Gold: Being the Marvelous History of General John Augustus Sutter by Blaise Cendrars (review)

Reviews 179 Besides the environment, Wild also uses personal experience — a visit to a friend’s place, the disappointment of an addition to the house built poorly, refurbishing an old oak chair, the wife bringing home an antique dry sink . . having wrecked your bank account. . . .” These are the kinds of dis­ appointments and joys that hit a responsive chord. But whatever the subject, Wild fills his poems with animals — his trade­ mark. A bear gets chased out of an outhouse or a moose pokes “his head out, / soapy-eyed, . . .rolling his tongue, making faces at us” or an elk kicks a beaver or a bull sticks his head out of the barn at sunset and “tests his golden throat / like Enrico Caruso getting ready for a date.” Wild’s animals are real, but they are caricatures, too, wildly tumbling together as in an ark out of a Dr. Seuss story. The serio-comic nature of Wild’s themes — the tragic overtones of a farmer and his wife who must eventually lose their farm because they are childless contrasted with the comical image of the wife “throwing / saucers and pictures out the window / in a rage because she can’t” bear a child — sometimes produces laughter full of pain. More often they produce puzzle­ ment quickly changing to delight. The poem “The Peaceable Kingdom” is at first puzzling with its two different topics. Here a young man dreams of pioneers building houses in the new world as elk graze nearby and Indians “innocent as new Christians” peek out of bushes to watch. The new-world theme seems a digression from the earlier portrayal of the young man hating girls. But he considers changing his attitude after the dream. Perhaps a truce between man and woman, between man and other animals is possible, after all. The exuberance and the robustness of life revealed in the images, in the ironies, in the odd connections — all tell that this poet entertains hope in the future of the animal kingdom. