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The Manifold Destiny of Eddie Vegas
"Rick Harsch told me that for The Manifold Destiny of Eddie Vegas, he reached into a bag of tricks left in a closet in Brussels by forgotten literary masters, and as the punning title might suggest, he attempts no less—and much more—than to come to grips with what empire has wrought, and how over the recent two centuries the United States rose to global economic mastery and nuclear proliferate madhouse. A serious tome indeed, with serious purpose, to the delight of the reader Harsch recognizes that seldom do tricks accomplish their purpose without humor—thus he is able to render the story of Hugh Glass and the grizzly (his manuscript preceded the DiCaprio film) with dark humor and quotidian accuracy yielding what meaning of that story was absent from the film even as the location has been moved 1500 miles westward. Yet Harsch plays no tricks with time: his modern characters are modern and his historical rendering of their ancestors slot into their proper niches in historical time, vividly lit within historically corrective tales running from the days of the mountain man right up to those of nuclear testing, down the Oregon Trail, with the gold rush, into the nuclear age, Vietnam, and even Blackwater—or, in this novel, Blackguard, the CEO of which is Mandrake Winchester Fondling, father of Drake Fondling the second, friend of Donnie Garvin, the two of whom dash off to Brussels much in the manner of Bardamu joining WWI at the beginning of Celine’s masterpiece. Heedless of the history hurrying their fates, they befriend the artist/bartender Setif, whose role in the story may be no more than to suggest what Harsch calls ‘an adamantine luminescence of the sane and the good buried beneath the degradations of time and the humans who keep track of it’. Their return to the United States is as if the fording of a stream across stones of history: Fallujah, Twin Towers, Assassinations, and the familial dysphagia that bedevils the themes of US literature.
My favorite of Harsch’s tricks are the Rabelaisian lists, for this novel may be above all a gift from one lover of language to all literary lovers of language, and the shock upon realizing the meaning of the lists—where the surreal, the hypermodern, and the mundane finally meet in an equation of horror—is jarring enough to elicit guilt in the most innocent reader. Meanwhile, this book is a romp, a romp through history and the present, story after story told in the jargon of the mountain man of the old west, the Indians, the coal miners, the Joycean—at times, at others the clochard—narrator, the anonymous songsters of the old west, the tycoons of past and present, and one madman montagnard, the mysterious midget Nordgaard. Throughout, all registers are reached, the reader finding where known legends are unknowable, where the wild Joaquin Murriata and the first Nevada lawman—shot six times only to survive—intersect, and what veins of story lead us to the present, where the logic and illogic of rapine dust off the irradiated dust to find that the inevitably violent and absurd have remained as complicit and inseparable as horse and rider, rider and horse."
- Klaus Hauser, Stuttgart, for River Boat Books.
An excerpt from the novel: “This hell began with vast stretches of woodlands host to vermin of all manner, including preternaturally giant hirsutes suchlike as bears and wolves, and small aerial pests including bees, biting flies, mosquitoes, and flying stinging ants. The psychological hell would set upon him in the form of large docile creatures such as elk, deer, goats, and even fish that would all appear close and real and transmogrify into phantasms that vanish before the feckless hunting forays of a starving man. There would be berries aplenty and they would taste fresh and they would burst with elixir upon bite, juice dampening Hector’s beard—but after a week they would come to resemble tree bark at first tongue touch, fierce with the redolence of possum piss. There would be possum piss but not sighting of possum and certain digitigrade carnivores as the ferocious sagonku (such a delicacy as would never be known back east and as far as Europe if you knew just how they roast) that would be difficult enough to elude when they drygulched you as they tended, the more so when the victim be a limper, and worst of all they et what they tore off of flesh and left with a sarcophery of stink spray that etched into the skin and remained to remind of the assault for weeks, all of which is to say that in beaver rich riverine forest why would not a man unfamiliar with said beaver find them to be the most nervewrasslin of all, the monstrous teeth, what they did to trees, the construction evidence of a great intelligence, especially once an Injun or two convinced ya that maybe Injuns are smarter than ye, in which case, and considering the implacable fleshungry sagonku, what did beavers eat and were them not bones crossed at the apex of them midstream huts where they could hi...
My favorite of Harsch’s tricks are the Rabelaisian lists, for this novel may be above all a gift from one lover of language to all literary lovers of language, and the shock upon realizing the meaning of the lists—where the surreal, the hypermodern, and the mundane finally meet in an equation of horror—is jarring enough to elicit guilt in the most innocent reader. Meanwhile, this book is a romp, a romp through history and the present, story after story told in the jargon of the mountain man of the old west, the Indians, the coal miners, the Joycean—at times, at others the clochard—narrator, the anonymous songsters of the old west, the tycoons of past and present, and one madman montagnard, the mysterious midget Nordgaard. Throughout, all registers are reached, the reader finding where known legends are unknowable, where the wild Joaquin Murriata and the first Nevada lawman—shot six times only to survive—intersect, and what veins of story lead us to the present, where the logic and illogic of rapine dust off the irradiated dust to find that the inevitably violent and absurd have remained as complicit and inseparable as horse and rider, rider and horse."
- Klaus Hauser, Stuttgart, for River Boat Books.
An excerpt from the novel: “This hell began with vast stretches of woodlands host to vermin of all manner, including preternaturally giant hirsutes suchlike as bears and wolves, and small aerial pests including bees, biting flies, mosquitoes, and flying stinging ants. The psychological hell would set upon him in the form of large docile creatures such as elk, deer, goats, and even fish that would all appear close and real and transmogrify into phantasms that vanish before the feckless hunting forays of a starving man. There would be berries aplenty and they would taste fresh and they would burst with elixir upon bite, juice dampening Hector’s beard—but after a week they would come to resemble tree bark at first tongue touch, fierce with the redolence of possum piss. There would be possum piss but not sighting of possum and certain digitigrade carnivores as the ferocious sagonku (such a delicacy as would never be known back east and as far as Europe if you knew just how they roast) that would be difficult enough to elude when they drygulched you as they tended, the more so when the victim be a limper, and worst of all they et what they tore off of flesh and left with a sarcophery of stink spray that etched into the skin and remained to remind of the assault for weeks, all of which is to say that in beaver rich riverine forest why would not a man unfamiliar with said beaver find them to be the most nervewrasslin of all, the monstrous teeth, what they did to trees, the construction evidence of a great intelligence, especially once an Injun or two convinced ya that maybe Injuns are smarter than ye, in which case, and considering the implacable fleshungry sagonku, what did beavers eat and were them not bones crossed at the apex of them midstream huts where they could hi...
718 pages, Paperback
Published October 26, 2019
13 people are currently reading
969 people want to read
About the author
Rick Harsch
21 books295 followersPublisher, chief editor of corona\samizdat press; Izola, Slovenia....www.corona\samizdat press; rick.harsch@gmail.com
The Manifold Destiny of Eddie Vegas, a novel;
and
Walk Like a Duck, a Season of Little League Baseball in Italy
As of April 24, 2020, these two books are available in a world edition from corona/samizdat, as explained in the following youtube video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z4JUl...
I have finished a two volume anthological novel, The Assassination of Olof Palme, a an anthological novel, which involves the contributions of at least 50 writers from about 20 countries, and extracts the fungus of the Reagan years, montagerates the murderous manners of secretive Nato/CIA folk in Post WWII Europe, particularly in Italy and France, pays some attention to the Assassination of Olof Palme, while exploring a sort of alternative notion of the autobiographical novel and putting an end to proofreading.
Skulls of Istria, published by River Boat Books, June 26, 2018
Not available on Amazon, only direct from:
http://www.riverboatbooks.com/our-books
Voices After Evelyn was published by Maintenance Ends Press, the Avant Garde wing of Ice Cube Press, in November of 2018
This novel is available at 19.95, from http://www.icecubepress.com/
Author of three novels published by Steerforth press:
The Driftless Zone
Billy Verite
The Sleep of Aborigines
[The Driftless Trilogy]
These three were published in translation in France, two were subsequently chosen for mass market publication and I received a copy of each before the press went bankrupt.
Author of a chapter in Creative Nonfiction's Anatomy of Baseball, prefaced by Yogi Berra.
Living now in Slovenia, where Amalietti&Amalietti of Ljubljana has published:
Several of my own novels have now been published by corona\samizdat, along with works by
Chandler Brossard
David Vardeman
Vesna Radić
Jeff Bursey
Bori Praper,
and coming soon
WD Clarke
Joao Reis
Mark Douglas
Phillip Freedenberg (with Jeff Walton)
Jomme Keller
Giuliano Vivaldi (with a co-translator)
Roberto Alt
Prasenjit Gupta
Zachary Tanner
and more
Arjun and the Good Snake (memoir)
and, in Slovene:
Arjun in dobra kača
and the novels:
Kramberger z opico (Kramberger with Monkey)
Adriatica Deserta
Istrske Lobanje (The Skulls of Istria)
2019:the novel Voices after Evelyn by a new imprint of Ice Cube Press (Iowa)
here is a review by Chris Via: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NISsr...
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April 8, 2023Original video review: https://youtu.be/ngVSNv69LM8
Written review: https://www.thisissplice.co.uk/2020/0...
Rereading Eddie Vegas video review: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LCGjd...
Written review: https://www.thisissplice.co.uk/2020/0...
Rereading Eddie Vegas video review: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LCGjd...
July 11, 2024
Do you like Joyce, Beckett, Gaddis, Broch, Pynchon, DFW, Nádas, Bolaño, DeLillo, Proust, and all the rest? Are you a fan of the Dalkey Archive? Then you will not like this book, because it is terrible; a fifth-rate imitation of far better authors, packaged into the non-existent 'genre' of 'big postmodern novels' that so many folks on GR seem to think exists.
