, would it?

For a real plot-propeller, L'Amour turns to the good old angry aristocrat. The day Barnabas brings his coins to a local antiquarian enthusiast also winds up being the day he witnesses one doing something dumb in front of a pretty lady, and if there's one thing such types hate more than the Laughter of Women, its having witnesses when they provoke it. The fact that said aristocrat already has reason to hate Barnabas (unknown to Barnabas at the time) doesn't help.

Barnabas has to Get Out of Dodge. Which he does, though not in the way that he planned.

What I like best about Barnabas, and this first Sackett novel, is that this Big Damn Hero could very plainly accomplish his goals by following in his mercenary father's footsteps; Barnabas is "as strong as two men" and his father taught him every sword-fighting trick in the book.

But Barnabas is determined to succeed by his wits instead. Even if sometimes it seems a bit perverse of him to do so.

It's as if Jayne Cobb decided to knuckle down and master business administration. Who wouldn't want to read that? And who wouldn't want to know what happens next?

*And as a matter of fact, no, I was not, in fact, able to stop thinking of Barnabas Collins through this, and yes, kept expecting him to meet a vampire on his journeys. Why do you ask?

FGC #13 - Disturbance

The makeshift saloon in "downtown" Blacksand had seen better days -- and it was only a few months old. Already three chairs and two tables were smashed to firewood, if not to kindling, the one remaining hand-turned leg among them now serving as a club in the hands of the man who most, but not all, would later agree had started the fight.

"I said I don't know nothing about it," the man, bellowed. The chair leg made an audible whooshing sound as he missed his target. His opponent had seen the blow coming and taken an easy step back, even taking the time to spit to one side as the wood missed his jaw.

"I would never go so far as to accuse you of knowing anything," the spitting man, a drifter who claimed to have come through the settlement seeking employment,  said.

This insouciance just made the man with the club even angrier.

"Clinton Ellison Wayne, don't you bust up this place," a woman anxiously watching the developing brawl called out, reaching with one hand to grope blindly behind her for a whiskey bottle before it toppled over the cards the two men had so hastily abandoned.

"Who let that woman in here?" someone demanded over the sound of a punch finally connecting. “Is nowhere sacred?”

"Who let you in here?" The woman sipped daintily from her rescued prize.

"Get out of here before someone gets hurt!"

"I would say the same to you," the woman said, spinning around to fix the speaker with a severe and unfriendly squint. Her voice was very soft and very calm, which, had the object of her attention thought about it at all, would have signaled to him that he was in trouble.

"Donald, if you please," she said.

Without further ado, Donald and another dirty, muscled old-timer seized the loudmouth by the arms and hustled him out of the saloon.

"Mr. Johnston is going to hear about this, be assured," the woman called out after them. “Won’t he, boys?”

"Shore thing, Miss Louise," came a voice from the other side of the swinging doors.

"Oh, and clear out of the..."

The fight spilled abruptly out of doors on the heels of the ejection.

"Way..." the woman -- Miss Louise -- murmured. She sighed, set the bottle back down on the card table, and picked her way around the wreckage of the room's other furniture.

"I told grandpa he was a fool to open this place up like this," Louise said, dusting herself off and smiling at the man tending bar. "I suppose we'd best fetch him."

The bartender touched his hat and headed out the door, through which the sounds of fighting could still be heard.

Louise sighed, cast a long-suffering glance at the shambles left in the fight’s wake, and followed everyone else out of the building.

The action was nearly impossible to see, lost in clouds of dark dust that stung the eyes and coated the skin. The settlement of Blacksand had been founded to exploit a seam of coal near the surface that a degree promised prosperity as soon as the railroad came through this part of the territory. The handful of workers harvesting this bounty had come out on promises of minerals more lucrative than coal, but made do with what they found after no gold or silver turned up, gladly accepting Louise's grandfather's offers of employment when their own, often pitiful, resources ran out.

It was usually a peaceful town, the miners too tired after long shifts to cause much trouble and, Louise had to admit, too poorly paid to have much to cause trouble with.

Which was why Louise was making no great effort to break up the fight between Clinton and the newcomer whom even she suspected of having cheated at cards.

"You big dummies," she screamed into the dust. "You’re all in big, big trouble!"

"No you're not," a bystander told her.

"Is that a threat?"

"No, just... ain't you heard?"

"Heard what?"

"The Blacksand's on fire, ma'am."

***

"Oh god, it's true," Louise said, hat twisted up in her hands as she watched enormous clouds of black smoke billow forth from the air shaft where dozens of her grandfather's employees were gathered. "Does Grandpa know yet?"

"Oh, he knows," a miner said. He took a quick look at his hand, decided it was too filthy to put on Miss Louise's shoulder and ruin her pretty new blouse. She may wear britches, the miners said to each other, but she's still a lady.

