Glen David Gold

Carter Beats the Devil is a marvelous, rolicking, sometimes frightening novel set in Prohibition era San Francisco, mostly, with occasional jaunts across the country and the world. Carter is based on a real magician and the acts he and fellow magicians who make appearances in the book including Houdini are based on those performed at the time. Glen David Gould hinges the story around the death of Warren G. Harding and also manages to involve Philo Farnsworth who invented television. I loved it from beginning to end.… (altro)

You cannot blame Gold for lacking ambition: this novel attempts to sum up the state of America during the late 19-teens, and in doing so he goes off on narrative tangents that seem tenuously connected. The two major events portrayed here are the birth of the Hollywood film industry and America's entry into WWI; both are important in that they are the beginnings of the U.S. as the dominant military and cultural power in the world, a state that we have become accustomed to in the modern era. Some of the characters are drawn better than others: Charlie Chaplin's pathos, woman troubles and genius are on brilliant display. Others veer more towards caricature, especially Hugo Black, who seems to be written into the novel to present a staged meeting between insular American old money and the (literally) dying Russian aristocracy. Gold's themes are large and subtly disseminated throughout the novel - but he asks patience on the part of the reader to see the big picture in the books final pages.… (altro)