I sincerely don't know why I'm bothering to write this, but to anyone who has stumbled across this book's URL, please do not spend money on it, and keep in mind that all the positive reviews are from accounts that have 1-2 reviews total (i.e. these aren't real reviews) and/or from what appear to be friends of the author, one of many tiny subcultures of terrible 'experimental' authors on GR who constantly plug each other's mediocre work, writing overwrought 5-star reviews on each other's author pages -- it reminds me of the hordes of amateurish Bandcamp musicians or Flickr photographers who do the same thing, giving each other positive reviews and then wondering why no one actually purchases or enjoys their work. There's just something so enervating and faintly depressing about it.
But wait, did you know that Rick Harsch attended the Iowa Writer's Workshop (as did many hundreds of other writers you've never heard of)? Did you know that he somehow convinced Steven Moore -- who will write a positive blurb for literally any human being who has visited the state of Iowa at any point in the past five decades -- to write an ambiguously semi-positive blurb for his terrible book? Of course, no one on earth gives a shit about these two facts, but I know them simply because this super-serious author, Rick Harsch, sent me a five-paragraph email on GR whining about my one-star review . . . ?! Honestly one of the oddest/funniest things I've ever seen on this website.
Am I being a little mean here? Maybe! Could I be wrong? I've read 3,000+ novels and would say I have a pretty good sense of what high-quality literature is, but, yes, absolutely, I could be wrong.
But ffs, someone needs to write an honest review; if you don't believe me, just read some excerpts here. If you can get through even one of these passages and think to yourself, "man, I want to spend actual money on a 700-page physical version of this!," then by all means, buy the book.
I sincerely don't know why I'm bothering to write this, but to anyone who has stumbled across this book's URL, please do not spend money on it, and keep in mind that all the positive reviews are from accounts that have 1-2 reviews total (i.e. these aren't real reviews) and/or from what appear to be friends of the author, one of many tiny subcultures of terrible 'experimental' authors on GR who constantly plug each other's mediocre work, writing overwrought 5-star reviews on each other's author pages -- it reminds me of the hordes of amateurish Bandcamp musicians or Flickr photographers who do the same thing, giving each other positive reviews and then wondering why no one actually purchases or enjoys their work. There's just something so enervating and faintly depressing about it.
But wait, did you know that Rick Harsch attended the Iowa Writer's Workshop (as did many hundreds of other writers you've never heard of)? Did you know that he somehow convinced Steven Moore -- who will write a positive blurb for literally any human being who has visited the state of Iowa at any point in the past five decades -- to write an ambiguously semi-positive blurb for his terrible book? Of course, no one on earth gives a shit about these two facts, but I know them simply because this super-serious author, Rick Harsch, sent me a five-paragraph email on GR whining about my one-star review . . . ?! Honestly one of the oddest/funniest things I've ever seen on this website.
Am I being a little mean here? Maybe! Could I be wrong? I've read 3,000+ novels and would say I have a pretty good sense of what high-quality literature is, but, yes, absolutely, I could be wrong.
But ffs, someone needs to write an honest review; if you don't believe me, just read some excerpts here. If you can get through even one of these passages and think to yourself, "man, I want to spend actual money on a 700-page physical version of this!," then by all means, buy the book.
May 25, 2021
The desert tries to impress it absences on you, but it is full, dry but ripe.
Perhaps I rushed when I should have paused? There is a simmering notion that I would have enjoyed this more if I could have read it over 2-3 days rather than a week. Late in the novel a character contemplates not the difference but perhaps the distance between the jejune and the banal, especially to those who've run aground on the terra firma of the Estados Unidos, albeit with the proper documentation. I find myself in a similar quandary.
This is novel of parallel narratives but within the contemporary timeline it quickly becomes one of oblique perspectives, almost cubist and there's an early theme of Picasso which becomes questionable and perhaps uncomfortable. Think Sorrentino on the former and try not imagine the latter.
It is the historical thread which I found fascinating, a genealogical fault-line running across the North American West like Against the Day but within Vollman's forests with the staccato delivery of Dos Passos. The characters Hector and Rowor are fascinating and it is within each that an alchemy of language does occur. The contemporary asides feel like boasting. What happens then/now? Two guys meet while gambling and decide to go to Brussels. Why would they go there? Braudel and the menace of Global Jihadis. That sounds simple enough, right? They drink beer and repeatedly watch images of the attack on the World Trade Center. (who doesn't?) They meet a quick witted bar maiden and matters then shift back to the US, back to the west, back to the 'Merican Moloch of Las Vegas. House rules prevail and this amounts to graphic depictions of counter insurgency in Vietnam and Iraq. There are also poetic discussions of the use of drones. Punctuating it all is a family saga, one which bifurcates to include another clan, another rise and fall of peckerwood destiny. All of this carnage is but a treatment of legacy, the exact etiology as elusive as a rattlesnake or overland escape and evasion when the fuel gauge is broken.
4.25 stars. I will definitely seek out and read the other work by Harsch.
Perhaps I rushed when I should have paused? There is a simmering notion that I would have enjoyed this more if I could have read it over 2-3 days rather than a week. Late in the novel a character contemplates not the difference but perhaps the distance between the jejune and the banal, especially to those who've run aground on the terra firma of the Estados Unidos, albeit with the proper documentation. I find myself in a similar quandary.
This is novel of parallel narratives but within the contemporary timeline it quickly becomes one of oblique perspectives, almost cubist and there's an early theme of Picasso which becomes questionable and perhaps uncomfortable. Think Sorrentino on the former and try not imagine the latter.
It is the historical thread which I found fascinating, a genealogical fault-line running across the North American West like Against the Day but within Vollman's forests with the staccato delivery of Dos Passos. The characters Hector and Rowor are fascinating and it is within each that an alchemy of language does occur. The contemporary asides feel like boasting. What happens then/now? Two guys meet while gambling and decide to go to Brussels. Why would they go there? Braudel and the menace of Global Jihadis. That sounds simple enough, right? They drink beer and repeatedly watch images of the attack on the World Trade Center. (who doesn't?) They meet a quick witted bar maiden and matters then shift back to the US, back to the west, back to the 'Merican Moloch of Las Vegas. House rules prevail and this amounts to graphic depictions of counter insurgency in Vietnam and Iraq. There are also poetic discussions of the use of drones. Punctuating it all is a family saga, one which bifurcates to include another clan, another rise and fall of peckerwood destiny. All of this carnage is but a treatment of legacy, the exact etiology as elusive as a rattlesnake or overland escape and evasion when the fuel gauge is broken.
4.25 stars. I will definitely seek out and read the other work by Harsch.
November 6, 2019
If this book had been published in 1960, we would all know about it by now. "Manifold Destiny" would be a catch-phrase justification for our monstropolis steamroller of a country.
Combining an astonishing range of styles, a magisterial voice, operatic reverence, elegant tone variance, and predominantly satirical, cynical, jaded, darkly comic, acerbic, and comedic characters, this tome draws fair comparisons with David Foster child Wallace.
Composed of shifting viewpoints interwoven with parallel narratives - a rough outline of the riverine vortices you will encounter might look like this:
Hector Robitaille versus Old Ephraim. Approximately 1840 on the American frontier.
Donnie & Drake in Brussels and stateside, their gambols and gambles. 8 generations removed from Hector's timeline.
Garvin/ Gravel/ Eddie - 1 generation behind the teen pseudo-protags.
Setif's imperative feminine perspective in a male-dominated society.
Nordgaard's Vietnam tale within a tale, contemporaneous, but drilling through multiple narratives.
Author’s asides - breaking the 4th wall.
Harsch's multi-layered language and surgical word choices will constantly outwit you. The prose is peppered with puns and alive with alliteration. This is a no-holds-bard, creme de la crop, onomatopoeic, virtuosic performance. There is no parody or imitation, no reliance on cliche or cheap gimmicks, except perhaps for a single exception in the loving homages to Rabelais in the form of whimsical lists. Not a tired phrase in sight, no strained eloquence, but only practical, improvisational riffing, which in its accumulated convolutions and fluttering depths assumes layers of lyrical immanence.
You get intertextual arrangements, traditional Western songs, and bawdy ramblings, symphonic narration, dreamlike languor, and precise observations, along with sentences as courageous as landslides, and the convincing plot is always marching into vast horizons of meaning, leaving you parched on the precipice of awe.
Not to mention the meta-fictional moments, some of the most creative and elaborate strings of curses I’ve ever encountered, a breadth of erudition to place this book in the first class of American literature, and a lyrical fluency on par with Lowry's Under the Volcano. Plus, as if that isn't enough, character descriptions so jaw-dropping, they actually stand out in the constant poetic fireworks display.
Luckily, amid the disenchantment, slaughter and rapine, there is loving humor and spiteful candor. The cruelty of our human frailty leaves little room for solace in the relentlessly advancing, increasingly heartless universe.
Do you like literary puzzle of the level of Infinite Jest's subliminal world building, but more approachable, horripilating narration, and characters with a wider scope and relation to society? This novel coordinates its intricate, complex, dense, Ivy League prose, infusing it with luscious imagery, lascivious charm, and wry, pithy one-liners and palindromes, luxuriant and serpentine descriptions, compounding philosophies, and atmosphere to stagger the imagination and ensorcel the senses. It is a hallucinogenic tour de force that reinvents language, with inspiring, spiraling irreverence, that encapsulates the bleak aura of our shameful and shameless history, but isn’t devoid of compassion. Beware the seamlessly blent portmanteau words and regional dialect. They require a double-take, but are appreciated upon reflection. It's a memorable ride, so fast and loose and smooth you’ll feel lashed and used and moved.
Pay particular attention to:
Drake and Donnie’s encounter with Setif’s ex’s gang resulting in a display worthy of their ancestors.
Hector's encounter with the snake versus Eddie's encounter with the snake, and what each reveals about the characters.
How the omniscient narrator skip-traces through each generation.
How Hector’s Odyssey is reminiscent of Crusoe’s solo survival. It is a declarative master class on how to describe character interactions with their environment
Don't miss Easter eggs in the chapter titles and puns in the character names.
Prepare for tall tales, a grizzly affair or two, a very scary midget, multi-generational bloodthirsty feuds, disillusioned gunslingers and rapacious claim-jumpers, landmines and their accompanying human potpourri, and literary devices juggled like a circus performer adding bowling pins until you lose count.