Louise kept looking at the smoke. "He's down in it, isn't he?" she said. No emotion showed on her face or in her voice, but her hat was nearing irreparably crumpled, would have been torn to pieces if it were the kind of lacy bonnet most of her contemporaries favored.

"'Fraid so, miss."

"Trying to rescue his men."

"Weren't too many down there, at least."

"Thank god for that," she said, but she didn't sound especially thankful. "And what are we doing about it up here?"

"What can you do, miss? Wait for it to burn out, I reckon."

"That could take years, you fool! Do you know how much coal is down there? " Her laughter was brittle. She moved to approach the mine. This time the man standing next to her did reach out, filthy hands and all, to stop her. The shock of it brought her momentarily to her senses, but he held on to her as she surveyed the scene.

"They're not too deep down, are they? I've never... I've never been," she said.

"Naw, that seam's up purty close. Hundert feet or so, maybe two."

"We need a head count as soon as possible. We have to find out how many people are down there."

"Yer grandpaw said there was eight."

"Eight plus him makes nine," she corrected.

“Here come some!” someone shouted, and it was true. First one man, then another, and then what might be the rest stumbled out of the mine entrance, coughing, clutching their chests, tripping over sage brush. Then at last came two more.

Louise tore herself out of the miner's restraining arms and ran toward the shaft, from which the last man had just emerged. Louise flung her arms about him and all but lifted him off the ground.

“Let me go, girl!” Thomas Johnston was not a demonstrative man.

“You’re all right?”

“Of course I am.”

Louise was unwilling to let go of her grandfather completely, and escorted him from the mineshaft with a loving arm over his shoulders. Around her, the rest of the men who had nearly been trapped fell to the ground. One struggled mightily to breathe, coughing up huge gouts of sooty phlegm. Another seemed unconscious.

“How bad is it?”

“Bad. Whole damn mine is burning up.”

“Oh god, what are we going to do?”

“What can we do. Pray and plan and pack up.”

“What?” Louise stopped walking, stunned. It was not like him to give up.

“No, there has to be something. Suffocate it somehow…”

“We dug seven big ventilation shafts, girl,” her grandfather waved her off. “No. We’re done.”

They resumed walking away

“How did…?”

“It was that fool Sutton. Drunker’n a two-peckered billy goat and knocked over a lantern. Stupid ass can’t hold his firewater.”

Louise stopped short again, casting her eyes over the landscape. She tugged at her grandfather’s sleeve. “What did you say?”

“Can’t hold his firewater.”

“That’s it!” she let go and took several strides to the south on her own. Unktehi Creek was running bankful, swollen with spring runoff. Louise snapped her fingers. “That’s it! Hey, you guys, grab all the shovels you can. Pickaxes too.” She ran toward the water’s edge.

“The hell you on about?” her grandfather shouted.

“We’re going to put out the fire, grandpa. Come on, you bastards! Get over here.”

Her grandfather, still spry, ran coughing to her side.

“Just what the hell are you planning, young lady?”

“Look at all this water,” Louise said.

“Yeah, and?” there was a warning edge to her grandfather’s voice. He knew what she was thinking, just wanted her to say it.

“All we have to do is divert it.”

“And drown the mine? How will that make things better?”

“It will put the fire out, for starters. It will save all that coal.”

“By submerging it completely?”

“Well, yes, in the short run.”

“And the long. You think all that water will just go away once the fire’s out?”

“Shh. I’m thinking about that.”

“This is tomfoolery.”

“Walk with me, grandpa.”

Louise surveyed the banks, looking for a lower point, looking for a path. “We just have to dig a trench and divert some,” she said softly, distracted by her thoughts. “We don’t have to re-route the whole creek.”

“You dig a channel deep enough to let the water run, you’re getting the whole creek. Forever.”

“Not if it’s shallow enough. We just want a little of the extra runoff.”

“Louise, I love that you’re trying.”

“Don’t you patronize me.”

“I’m not. But it’s my mine and I’ll make the decisions. Where’s Powe? Powe! Get over here!” Obie Powe was the mining engineer Thomas had hired out of West Virginia the year before.”

“He’s still out cold, sir!” a man shouted from where the rest of the rescued were still gathered.

“Wake ‘im up and get ‘im over here!”

“Yes sir!”

“If he agrees with me, we’re doing this. Right?” Louise insisted.

“If he agrees with you, I’ll dig the damn trench myself. But!”

“But what? Your fortune’s going up in smoke.”

“It’s yours too, my dear, don’t forget that.”

“Grandfather!”

“Don’t you ‘grandfather’ me, girlie.”

“Sorry. But what’s your ‘but’?”

