Heyday

So here’s the thing about this book. I have no idea what it was about. Wait, I remember what it was about. It was about something… something… uh, think it was early America or something like that, maybe these people were early Americans, or maybe they came from Europe, possibly Americans in Europe who came back to America, I really can’t remember. It’s, oh, wait, it was gold rush time! I remember that. They wanted gold. I think they panned for it. No, they dug for it. No, they panned. They definitely panned. Yeah, that’s it. I’m sure of that. And they made their own little community, some sort of Utopia-commune-thing, but that was after mostly everybody died. And then I think everybody else died. Maybe not the last person. Uh, somebody had to live, right… somebody was telling the story… no, that was just an omniscient narrator, never mind. Everybody died.

So just to clarify, I hated this book. It was ridiculous. It was silly. It was stupid. I will give the author kudos for one thing, however. He really did his research on the time period. He definitely knew who all the major players at the time were. In fact, he knew them so well that he made sure his main characters ran into each and every one of them. Never (since Forrest Gump) have I met an entire cast of characters that was so lucky as to run into every famous contemporary on the globe. (And just for the record, Forrest Gump did it better.) Don’t believe me? Here’s a short and incomplete list of mid-century celebrities that our heroes (who all die, I don’t even feel guilty about spoiling that) encounter:

1. Charles Darwin (who apparently suffers from a severe case of indifferent flatulence)
2. Mr. Proctor (of Proctor and Gamble fame)
3. Cassius Clay (the first one)
4. Robert E. Lee (20 years before the war)
5. Stephen Foster (who conveniently hears them mention something about coming around the mountain)
6. John Deere (really?)
7. Noah Donner (a convenient survivor)
8. Joseph Smith
9. John Jacob Astor (thought he drowned)
10. William Tecumseh Sherman (I repeat… really?)
11. Prince Albert (sigh)
12. Brigham Young
13. Edgar Allen Poe (who initialized the Big Bang theory, did you know?)
14. Kit Carson
15. Allan Pinkerton
16. Horace Greely
17. John Charles Fremont
18. Abraham Lincoln (yep, just hanging out in a bar)
19. William Herndon (sharing a drink)
20. Charles Dickens
21. Walt Whitman
22. Alexis D. Toqueville
23. James Sheridan Knowles (look him up)

…And that’s all I can remember off the top of my head, and let’s all remember one thing: I have a very bad memory. So my hat’s off to the author. Congratulations on elevating your ridiculous, time-wasting story into a completely unbelievable piece of tripe. I look forward to ignoring your next literary installment. But not really.