This is Gold Rush country, even in the modern age, full of slurs, slants & baggy pants, home of the free built upon the graves of the braves. What is the expense of our freedoms? What is the cost of its preservation? "Empires carry the seeds of their own destruction." The mythic force of human desire does not counteract our animalistic nature. Our ancestors are inescapable, no matter how estranged we think we are.
What's left is clarity and consistent invention, the force of a great raconteur, historical and microcosmic details, bravado, and bold humor around every turn. Some sentences are polished to the atomic level and others erupt like a widening whirlpool of malleable lava.
Desolate and teeming, this book discusses how hardship and struggle echo through time and across landscapes, touches families and dissolve loves. Inhabiting a skewed and tilted reality, it is about fathership above all - of children, of a name, of a nation, of a legend, of a disaster, and of a godless destiny. The steel-girt profunditties, the growling, prowling, scowling, howling, simply lovely writing, the phantasmagloric rabblearousing, un-pandering, double, no triple, entendre-ing, and tongue-in-cheek full-of-our-babies-merry-go-round-on-fire harsch dose of Reality qualify The Manifold Destiny of Eddie Vegas as a bonified masterpiece.
Now to end with a handful of my favorite quotes from the book:
"The land shapes a man's destiny, however appallingly insignificant."
"A full fed feller with a full-fledged fire."
"Solitude maketh of man many an oddity."
"You just aren't self-aware enough to be aware of other selves."
"My decision is flannel."
"The desert tries to impress it absences on you, but it is full, dry but ripe."
"On bad days I am at least four decades shabbier than Eastern Europe."
Combining an astonishing range of styles, a magisterial voice, operatic reverence, elegant tone variance, and predominantly satirical, cynical, jaded, darkly comic, acerbic, and comedic characters, this tome draws fair comparisons with David Foster child Wallace.
Composed of shifting viewpoints interwoven with parallel narratives - a rough outline of the riverine vortices you will encounter might look like this:
Hector Robitaille versus Old Ephraim. Approximately 1840 on the American frontier.
Donnie & Drake in Brussels and stateside, their gambols and gambles. 8 generations removed from Hector's timeline.
Garvin/ Gravel/ Eddie - 1 generation behind the teen pseudo-protags.
Setif's imperative feminine perspective in a male-dominated society.
Nordgaard's Vietnam tale within a tale, contemporaneous, but drilling through multiple narratives.
Author’s asides - breaking the 4th wall.
Harsch's multi-layered language and surgical word choices will constantly outwit you. The prose is peppered with puns and alive with alliteration. This is a no-holds-bard, creme de la crop, onomatopoeic, virtuosic performance. There is no parody or imitation, no reliance on cliche or cheap gimmicks, except perhaps for a single exception in the loving homages to Rabelais in the form of whimsical lists. Not a tired phrase in sight, no strained eloquence, but only practical, improvisational riffing, which in its accumulated convolutions and fluttering depths assumes layers of lyrical immanence.
You get intertextual arrangements, traditional Western songs, and bawdy ramblings, symphonic narration, dreamlike languor, and precise observations, along with sentences as courageous as landslides, and the convincing plot is always marching into vast horizons of meaning, leaving you parched on the precipice of awe.
Not to mention the meta-fictional moments, some of the most creative and elaborate strings of curses I’ve ever encountered, a breadth of erudition to place this book in the first class of American literature, and a lyrical fluency on par with Lowry's Under the Volcano. Plus, as if that isn't enough, character descriptions so jaw-dropping, they actually stand out in the constant poetic fireworks display.
Luckily, amid the disenchantment, slaughter and rapine, there is loving humor and spiteful candor. The cruelty of our human frailty leaves little room for solace in the relentlessly advancing, increasingly heartless universe.
Do you like literary puzzle of the level of Infinite Jest's subliminal world building, but more approachable, horripilating narration, and characters with a wider scope and relation to society? This novel coordinates its intricate, complex, dense, Ivy League prose, infusing it with luscious imagery, lascivious charm, and wry, pithy one-liners and palindromes, luxuriant and serpentine descriptions, compounding philosophies, and atmosphere to stagger the imagination and ensorcel the senses. It is a hallucinogenic tour de force that reinvents language, with inspiring, spiraling irreverence, that encapsulates the bleak aura of our shameful and shameless history, but isn’t devoid of compassion. Beware the seamlessly blent portmanteau words and regional dialect. They require a double-take, but are appreciated upon reflection. It's a memorable ride, so fast and loose and smooth you’ll feel lashed and used and moved.
Pay particular attention to:
Drake and Donnie’s encounter with Setif’s ex’s gang resulting in a display worthy of their ancestors.
Hector's encounter with the snake versus Eddie's encounter with the snake, and what each reveals about the characters.
How the omniscient narrator skip-traces through each generation.
How Hector’s Odyssey is reminiscent of Crusoe’s solo survival. It is a declarative master class on how to describe character interactions with their environment
Don't miss Easter eggs in the chapter titles and puns in the character names.
Prepare for tall tales, a grizzly affair or two, a very scary midget, multi-generational bloodthirsty feuds, disillusioned gunslingers and rapacious claim-jumpers, landmines and their accompanying human potpourri, and literary devices juggled like a circus performer adding bowling pins until you lose count.
This is Gold Rush country, even in the modern age, full of slurs, slants & baggy pants, home of the free built upon the graves of the braves. What is the expense of our freedoms? What is the cost of its preservation? "Empires carry the seeds of their own destruction." The mythic force of human desire does not counteract our animalistic nature. Our ancestors are inescapable, no matter how estranged we think we are.
What's left is clarity and consistent invention, the force of a great raconteur, historical and microcosmic details, bravado, and bold humor around every turn. Some sentences are polished to the atomic level and others erupt like a widening whirlpool of malleable lava.
Desolate and teeming, this book discusses how hardship and struggle echo through time and across landscapes, touches families and dissolve loves. Inhabiting a skewed and tilted reality, it is about fathership above all - of children, of a name, of a nation, of a legend, of a disaster, and of a godless destiny. The steel-girt profunditties, the growling, prowling, scowling, howling, simply lovely writing, the phantasmagloric rabblearousing, un-pandering, double, no triple, entendre-ing, and tongue-in-cheek full-of-our-babies-merry-go-round-on-fire harsch dose of Reality qualify The Manifold Destiny of Eddie Vegas as a bonified masterpiece.
Now to end with a handful of my favorite quotes from the book:
"The land shapes a man's destiny, however appallingly insignificant."
"A full fed feller with a full-fledged fire."
"Solitude maketh of man many an oddity."
"You just aren't self-aware enough to be aware of other selves."
"My decision is flannel."
"The desert tries to impress it absences on you, but it is full, dry but ripe."
"On bad days I am at least four decades shabbier than Eastern Europe."
Want to read
May 1, 2020The River Boat Books edition did not become a book. There is only one published edition of this book, by corona/samizdat. For details, contact rick harsch here or at rick.harsch@gmail.com
October 1, 2021
I usually don’t add any written reviews on here, but this was too wonderful to continue that trend.
Rick’s book is a phantasmagoria of American heritage, from the abhorrent war crimes old and new, to the awe-striking natural beauty of landscapes and the desolate cityscapes that invaded indigenous lands. This book has some of the most enthralling, whimsical dialogue I’ve ever read - I was reminded of the quality of existential, humorous, quick-witted conversations in White Noise. The difference being the skull-smashingly inventive wordcraft, much of which couldn’t merely be looked up, but forces one to intuit based on the juxtaposed lingual ingredients. Steven Moore’s blurb rings clear and true, this author is word-drunk, and I fucking love it!
I continuously felt the creeping sensation of misjudging an ocean wave, thus being dragged under the crashing, flashing waves; tumbled along beneath the surface unable to draw in nought but salinized water. After being yanked by undertow into Rick’s world countless times, I learned to trust that I’d be pulled above by the hunky lifeguard that is this narrative voice. CPR if required, but mainly just a swift slap cross the face or kick in the pants is all that is needed to bring me back to this fictitious reality.
I mean, shit, this man can write. Showing the chops for old-timey settler drawl, the aforementioned linguinastics (Chris Via?), and the horror of having your gaze held against your will (think Clockwork Orange or an animal test subject) on the atrocities of industrially complex genocidal war. All of this is intimidating, but is handily balanced with plenty to (paraphrasing DFW here) make the work so seductive that you want to put the work in.
Sorry if this review is unreadable or missing the target, but this book is too expansive and multi-layered for me to quickly encapsulate anything that would be salient. All of this to say: if you like hard books, blindingly brilliant books, weird books, dark books, etc, definitely pick up a copy from Rick/Corona Samzidat or from the upcoming release of an American publishing by Zerogram Press!
Rick’s book is a phantasmagoria of American heritage, from the abhorrent war crimes old and new, to the awe-striking natural beauty of landscapes and the desolate cityscapes that invaded indigenous lands. This book has some of the most enthralling, whimsical dialogue I’ve ever read - I was reminded of the quality of existential, humorous, quick-witted conversations in White Noise. The difference being the skull-smashingly inventive wordcraft, much of which couldn’t merely be looked up, but forces one to intuit based on the juxtaposed lingual ingredients. Steven Moore’s blurb rings clear and true, this author is word-drunk, and I fucking love it!
I continuously felt the creeping sensation of misjudging an ocean wave, thus being dragged under the crashing, flashing waves; tumbled along beneath the surface unable to draw in nought but salinized water. After being yanked by undertow into Rick’s world countless times, I learned to trust that I’d be pulled above by the hunky lifeguard that is this narrative voice. CPR if required, but mainly just a swift slap cross the face or kick in the pants is all that is needed to bring me back to this fictitious reality.
