Peter Doyle

by John Vernon

On St. Helena island in 1821 a mysterious doctor removes Napoleon Bonaparte’s penis from his corpse while in the next room his loyal lieutenants brag about their dead emperor’s merciless cruelty. Fifty years later the search for this itinerant appendage leads through Victorian London to ante-bellum New York, Amherst, Massachusetts, and finally Colorado Territory, dragging in its path a promiscuous mix of French counts, love-sick poets, dandies, shady antiquarians, utopian dreamers, con men, and a pieced-together homunculus named Bonnie. The French want to re-member their empire, the English relic-seekers wish to recover a valuable prize, and Bonnie wants to complete his diminutive body. Along the way, John Vernon corrects history’s mistake by arranging a meeting between the two great American poets, Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson. And Whitman’s friend, Peter Doyle, the dandified streetcar conductor at the center of it all, saves the lives of a family abducted by Indians with an ingenious use of Napoleon’s “dingus,” as he calls it. From the half-completed Brooklyn Bridge to Horace Greeley’s Union Colony in Colorado Territory to the Rocky Mountains and the canyons of the Green and Yampa rivers, this sprawling novel creates its own manifest destiny by mixing fact and fiction with shameless joy. Peter Doyle’s brand of speculative historical fiction corrects history’s minor errors while vividly describing its major ones.

Praise

“Vernon’s great virtue is his style–smart, marvelously specific, insightful both about large issues and small ones. The novel contains a wealth of fine sentences, and a wealth of sharply delineated objects. Reading it is rather like going into the world’s best and most fascinating antique store and watching everything, on every shelf, in every drawer, draped over every rack, be made new again. This is not a novel to be devoured, but to be browsed over and savored.” – Jane Smiley, The Boston Globe

“Peter Doyle is not just a novel, it’s a conjuration–a darkly comic, exciting, can’t-put-it-down, joyous chase of a book. Twisting and turning from history to fantasy, from picaresque to romance, from Europe to Colorado, this is a grand old stem-winder told with great zest, invention, and flair.” – Ron Hansen

“Vernon is a superb writer, and most of Peter Doyle is a thrill to read. Here is a funhouse-mirror distortion of American dreams, American eccentricities, and American tragedies, offered with sly purpose and cracked wisdom.” – The San Francisco Chronicle

“A magical mystery tour of the 1870s and ’80s, from a memorably squalid New York to the wide-open spaces of the Colorado Territory. . . . A furiously bubbling stew of all manner of ingredients, a grab bag stuffed to the bursting point with the real and the invented.” – Angela Carter, The New York Times Book Review

Genres: Fiction

417 pages, Kindle Edition

First published April 23, 1991

Reviews

[Jon Walgren · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very twisted, odd, complex, hard to follow book but things all come together if one doesn't give up. I nearly gave it 5 stars as Vernon is a fine writer.

Enjoy and learn.

[Carl R. · Rating 5 out of 5]

Every once in a while, the cliché goes, a work comes along … Actually, Peter Doyle is not the work for the ages that introduction migt imply, but it’s a terrific historical novel and deserves to be better known and more widely read. I mean, who else has done all these things in a single work: Written a book centering around a penis purloined from Napoleon Bonaparte’s corpse? Taken the reader from St. Helena, 1821 to Colorado Territory, 1886? Given us Emily Dickinson in drag? Brought Emily and Walt Whitman together in the same room (well, hallway)? And there’s more, believe me, a lot more.
In addition to the purloined penis, there’s a pivotal secret in the book, one that’s not revealed till very late, the kind of secret that I often object to because I feel manipulated by writers who hold back for effect what characters would undoubtedly have pondered in the thoughts we have been immersed in for pages and pages. But Vernon pulls it off. You find out, and you say, of course why didn’t I see that before? Or maybe you’re smarter than I am and already suspect it and have your suspicions confirmed. Either way, it’s blockbuster, changes the whole tale and aligns everything in an instant.
And if these virtues weren’t enough, there are the voices and the language. A New Yorker article by James Wood recently described how Richard Price elevates ghetto language to a kind of poetry that is both of and outside of the street language of his characters. So, too, has Vernon transcended his historical period and his historical characters’ voices with a language that evokes authenticity but is all his own. Or all Peter Doyle’s own. Here are some examples drawn rather hastily. There are probably better, but let these serve:
You could bicker with Josie to lick creation without pulling even.

[From an E. Dickinson letter. Punctuation is as printed in the book.] How do most people live without any thoughts. Tell me, Mr. Whitman. There are many people in the World, you must have noticed a few in the Street. How do they live. How do they find the strength to put on their Clothes in the morning. I cannot say myself myself.

Walt had to stop and stand there to let his mind slowly fill back up while people skirted his rooted bulk as they would any inconvenient obstacle.

[from a WW conversation] “I’m still cheery, though badly whacked. I’m like a tree with the chief limbs gone.”

[Pete] had always known when to fly off, and just what opportunities to cling to.

Sometimes the wind blew right through her body and … she realized how much she cherished her own vile impurities, hugged them protectively.

Taken all in all, this is quite a package, full of language both boisterous and fine, of adventure, surprises, history, and characters so well-drawn there’s nothing for it but to love them. And to love Peter Doyle.

[fyn · Rating 3 out of 5]

*3.25
This was fun but also extremely freaking weird?? It got really tedious towards the middle, because it followed so many characters, which most of the time seemed insignificant or just plain boring. I loved the Emily section though!! +.25 for all of the underlying and also overflowing gayness throughout, especially towards the end; that saved the whole story for me.

[Will · Rating 2 out of 5]

Hard to read, disjointed, not believable as historical fiction