“But… you still haven’t told me how we’re gonna rescue the mine after we flood it.”

“I’m still thinking on that. And maybe Obie will have an idea too.”

From the chaos near the mine entrance came two men, one supporting the other’s weight. They were as filthy as Grandfather, coughing and covered in soot.

“You wanted me, sir?” Powe said, leaning heavily on his friend.

“Yes. You feeling better, boy?”

“I’ll live. Thanks for getting us out, sir. You saved all our lives. Still got a fine set of lungs on ya.”

“Well, look. My granddaughter here has an idea about putting the fire out.”

Powe cast a sour look at Louise. New to the operation, he’d still not learned to respect her or her opinions.

“Hear me out, Obie,” she said. “Look at the creek here.”

“Uh huh.”

“What if we dug a shallow trench, right about there,” she began, pointing, “And –“

“And what, flood the pit? Wait…” All the scorn had left Obie. “Wait, yes. If we keep it shallow and just get the overflow, yes, that could work.”

His look was one of awe.

“That’s our girl,” his partner, young Andrew Gardner, said proudly. “Almost as smart as her pappy.”

“Almost too smart for her own good,” her grandfather said. “And as crazy as her damn father.”

“Why would you say that?” Louise said. Her father had blown himself up excavating the very mine they were now trying to save.

“I apologize. But tell me, Powe. This damn idea of hers – any good?”

“Actually, yes, Mr. Johnston. Been did before.”

“Done,” Louise whispered.

“What was that?” her grandfather asked.

“Nothing.”

“But so, what do we do after?”

“Grandpa, I think I know…” Louise said. “You still got that Montgomery Wards catalog we got last month?”

“Some of it, yeah. What we haven’t wiped with yet.”

Louise made a face at this.

“Well, I think there was an ad in it…”

“It’s all ads, my girl. That’s what it’s for.”

“…For steam-driven pumps.”

Her grandfather began to laugh, quickly, nervously joined by Powe and Gardner.

“What? I’m serious.”

“Ho ho ho, I know you are, m’girl,” Thomas said, hugging her. “You’re brilliant. Isn’t she brilliant, Obie? Brilliant!”

“Was what I were fixin’ to suggest,” Obie said, spitting up a gob sooty phlegm.

“Well, what the hell are we standing around for?” Thomas demanded. “You lot, get your asses over her and get to diggin’. We’re burning daylight. And coal.”

*

They dug until dusk, starting from the edge of the nearest ventilation shaft and working toward the edge of the creek. The men who had been rescued were excused from this labor, all except for Sutton, who had been told he could either dig or find other employment.

The Johnston mine was the only employment – the only settlement of any kind – for a good hundred miles in either direction.

Louise stayed up far into the night, poring over the remains of the last Montgomery Wards catalog anyone had received with Obie Powe, figuring out how many pumps they would need and penning a letter to place the order.

“These should do us a treat,” Powe said. “And, to be honest, we should have had some on hand anyway. Vital equipment, for a mine like this, back east.”

“Back east, the water table is a few inches underground,” Thomas snapped from his bed at them. “I don’t know how you people get anything out of there.”

“Which is why you hired me,” Powe said.

“True.”

“Miss Louise, you’d make a fine engineer, if you was…”

“If I was a man?”

“Well, yes.”

“Times change, Mr. Powe. Times change.”

At dawn the next morning, Thomas Johnston roused his entire crew except for one badly injured man whom all suspected of having irrevocably singed his lungs – Thomas said later Shane Quenzer had been the last man out, had stayed behind to make sure there were no stragglers – and, true to his word, had grabbed a shovel himself.

No one protested when Louise, tall as a man and nearly as strong as some, joined in the effort.

By midday, the crew broke through the last crust of earth separating their trench from the creek. The last strokes of the pick were difficult and muddy, as the water gushed forth on its way to the mine.

By sundown, the thick black smoke that had poured nonstop from the mine entrance and its ventilation shafts had mostly changed to steam.

They had done it.

“Now we’ve just gotta wait for the Pony Express to send off our order, I reckon,” Powe said, standing with Thomas and Louise and admiring their handiwork.

“The hell we do. Sutton! Sutton!”

The woebedraggled miner had stayed close to his employer since the trouble had started.

“Sir?”

“Rest good, boy. You’re a-riding east in the morning.”

“Sir?”

“You’re not in Deadwood and mailing Miss Louise’s letter in three days time, you in a whole heap o’trouble, boy.”

“Yes sir. I’m sorry, sir.”

“You’ve said that about a thousand times already. Time to prove it.”

Sutton said nothing more and retired to the shack he shared with a dozen others.

“Now, grandfather,” Louise said sweetly. “About that stupid saloon of yours…”