I mean, shit, this man can write. Showing the chops for old-timey settler drawl, the aforementioned linguinastics (Chris Via?), and the horror of having your gaze held against your will (think Clockwork Orange or an animal test subject) on the atrocities of industrially complex genocidal war. All of this is intimidating, but is handily balanced with plenty to (paraphrasing DFW here) make the work so seductive that you want to put the work in.
Sorry if this review is unreadable or missing the target, but this book is too expansive and multi-layered for me to quickly encapsulate anything that would be salient. All of this to say: if you like hard books, blindingly brilliant books, weird books, dark books, etc, definitely pick up a copy from Rick/Corona Samzidat or from the upcoming release of an American publishing by Zerogram Press!
July 28, 2020
No, I didn’t read this amazing work of genius in a day. Though I could’ve (my GR list/timing is all messed up, was). I did start reading the second it arrived. Like when I received my first bicycle for my birthday. I ran right outside to ride (I was born on the last day of the year. Long Island, it was cold!) but that’s how excited I was. Many people smarter than I have said and written great things about this book and I say to you...listen to them, and now me, and order this. Order a couple. Give a copy to your BF. Have a copy in every room of where you live. You will be drunk with the wordplay. You will be sleepy from constantly reading. And more importantly, you’ll just have a kick-a$$ time. It’s fun, it’ll make you smarter and you’ll experience an original piece of genius. Holla at Rick for the deets.
June 15, 2023
Like others I'm sure, I became aware of Rick Harsch and his novel The Manifold Destiny of Eddie Vegas from reading Phillip Freedenberg's novel America and the Cult of the Cactus Boots: A Diagnostic. From the time I ordered my copy of Cactus Boots the mythos of Rick Harsch already began to take form.
First, receiving a handwritten package from him all the way from Slovenia, then reading about him and his book The Manifold Destiny of Eddie Vegas in Freedenberg's novel, then spending months acclimating myself to Rick's unique and eccentric videos on youtube and instagram. Eventually I thought, "enough is enough, I've got to read one of his actual works" and what better place to start than The Manifold Destiny of Eddie Vegas?
While I had seen a few videos discussing The Manifold Destiny of Eddie Vegas, I wasn't fully prepared for what I was about to experience. Harsch's reputation proceeds him as a wordsmith and a writer of well crafted dialogue but to what degree these skills, and more, were presented was a great surprise.
The Manifold Destiny of Eddie Vegas is many things and it's hard to know where to start when describing it. Eddie Vegas is a novel of adventure, action, love, lust, a bond of blossoming friendship, of father son relationships, Americana™, a war novel, a travel novel, a cliché novel, an experimental novel, an experiential novel, a literary playground, a book soaked in happy hour pitchers of American domestic beer sourced straight from God's Country ™, a Tom Clancy book for those appalled by the world of a Tom Clancy book, a list book, a book that should be on lists, and finally; a generally pretty good book.
I really enjoyed Eddie Vegas. I went into it thinking I'd get another piece of the Cactiverse and maybe a better understanding into who this Rick Harsch guy is. I got that and much more. There's so much to cover that I wouldn't want to spoil or overindulge while writing this review so I will try to keep it to my select highlights.
Some of these select highlights being the creative writing class chapter, the created Esperanto language of a 19th century Native American, and the overall survival story surrounding "Black Ass". Harsch is a master of creating new and exciting words, two of my favorites that stuck with me are "Manlyhattens" and "Phantasmagoriflage". I knew I was dealing with a novel of a higher caliber when I came across a passage where Harsch compares the smoke off the second of the Twin Towers to that of a waterfall pouring on a Hamm's Beer sign. I can't remember the last time a book had me stopped in my tracks rereading a passage marveling at what I had just been presented with.
Throughout Harsch offers a seamless and seemingly effortless prose that plays with form and focus to present passages to the reader in an exciting and engaging way. Unlike many other maximalist, post modern novels I've read, I never felt bogged down or confused by ideas too convoluted. For all of the worldly wordiness I never felt like the plot or the events of any particular scene were taking a backseat to the the prose.
Eddie Vegas offers a wide spectrum of the American experience. From the early 19th Century western expanse to the Xbox controller of a drone bomb operator. Many character's points of view are visited and paint this picture of the destructive death cult we find ourselves living in today. As far as I'm concern this is "The Great American Novel™" of the 21st Century, at least so far.
First, receiving a handwritten package from him all the way from Slovenia, then reading about him and his book The Manifold Destiny of Eddie Vegas in Freedenberg's novel, then spending months acclimating myself to Rick's unique and eccentric videos on youtube and instagram. Eventually I thought, "enough is enough, I've got to read one of his actual works" and what better place to start than The Manifold Destiny of Eddie Vegas?
While I had seen a few videos discussing The Manifold Destiny of Eddie Vegas, I wasn't fully prepared for what I was about to experience. Harsch's reputation proceeds him as a wordsmith and a writer of well crafted dialogue but to what degree these skills, and more, were presented was a great surprise.
The Manifold Destiny of Eddie Vegas is many things and it's hard to know where to start when describing it. Eddie Vegas is a novel of adventure, action, love, lust, a bond of blossoming friendship, of father son relationships, Americana™, a war novel, a travel novel, a cliché novel, an experimental novel, an experiential novel, a literary playground, a book soaked in happy hour pitchers of American domestic beer sourced straight from God's Country ™, a Tom Clancy book for those appalled by the world of a Tom Clancy book, a list book, a book that should be on lists, and finally; a generally pretty good book.
I really enjoyed Eddie Vegas. I went into it thinking I'd get another piece of the Cactiverse and maybe a better understanding into who this Rick Harsch guy is. I got that and much more. There's so much to cover that I wouldn't want to spoil or overindulge while writing this review so I will try to keep it to my select highlights.
Some of these select highlights being the creative writing class chapter, the created Esperanto language of a 19th century Native American, and the overall survival story surrounding "Black Ass". Harsch is a master of creating new and exciting words, two of my favorites that stuck with me are "Manlyhattens" and "Phantasmagoriflage". I knew I was dealing with a novel of a higher caliber when I came across a passage where Harsch compares the smoke off the second of the Twin Towers to that of a waterfall pouring on a Hamm's Beer sign. I can't remember the last time a book had me stopped in my tracks rereading a passage marveling at what I had just been presented with.
Throughout Harsch offers a seamless and seemingly effortless prose that plays with form and focus to present passages to the reader in an exciting and engaging way. Unlike many other maximalist, post modern novels I've read, I never felt bogged down or confused by ideas too convoluted. For all of the worldly wordiness I never felt like the plot or the events of any particular scene were taking a backseat to the the prose.
Eddie Vegas offers a wide spectrum of the American experience. From the early 19th Century western expanse to the Xbox controller of a drone bomb operator. Many character's points of view are visited and paint this picture of the destructive death cult we find ourselves living in today. As far as I'm concern this is "The Great American Novel™" of the 21st Century, at least so far.
January 25, 2025
I'm sitting here trying to find a way to adequately convey my infinite thoughts on the Manifold Destiny of Eddie Vegas by Rick Harsch within the confines of a finite amount of words, this will be a feeble, though potentially fictile attempt though with a likely fingent quality to it. Anyway, I'll start somewhere, and that somewhere is how the Manifold Destiny of Eddie Vegas can probably be advertised as a paranoid novel full of historical trivia ranging from manifest destiny to current day conflicts with plenty of goofy characters and their eccentric quirks and interactions all told through a narrator who exemplifies the idea of mincing words and running up the search history to finding obscure words to write as indirectly as possible, though that is not to say that the book is hard to read, quite the contrary, I'd just say that the narrator is drunk on language runs the gamut of combining words to create a goofy assembly of neologisms that only make sense in the context of their specific sentences, but in isolation amounts to nonsense. So in a single word instead of many, it's Joycean. But yeah, to speak briefly on what the book is actually about. Eddie Vegas is a two tiered plot that bounces between past and present: past is an odyssey of the west as you read about one man's journey to finding his rifle after a horrid run in with America's harshest of apex predators; and the present involves two fast friends who meet during a fast game of cards at Vegas, Drake and Donnie, both with differing backgrounds but of similar age and interests so they bond quickly and embark on a globe trotting adventure to seek high minded pursuits in consuming alcohol, gambling, and chasing women in dingy taverns in the back alley of brussels. What seems like two vastly different plot lines (they are) stitched together from different novels, they converge in entertaining fashion that makes for a fun payoff. While the plot lines differ, they share common ground regarding global and domestic violent conflicts, and the novel runs the trivia on stuff like Vietnam, Iraq, the Civil war, and many many more along with all the dirty covert stuff that is involved in said conflicts. It makes for interesting ready. In short, this is a complex novel dealing with heavy subject matter told in a Joycean manner that reminds me of a prime Guy Ritchie Movie that is full of goofy banter and oddball characters. So that begs the question, is this worth reading? To some absolutely. I loved it. I can see others driven mad by the maddening writing, but that is half the fun. If told in a succinct manner a la John Le Carre, the fun would dissipate and the page count heavily reduced, no thank you, and I enjoyed the Spy Who Came in From the Cold, but this is not that, this is a serious story told in a silly manner that adds in plenty of levity when discussing harrowing topics. In other words, it's an emotional kaleidoscope. Needless to say, I'll be sitting in seat 22B on airplanes for now on.
Read
June 15, 2022A reading by Chris Robinson of Rick Harsch's masterpiece? Most agree. Although he might have two and the rest aren't far behind.
https://www.instagram.com/tv/CeXobdNg...
Now available from:
https://zerogrampress.com/2022/01/26/...
July 5, 2022
There are better reviews out there and I am pressed for time.
However, if you want my opinion, what I can say is this is a fantastic exercise in language and scope.
With Manifold Destiny you will encounter:
Multiple timelines ranging from the gold rush, ww1, ww2, Vietnam war, 9/11, and the drone strikes.
Lots of gambling and midgets and desert prose.
Lengthy lists one being 30 pages long.
Some of the most interesting language in a novel I’ve read so far.
It’s funny, it’s sad, it’s nuanced in absurdity.
The book is also physically heavy with the type of paper used to print it.
I feel like I would fail at asking Rick what his main influences are so I won’t attempt to here myself.
I challenge you to read this.
However, if you want my opinion, what I can say is this is a fantastic exercise in language and scope.
With Manifold Destiny you will encounter:
Multiple timelines ranging from the gold rush, ww1, ww2, Vietnam war, 9/11, and the drone strikes.
Lots of gambling and midgets and desert prose.
Lengthy lists one being 30 pages long.
Some of the most interesting language in a novel I’ve read so far.
It’s funny, it’s sad, it’s nuanced in absurdity.
The book is also physically heavy with the type of paper used to print it.
I feel like I would fail at asking Rick what his main influences are so I won’t attempt to here myself.
I challenge you to read this.
September 12, 2019
Dear Yous,
Shame on you for remembering it so. Nothing was your fault. And it wasn’t so crazy and rough. It was mostly still. We walked along the river almost every night, diving from the sea wall and swimming out to Rat Island. We’d divide the universe into threes and count our falling stars. It was a dime for each and Bell always got rich. He’d describe our past lives. In one we were the captains of the Nina, Pinta and the Santa Maria. In another we were a family with him the mother and us the brat kids. And then that awful lifetime where you and I cut his throat for a song. He never let us forget that. You’re right, though, we were aimless until the mission.
I miss the direction a mystery gives. This winter, when snow covered everything, I couldn’t help thinking how the stuff makes every move a crime. You can’t lift a finger or breathe a breath without betraying yourself. Whether sneaking a shot of whiskey behind the smoke house or skating the Race to visit your love, a guilty trail is left for all to see.
I’m beginning to feel a little guilty myself, about these letters. I know there’s nothing to tthem, but it means I am hiding something from Jeff. Small actions can poison a house, though they’re hard to strain out from the big dying. I know I’m just being melodramatic. There is nothing to feel guilty about. And I do feel as though I am getting to know you again… and that is fine!
I also need to mention a book, that arrived mysteriously in the mail: The Manifold Destiny of Eddie Vegas by Rick Harsch. (I thought at first that you might be the culprit, but then saw the postmark from back East). The book revolves around an epic battle between Old Ephraim (a great bear) and a frontiersman named Hector Robitaille (true history’s Hugh Glass is one referent). In my reading, the characters (in addition we have Tom Garvin and the intercollapsing trio of Garvin, Gravel and the eponymous Eddie) are palimpsests of a palimpsest, exactly what cyberspace has blocked from our view. That the more contemporary males have only a fading image of the charging bear from which to gain their bearings seems the novel’s conundrum, if not fulcrum. I believe it to be a great work of our century, as much for the beautiful, funny and maddening display of language with which Harsch takes on our equally beautiful, funny and maddening world… like a savage. I include the tome as an offering and a gift. Like the orange you sent, I hope it delights you for as long as it lasts, and then possibly longer in flashbacks, dreams…
Yours,
Ev
Shame on you for remembering it so. Nothing was your fault. And it wasn’t so crazy and rough. It was mostly still. We walked along the river almost every night, diving from the sea wall and swimming out to Rat Island. We’d divide the universe into threes and count our falling stars. It was a dime for each and Bell always got rich. He’d describe our past lives. In one we were the captains of the Nina, Pinta and the Santa Maria. In another we were a family with him the mother and us the brat kids. And then that awful lifetime where you and I cut his throat for a song. He never let us forget that. You’re right, though, we were aimless until the mission.
I miss the direction a mystery gives. This winter, when snow covered everything, I couldn’t help thinking how the stuff makes every move a crime. You can’t lift a finger or breathe a breath without betraying yourself. Whether sneaking a shot of whiskey behind the smoke house or skating the Race to visit your love, a guilty trail is left for all to see.
I’m beginning to feel a little guilty myself, about these letters. I know there’s nothing to tthem, but it means I am hiding something from Jeff. Small actions can poison a house, though they’re hard to strain out from the big dying. I know I’m just being melodramatic. There is nothing to feel guilty about. And I do feel as though I am getting to know you again… and that is fine!
I also need to mention a book, that arrived mysteriously in the mail: The Manifold Destiny of Eddie Vegas by Rick Harsch. (I thought at first that you might be the culprit, but then saw the postmark from back East). The book revolves around an epic battle between Old Ephraim (a great bear) and a frontiersman named Hector Robitaille (true history’s Hugh Glass is one referent). In my reading, the characters (in addition we have Tom Garvin and the intercollapsing trio of Garvin, Gravel and the eponymous Eddie) are palimpsests of a palimpsest, exactly what cyberspace has blocked from our view. That the more contemporary males have only a fading image of the charging bear from which to gain their bearings seems the novel’s conundrum, if not fulcrum. I believe it to be a great work of our century, as much for the beautiful, funny and maddening display of language with which Harsch takes on our equally beautiful, funny and maddening world… like a savage. I include the tome as an offering and a gift. Like the orange you sent, I hope it delights you for as long as it lasts, and then possibly longer in flashbacks, dreams…
Yours,
Ev
May 1, 2025
The Manifold Destiny of Eddie Vegas by Rick Harsh
The Manifold Destiny of Eddie Vegas is an essential piece of 21st-century literature and a piece of modern mythology. Harsch, like the ferryman Charon, but donning a felt hat or sun-stained bandana with expat wit and perspective, rows us, the reader, down the rivers of this American underworld he has created full of violence and historical mayhem. We are shown the horrors of this place and the plight of its characters who live in it from the safety of an ancient pirogue.
Rick's prose feels like you've been fired out of a cannon, and your body flies over the words. As you're in flight, limbs akimbo, you instantly realize you are reading a writer who is special. He is a writer who LOVES language and knows how to use it. It's playful and challenging; it can make you laugh or put the fear of god into you. Harsch is a maestro of alliteration, and like Gass, his words live in the mouth, are meant to be chewed and perhaps read aloud. For me, it's hard not to hear Rick's voice when reading this book. I would love this to be ___ first audiobook. His mix of high and low-brow vocabulary/humour keeps you on your toes. This is a writer that can use a word like verisimilitudinous and butthole in the same sentence. This book contains the best chapter titles ever, and if Pynchon has his songs, Harsch has his lists, which are sweet treats he leaves you along the way.
This novel is part beatnik travelogue, acid western, mutilated family saga, political diatribe, and war novel. To say it's wacky and weird is an understatement, and Rick himself could find the best and most obscure adjectives to describe it. Like the myriad of black humorists and post-modern writers I and others mention countlessly, Harsch concerns himself with human civilization's worst traits and events. What captured my attention the most was Harsch's almost deep relationship with war and how it's fought.
What Harsch does is examine the micro level of warfare and tactics of the death squads and terrorists of the 3rd world and the army platoons and private "security" firms of the 1st world, who are both able and willing to carry out the most horrific war crimes imaginable. In that conflict and destruction, the ideological lines become blurred, and who gets caught in the middle are the innocents, the women, the children and perhaps the tribes or native people (if they weren't exterminated already) who lived there long before these conflicts started. It's these little players that throw coal in the fire of the military-industrial complex and general human suffering. Their actions reverberate throughout history and are constantly repeating themselves.
I will say this book will not be for everyone and can be tiresome at times, but when you're ready and focused, hop in that row boat and let Rick take you on an odyssey through a literary netherworld like no other.
The Manifold Destiny of Eddie Vegas is an essential piece of 21st-century literature and a piece of modern mythology. Harsch, like the ferryman Charon, but donning a felt hat or sun-stained bandana with expat wit and perspective, rows us, the reader, down the rivers of this American underworld he has created full of violence and historical mayhem. We are shown the horrors of this place and the plight of its characters who live in it from the safety of an ancient pirogue.
Rick's prose feels like you've been fired out of a cannon, and your body flies over the words. As you're in flight, limbs akimbo, you instantly realize you are reading a writer who is special. He is a writer who LOVES language and knows how to use it. It's playful and challenging; it can make you laugh or put the fear of god into you. Harsch is a maestro of alliteration, and like Gass, his words live in the mouth, are meant to be chewed and perhaps read aloud. For me, it's hard not to hear Rick's voice when reading this book. I would love this to be ___ first audiobook. His mix of high and low-brow vocabulary/humour keeps you on your toes. This is a writer that can use a word like verisimilitudinous and butthole in the same sentence. This book contains the best chapter titles ever, and if Pynchon has his songs, Harsch has his lists, which are sweet treats he leaves you along the way.
This novel is part beatnik travelogue, acid western, mutilated family saga, political diatribe, and war novel. To say it's wacky and weird is an understatement, and Rick himself could find the best and most obscure adjectives to describe it. Like the myriad of black humorists and post-modern writers I and others mention countlessly, Harsch concerns himself with human civilization's worst traits and events. What captured my attention the most was Harsch's almost deep relationship with war and how it's fought.
What Harsch does is examine the micro level of warfare and tactics of the death squads and terrorists of the 3rd world and the army platoons and private "security" firms of the 1st world, who are both able and willing to carry out the most horrific war crimes imaginable. In that conflict and destruction, the ideological lines become blurred, and who gets caught in the middle are the innocents, the women, the children and perhaps the tribes or native people (if they weren't exterminated already) who lived there long before these conflicts started. It's these little players that throw coal in the fire of the military-industrial complex and general human suffering. Their actions reverberate throughout history and are constantly repeating themselves.
I will say this book will not be for everyone and can be tiresome at times, but when you're ready and focused, hop in that row boat and let Rick take you on an odyssey through a literary netherworld like no other.
August 30, 2019
Once again Rick Harsch, author of the classic Driftless Zone trilogy, enters the universe of hardened opportunists. Their victims this time are not small-city inhabitants who run afoul of local underground sleaze but children, their own and the nameless unnumbered casualties of the wars they profit by. This novel seethes brilliantly with cool but white-hot anger at the high-stakes war profiteers, their casual aplomb, their indifference to any but their own interests. Prescient, timely, vulgar to the point of reverence, this complex novel is a masterpiece of slow-motion convergence and revelation, a story-telling and linguistic triumph from a major writer.
This is not a fast read, nor should it be read any other way than at a leisurely pace, with savor for the linguistic firestorm that it is, a burning bush of prophecy with the voice of cool anger issuing from it, with ironic humor to salt it. Harsch's vision and voice are wide and take their bead on the avarice and lust for power that cast their net over the entire planet and leave no life unthreatened.
Eddie Vegas confirms Harsch's place among the most brilliant politically-engaged writers now working and alongside his literary forbears.
This is not a fast read, nor should it be read any other way than at a leisurely pace, with savor for the linguistic firestorm that it is, a burning bush of prophecy with the voice of cool anger issuing from it, with ironic humor to salt it. Harsch's vision and voice are wide and take their bead on the avarice and lust for power that cast their net over the entire planet and leave no life unthreatened.
Eddie Vegas confirms Harsch's place among the most brilliant politically-engaged writers now working and alongside his literary forbears.
August 16, 2020
One of the top five books that I've had the pleasure of reading.
July 3, 2022
Review forthcoming.
November 7, 2019
I liked the book; I have to say I've known Rick Harsch for oh over thirty-five years now and I've read his first works published in the early 1990s, it must have been.
"The Manifold Destiny of Eddie Vegas" is his longest book I believe but it has many of his earlier "elements": 1) Rick enjoys words and he has many, many that I've never seen before, but I don't let that bother me because, like Shakespeare, you WILL get the idea huh -- you don't need a dictionary; the plot will not elude you. 2) Rick has always had a talent for "noirish" writing and there's a "noir" within this book that interspaces with his I think "unique" and "arresting" view of the American West.
I grew up in Arizona and returned to it (from the Midwest) some fifteen years ago and I've always been interested in The Legend of the American West as portrayed in books and especially in film. Rick's view reminds me of -- it's a long time ago but -- the 1971 Robert Altman directed western "McCabe & Mrs Miller." Rick is uniquely creative in "his West" but he does not falsify its essence; he lets you see it "fresher."
His contemporary story -- interwoven as a family heritage, of "Eddie Vegas" or the "Eddie Vegases" as it turns out -- involves American wars in this century, in Afghanistan and Iraq, and particularly deals with mercenary firms (businesses really, in the "business of war") like "Blackwater"("Blackguard" is Rick's version) and the mix of two young friends, one the son of a mysterious mercenary, a "CEO" of such really, and the other of an ostensible creative writing prof at what is the Iowa Writers Workshop at the University of Iowa at Iowa City (of which by the way Harsch is a graduate).
The story goes to Brussels, to another "mix" of Algerian and sub Saharan communities there, back to the US to Los Angeles and finally in Nevada, to Las Vegas (as per the "Eddies" hm). On the way Harsch will give you, let me call them "Faulknerian" descriptions, sometimes I must say a bit lengthy, but often he will lead into something really pretty funny, even "illuminating" in a way -- Rick has "fun" with language. He will even insert himself occasionally, the writer into the written, and he's very entertaining as "Himself," or his novelistic version of himself.
I would say to readers -- don't be "daunted": Rick requires some "work" on your part other than to be able to read one word after the other (like the old Time magazine Rick also enjoys making up words, often in creative and funny combinations) but he really isn't "that hard" to read, anymore than Faulkner is, or Joyce, once you "let yourself in" and decide "What -- me worry?"!
He is ruminating on the "nature" (in both senses -- his description of a "bear's eye view" of post hibernation is fascinating) of American society and history and it's not an "optimistic" view but it is a thoughtful one, a critical one, and at times a "challenging" one. It explores many aspects of American life, for instance our penchant for "gambling," Las Vegas wise and "other"wise and card games have a significant role in the book, but again, don't worry, your familiarity or lack of won't get you "lost"; Rick tells you what you "need to know" at the moment and like any "mystery" it will unfold "in time."
There's more to say about the novel but I don't want this to become too much to read; I'd just like to convince you to "give it a try." Faulkner actually wrote (or rather helped write -- as most screenplays are necessarily collaborations, 'cuz no one wants to "take all the blame"?) a screenplay for a Raymond Chandler (one of the great "noirists") novel, "The Big Sleep," and Harsch also combines that Faulknerian with Chandler. He told me once that if any of his books got bought by Hollywood and he was hired to "help" with the screenplay that he'd take me with him -- just to look around huh. So I hope some "reader" at some studio looks at this one: it'd make a pretty good film at that...
"The Manifold Destiny of Eddie Vegas" is his longest book I believe but it has many of his earlier "elements": 1) Rick enjoys words and he has many, many that I've never seen before, but I don't let that bother me because, like Shakespeare, you WILL get the idea huh -- you don't need a dictionary; the plot will not elude you. 2) Rick has always had a talent for "noirish" writing and there's a "noir" within this book that interspaces with his I think "unique" and "arresting" view of the American West.
I grew up in Arizona and returned to it (from the Midwest) some fifteen years ago and I've always been interested in The Legend of the American West as portrayed in books and especially in film. Rick's view reminds me of -- it's a long time ago but -- the 1971 Robert Altman directed western "McCabe & Mrs Miller." Rick is uniquely creative in "his West" but he does not falsify its essence; he lets you see it "fresher."
His contemporary story -- interwoven as a family heritage, of "Eddie Vegas" or the "Eddie Vegases" as it turns out -- involves American wars in this century, in Afghanistan and Iraq, and particularly deals with mercenary firms (businesses really, in the "business of war") like "Blackwater"("Blackguard" is Rick's version) and the mix of two young friends, one the son of a mysterious mercenary, a "CEO" of such really, and the other of an ostensible creative writing prof at what is the Iowa Writers Workshop at the University of Iowa at Iowa City (of which by the way Harsch is a graduate).
The story goes to Brussels, to another "mix" of Algerian and sub Saharan communities there, back to the US to Los Angeles and finally in Nevada, to Las Vegas (as per the "Eddies" hm). On the way Harsch will give you, let me call them "Faulknerian" descriptions, sometimes I must say a bit lengthy, but often he will lead into something really pretty funny, even "illuminating" in a way -- Rick has "fun" with language. He will even insert himself occasionally, the writer into the written, and he's very entertaining as "Himself," or his novelistic version of himself.
I would say to readers -- don't be "daunted": Rick requires some "work" on your part other than to be able to read one word after the other (like the old Time magazine Rick also enjoys making up words, often in creative and funny combinations) but he really isn't "that hard" to read, anymore than Faulkner is, or Joyce, once you "let yourself in" and decide "What -- me worry?"!
He is ruminating on the "nature" (in both senses -- his description of a "bear's eye view" of post hibernation is fascinating) of American society and history and it's not an "optimistic" view but it is a thoughtful one, a critical one, and at times a "challenging" one. It explores many aspects of American life, for instance our penchant for "gambling," Las Vegas wise and "other"wise and card games have a significant role in the book, but again, don't worry, your familiarity or lack of won't get you "lost"; Rick tells you what you "need to know" at the moment and like any "mystery" it will unfold "in time."
There's more to say about the novel but I don't want this to become too much to read; I'd just like to convince you to "give it a try." Faulkner actually wrote (or rather helped write -- as most screenplays are necessarily collaborations, 'cuz no one wants to "take all the blame"?) a screenplay for a Raymond Chandler (one of the great "noirists") novel, "The Big Sleep," and Harsch also combines that Faulknerian with Chandler. He told me once that if any of his books got bought by Hollywood and he was hired to "help" with the screenplay that he'd take me with him -- just to look around huh. So I hope some "reader" at some studio looks at this one: it'd make a pretty good film at that...
August 31, 2019
This is the kind of book that initially draws you with its wildness and energy, luxuriating in language and wordplay and surprise, then cements its hold on you with the dawning (and startling) realization that the author is actually in full control of his material – which given the ridiculous scope of story and theme seems nearly impossible – then keeps you all the way to the stunning conclusion by creating characters you can't help but care about. There comes a moment deep in the novel when Harsch, the author, has a revelation about the fate of a character, and drives up into the hills of Slovenia in a swirl of emotion, sweeping the reader along with him. That moment represents as well as any the miracle of the book. Here was the author reminding me (yet again, as he'd done from the beginning) that everything about the story was in the imagination, and yet I didn't care – in fact cared all the more. I loved the characters as he did, and I respected, as he did, the need for the book to play its cards as it was supposed to in a world – both the imagined one and the real one it unflinchingly reflects – in which so many things don't. This is the kind of book that brings to mind terms like "tour de force" and "magnum opus." There really is this "kind of a book." But like all masterpieces, it's rare.
September 12, 2019
At first when I started reading Eddie Vegas I thought how much it reminded me of Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest. It's just this love of language and willingness to invent (I mean recalcitruant--think about that one) is there and it's got this multi-dimensionality of character and plot lines.....but whereas DFW's IJ looks to a calamity filled future for our would be empirical and exceptionalist happy nation the further I went into Eddie Vegas the more I was reminded of Melville or Dos Passos' 'America' trilogy because this is more steeped in historical narrative and angsty present.....and all that said this has real range--Harsch's ear is extraordinary---his frontiersmen speaking in a 19th century Wild Western dialect that sometimes is laugh out loud funny. It's a fucking hoot and a multi-dimensional and layered time warping look at where we've come from in pretty much less than two centuries....the absurdities piling up as we watch the great great great grandsons and granddaughters of 19th century lawless shitkickers turn into today's morality keepers of the universe.
Great book. A must read.
Great book. A must read.
September 15, 2019
I didn't think it was possible for Rick Harsch to one up his Skulls of Istria, but this here, The Manifold Destiny of Eddie Vegas, is his magnum opus. The language must be compared, as one blurb does, to that of James Joyce, the invention is astonishing, and the cumulative meaning is beyond anything I have ever come across. There are sentences I had to read twice, but many more that I read multiple times for the sheer pleasure of the prose. This is in the category of award winners, from whatever the best awards in the US are to Nobel prize. The book—this seems sort of dull, but I don't know how to say it—explains the United States, its violence, its transformation from a land of plenty to a land of plenty of nuclear bombs, and its apparent need to meddle in affairs world wide. The book covers the Indian genocide, the Vietnam War, the Twin Towers, the Iraq war, and, well, the human being, all of us—though it is not one of those books that says we are all guilty—it is much more complex than that. More important it is funny as hell.
Klaus Hauser
Klaus Hauser
March 29, 2021
This one is worth the admission price. I doubt I'll forget the mysterious tales told by Norgaard nor the excruciating journey of the man at the other end of the manifold, Hector Robitaille. Picking a 4 rather than the 5 in star value can be blamed on this reader. I have read a handful of challenging novels (yes, you must pay close attention here, too - not in all sections but in many). However, I doubt I have read even a small percentage of literary masters the author paid homage to throughout. No Rabelais (yet) or Ulysses (yet), and so on. Regardless, there is plenty to enjoy and be challenged by in here. If this is your thing, I suggest you add this to your reading pile. Immediately.
September 8, 2020
The Manifold Destiny of Eddie Vegas by Rick Harsch
This is a great American novel!!!
Spanning the last two centuries of United States history it follows 4 generations of the Gravel/Garvin family. The family odyssey begins in the mid-1800s in the American Northwest where mountain men, trappers, miners, soldiers of fortune and military men vie for a piece of the action, and ends in modern day Las Vegas where Tom Gravel reinvented as Eddie Vegas seeks to reconnect with his son who has become involved in a web of intrigue with corporate private security military for hire. Along the way, we visit the creative writing program of a midwestern university, brothels in Brussels, the first settlements in the Nevada territories, war torn Iraq, the French Indochina and Vietnam Wars, and present-day Los Angeles.
The cast of characters is dizzying and engaging. Among my favorites: Tom Gravel- a literary creative writing professor who also did time for manslaughter and is the great grandson of mountain men and a great Indian woman, Marie Fire and her daughter Ethel both of whom were savvy businesswomen who helped develop the wild wild west of old Nevada, Mandrake and his sidekick Nordgaard who met on the battlefields of Vietnam and formed the company Blackguard a secretive military for hire corporation with world wide tentacles, his son Drake who adopts another Gravel-Donnie- who is a bright, sharp young man open to adventures and their girlfriend Setif, a Belgium free spirited artist who they nickname Picasso Tits.
Obviously rich in character development, plot, and excitement the reading experience is heightened by the authors genius wordsmithing. Being well read I still found myself consulting a dictionary every few pages both learning new words and discovering how Rick Harsch has the unique ability to create new word syntheses that make total sense in both humorous and astounding fashion. Additionally, Harsch’s style includes what someone else described as Rabelaisian list making, and poetic interludes.
The author is a polyglot of language and history. In one chapter, the Sick Man of Europe, he presents a unique take on Colonial Imperialistic history: “China…a wall that could enclose the whole of Mexico”, “Venice- all the writers go there and fall in love…poets loving death”, “Great Britain-and whatever gave them Ireland I’ll never understand as opposed to Ireland getting them, is it something in the people like Irish could live eat potatoes and let live, while the English were the type who wanted other peoples’ potatoes”, and “Mexico-what restraint. Now a revolution. Everyone’s wife wants Pancho Villa for a lover, that moustache! That Sombrero! Those tremendous balls! I shall not blush at history.”
In terms of literary roots, in the book Harsch mentions a vast array of authors including Mark Twain, James Fennimore Cooper, Cervantes, Juan Rulfo, Charles Dickens, Joseph Conrad and others. For my take in reading this most entertaining novel I was intermittently reminded of Cormac McCarthy, Larry McMurtry, Don DeLillo, James Ellroy, Jack Kerouac and Roberto Bolano.
As crazy and wild as the above descriptions may sound, the history of this book’s publication is also pretty wild. Originally meant for publication by a small independent publisher the author was forced to claw back his rights and is now self-publishing the book from Slovenia where he currently lives as an ex-pat. Indeed, his own history of creative efforts and inventive intellect are reflected both in this masterpiece, and his own life’s journey.
Needless to say, I highly recommend this great novel.
(From the author, Rick Harsch:)
Thanks for asking about the availability of the book. The circumstances are that as the book is not yet published in the US, it is only available from the Slovene corona/samizdat, still only available via rick.harsch@gmail.com and paid for via paypal. (Though we are getting a page together--coronasamizdat.com--which soon will have an open public forum if we can manage.
This is a great American novel!!!
Spanning the last two centuries of United States history it follows 4 generations of the Gravel/Garvin family. The family odyssey begins in the mid-1800s in the American Northwest where mountain men, trappers, miners, soldiers of fortune and military men vie for a piece of the action, and ends in modern day Las Vegas where Tom Gravel reinvented as Eddie Vegas seeks to reconnect with his son who has become involved in a web of intrigue with corporate private security military for hire. Along the way, we visit the creative writing program of a midwestern university, brothels in Brussels, the first settlements in the Nevada territories, war torn Iraq, the French Indochina and Vietnam Wars, and present-day Los Angeles.
The cast of characters is dizzying and engaging. Among my favorites: Tom Gravel- a literary creative writing professor who also did time for manslaughter and is the great grandson of mountain men and a great Indian woman, Marie Fire and her daughter Ethel both of whom were savvy businesswomen who helped develop the wild wild west of old Nevada, Mandrake and his sidekick Nordgaard who met on the battlefields of Vietnam and formed the company Blackguard a secretive military for hire corporation with world wide tentacles, his son Drake who adopts another Gravel-Donnie- who is a bright, sharp young man open to adventures and their girlfriend Setif, a Belgium free spirited artist who they nickname Picasso Tits.
Obviously rich in character development, plot, and excitement the reading experience is heightened by the authors genius wordsmithing. Being well read I still found myself consulting a dictionary every few pages both learning new words and discovering how Rick Harsch has the unique ability to create new word syntheses that make total sense in both humorous and astounding fashion. Additionally, Harsch’s style includes what someone else described as Rabelaisian list making, and poetic interludes.
The author is a polyglot of language and history. In one chapter, the Sick Man of Europe, he presents a unique take on Colonial Imperialistic history: “China…a wall that could enclose the whole of Mexico”, “Venice- all the writers go there and fall in love…poets loving death”, “Great Britain-and whatever gave them Ireland I’ll never understand as opposed to Ireland getting them, is it something in the people like Irish could live eat potatoes and let live, while the English were the type who wanted other peoples’ potatoes”, and “Mexico-what restraint. Now a revolution. Everyone’s wife wants Pancho Villa for a lover, that moustache! That Sombrero! Those tremendous balls! I shall not blush at history.”
In terms of literary roots, in the book Harsch mentions a vast array of authors including Mark Twain, James Fennimore Cooper, Cervantes, Juan Rulfo, Charles Dickens, Joseph Conrad and others. For my take in reading this most entertaining novel I was intermittently reminded of Cormac McCarthy, Larry McMurtry, Don DeLillo, James Ellroy, Jack Kerouac and Roberto Bolano.
As crazy and wild as the above descriptions may sound, the history of this book’s publication is also pretty wild. Originally meant for publication by a small independent publisher the author was forced to claw back his rights and is now self-publishing the book from Slovenia where he currently lives as an ex-pat. Indeed, his own history of creative efforts and inventive intellect are reflected both in this masterpiece, and his own life’s journey.
Needless to say, I highly recommend this great novel.
(From the author, Rick Harsch:)
Thanks for asking about the availability of the book. The circumstances are that as the book is not yet published in the US, it is only available from the Slovene corona/samizdat, still only available via rick.harsch@gmail.com and paid for via paypal. (Though we are getting a page together--coronasamizdat.com--which soon will have an open public forum if we can manage.
September 20, 2022
This novel is a journey through the trajectories and grotesqueries of the American proclivities for violence. Hilarious, sad, at times baffling (yet discernible) with its poetic and experimental use of language, but a delight to read throughout. For example:
“The sky was a phantasm, a phantasmagoria, a phrenetic phenomenon of phases in stasis, yet chimerical, a kinetic chaos locked unloosed, the eye of a hurricane directly above, rippling as if reflecting on the wrapplings of the South Fork of the Clearwater that Hector awoke glancing rightward down upon like an expiring trout, his cheek feeling fused to the stone or the stone to the bone of his cheek, his facial skin tissue thin, thinner even, as to be near vaporous as the transience of the skyward mysteries projecting illusory distance even as it quivered in meet on the waters it would not enter or disdain, waters flowing as if to depart, carrying not the sky even in mere image, flowing as if to depart yet staid in turgid agreement with riverine banks as in a dance unto death.”
I mean Jesus Christ what a sentence! This is an antifascist novel that spans from the beaver-trapping mountain man days of the American West to the post 9/11 beginnings of our current techno-fascist American nightmare. Black Ops, Black Jack, and the black spectre of our foul deeds stalking us through the Nevada desert.
Recommended for those who enjoy good, layered fiction and anyone who hates Henry Kissinger as much as I do.
“The sky was a phantasm, a phantasmagoria, a phrenetic phenomenon of phases in stasis, yet chimerical, a kinetic chaos locked unloosed, the eye of a hurricane directly above, rippling as if reflecting on the wrapplings of the South Fork of the Clearwater that Hector awoke glancing rightward down upon like an expiring trout, his cheek feeling fused to the stone or the stone to the bone of his cheek, his facial skin tissue thin, thinner even, as to be near vaporous as the transience of the skyward mysteries projecting illusory distance even as it quivered in meet on the waters it would not enter or disdain, waters flowing as if to depart, carrying not the sky even in mere image, flowing as if to depart yet staid in turgid agreement with riverine banks as in a dance unto death.”
I mean Jesus Christ what a sentence! This is an antifascist novel that spans from the beaver-trapping mountain man days of the American West to the post 9/11 beginnings of our current techno-fascist American nightmare. Black Ops, Black Jack, and the black spectre of our foul deeds stalking us through the Nevada desert.
Recommended for those who enjoy good, layered fiction and anyone who hates Henry Kissinger as much as I do.
July 1, 2022
This book was nothing short of masterful. Rick Harsch, along with the other writers who make up his amazing press, are as talented as they come.
Eddie Vegas is an utterly unique literary creation that is immensely fun, incredibly challenging, wonderfully thought provoking and always madly thought engaging.
You need to read this book, then tell a friend.
You’re welcome.
Eddie Vegas is an utterly unique literary creation that is immensely fun, incredibly challenging, wonderfully thought provoking and always madly thought engaging.
You need to read this book, then tell a friend.
You’re welcome.
April 9, 2021
To read THE MANIFOLD DESTINY OF EDDIE VEGAS is to be swept away, hurtling along raging lexical rapids, midst swirling eddies of historicity and semasiological virtuosity, an exciting expedition dipping through waves of time past the flotsam-jetsam of nationalistic hubris and history's shadowed recesses, all devised by wordmonger Rick Harsch for wordhounds like us. A real joyride not to be missed.
July 6, 2020
Mightily ambitious and also mightily impressive in many ways. Since I know the author through a joint love of Roberto Arlt the most powerful feature which hit me was the comparable 'tellurian nightmare' which knocks you on the head and disorientates you in a similar way to Arlt. But, of course, Arlt is not the only presence (and certainly not the most likely one). The manifold in the title is very much a manifesto of intent and the dizzying multiplicity of voices, tones, registers, tenses is something that is masterfully sustained throughout the novel. I'm sure there are many comparisons to be made with a whole gamut of fundamental American novels that I've been meaning to read (noirs, Pynchon, Foster Wallace) but there is, too, a determined reckoning with the 'present nightmare' which is imbedded with the different layers of time sculpted into the veins of the novel - is this what is most authentically Harschian? (it was present, I think, in his Skulls of Istria and will be interesting to see how it will emerge in the forthcoming The Assassination of Olof Palme). In terms of language production this too is impressive- the Jocyean productivity is very much in sync with the narrative joy (not an easy feat). Both the visions and the voices, both the hilarity and the tellurian nightmarishness remain with one even after putting down the book and starting on a new one.
February 26, 2023
The Manifold Destiny of Eddie Vegas is an extraordinary example of what the written word can be. Lyrical, poetic, crude, violent, intoxicating, salacious, thoughtful, explorative, exploitative. Manifold.
It’s a novel of family, history, geology, lists of various sorts, conspiracy, revenge, human social triangles of various sorts, friendship, and destiny.
Harsch’s use of uncommon words is a breath of fresh air, Don’t let their ubiquity scare you off, you begin to understand them and their manifold uses. Their perfect placement pervades paragraphs and by the time the novel is finished you’ll be able to use the word inutile, consider portmanteaus, and think about history, lineage, and destiny.
It’s a novel of family, history, geology, lists of various sorts, conspiracy, revenge, human social triangles of various sorts, friendship, and destiny.
Harsch’s use of uncommon words is a breath of fresh air, Don’t let their ubiquity scare you off, you begin to understand them and their manifold uses. Their perfect placement pervades paragraphs and by the time the novel is finished you’ll be able to use the word inutile, consider portmanteaus, and think about history, lineage, and destiny.
February 2, 2022
Written by a misogynist. The women in this book are shells and puppets that the author uses to take his aggression out on. They are sex objects and 'crazies.' How can anyone take it seriously? Some of the 5-star reviews look weird, tbh. See for yourself, the profiles were created and only reviewed this one book. Whether or not the author is doing this to puff up the book's ratings or not, idk, but its not looking so good.....
Read
December 17, 2025The very obvious comparison to me is in Pynchon but I felt the Gaddis near the end there. The prose was unlike anything I've ever read and it rewards slow reading, almost like if you are reading poetry. You get more out of each word. My favorite is when he just Frankenstein's 3 words together to create an affect it is not dissimilar to something like DFW maybe. Main gripe is maybe my own issues with family sagas like this where it can be difficult to ascertain what and when things are happening for the middle period of the book especially when POV is swapping so consistently. I liked it but my inability to differentiate character names was a big hinderance and thats on me (if you have two male leads and you start both their names with D or any same letter I am immediately going to be confused I just can't think).
November 8, 2019
I won't conceal the fact that I know Rick Harsch – the author of The Manifold Destiny of Eddie Vegas – personally. What’s best about that – apart from being able to enjoy Rick’s sunny disposition and roguish good looks first-hand, of course – is that sometimes he lets me read his work before it’s published. So I happened to read Eddie Vegas more than four years ago (judging from my history on Goodreads), but, of course, the lazy slob that I can be, I didn’t bother to write a review. The convenient excuse that I told myself was that I found it just the tiniest bit weird to express opinions about an unpublished book. Which is true, but still: now along comes Eddie, having recently been published by River Boat Books – which is fabulous news, as I’ve always cheered for this novel – and I’ve wound up owing Rick a review all this time later. Which worries me, because I usually don’t remember what I had for lunch yesterday.
I’ve started writing this worried that rummaging through my mind for things I remember about Eddie Vegas would be frustrating – and yet, completely unexpectedly, I find myself remembering all these vivid details for some reason. As this is, sadly, definitely not true of every book I happen to read, apparently Eddie has made quite an impression. So let me see what I can remember from more than four years ago.
The Manifold Destiny of Eddie Vegas is a formidable tome in terms of length and complexity, yet it reads effortlessly, smoothly, and very quickly – especially once you get the hang of Rick’s trademark linguistic stunts. I’ve had the fortune of reading much of what Mr Harsch has written, and I don’t suppose he ever disappoints in this regard – but I found that Eddie was truly on (a yet) another level. Still, I don’t feel that Rick ever crosses that fine line between good taste and gratuitous fanciness: while he is indeed an impressively eloquent linguistic delinquent, he is also as hilarious as he's unrelenting. And his lists, for crying out loud, the lists! They are poems, really: from dirty, drunken ditties to dazzling diatribes such as the horrendous thirty-page list of moronic, imbecilic, and idiotic names – truly pure-blooded American names – for doomsday devices. What am I going on about, you ask? Well, Rick approaches the rather sensitive subject of nuclear tests with the immediacy of a battering ram: instead of wasting any time yammering about it, he just hands us a list of names of each individual nuclear bomb that Americans have ever blown up on their own soil. There is a truckload of them – the list goes on forever – and seeing so much human idiocy in one place is about as bizarre and disturbing as watching the news or checking out your favourite social media stream.
However, Eddie Vegas is undoubtedly far from being all fancy bells and whistles and no substance. Four years after I read it, I still remember it as a magnificent, intricate, urgent spectacle spanning two continents and multiple timelines, a political thriller, a (noir) crime novel, an absurdist comedy, a love story, a drama, a poetry collection, a dictionary of languages forgotten and newly invented, an epic historical novel, and even a Western (I haven’t read a Western as good as parts of Eddie for a very long time, if at all) – all of this at once.
In short, Rick Harsch’s newest novel is not only a treasure cove of language porn – it is also a narrative rollercoaster, artfully fashioned by a whimsical narrator you simply can’t help admire even when he gets intentionally annoying. In times somewhat different than the current age of Twitter tweets and rampant split-second attention deficit disorder I can easily imagine this becoming a part of the canon. Kids in secondary schools and universities all over the English-speaking (or English-learning) world could easily be pestered with this instead of Finnegan's Wake, for example – only that in case of Eddie, they might even be interested in making it further than the cover.
I’ve started writing this worried that rummaging through my mind for things I remember about Eddie Vegas would be frustrating – and yet, completely unexpectedly, I find myself remembering all these vivid details for some reason. As this is, sadly, definitely not true of every book I happen to read, apparently Eddie has made quite an impression. So let me see what I can remember from more than four years ago.
The Manifold Destiny of Eddie Vegas is a formidable tome in terms of length and complexity, yet it reads effortlessly, smoothly, and very quickly – especially once you get the hang of Rick’s trademark linguistic stunts. I’ve had the fortune of reading much of what Mr Harsch has written, and I don’t suppose he ever disappoints in this regard – but I found that Eddie was truly on (a yet) another level. Still, I don’t feel that Rick ever crosses that fine line between good taste and gratuitous fanciness: while he is indeed an impressively eloquent linguistic delinquent, he is also as hilarious as he's unrelenting. And his lists, for crying out loud, the lists! They are poems, really: from dirty, drunken ditties to dazzling diatribes such as the horrendous thirty-page list of moronic, imbecilic, and idiotic names – truly pure-blooded American names – for doomsday devices. What am I going on about, you ask? Well, Rick approaches the rather sensitive subject of nuclear tests with the immediacy of a battering ram: instead of wasting any time yammering about it, he just hands us a list of names of each individual nuclear bomb that Americans have ever blown up on their own soil. There is a truckload of them – the list goes on forever – and seeing so much human idiocy in one place is about as bizarre and disturbing as watching the news or checking out your favourite social media stream.
However, Eddie Vegas is undoubtedly far from being all fancy bells and whistles and no substance. Four years after I read it, I still remember it as a magnificent, intricate, urgent spectacle spanning two continents and multiple timelines, a political thriller, a (noir) crime novel, an absurdist comedy, a love story, a drama, a poetry collection, a dictionary of languages forgotten and newly invented, an epic historical novel, and even a Western (I haven’t read a Western as good as parts of Eddie for a very long time, if at all) – all of this at once.
In short, Rick Harsch’s newest novel is not only a treasure cove of language porn – it is also a narrative rollercoaster, artfully fashioned by a whimsical narrator you simply can’t help admire even when he gets intentionally annoying. In times somewhat different than the current age of Twitter tweets and rampant split-second attention deficit disorder I can easily imagine this becoming a part of the canon. Kids in secondary schools and universities all over the English-speaking (or English-learning) world could easily be pestered with this instead of Finnegan's Wake, for example – only that in case of Eddie, they might even be interested in making it further than the cover.
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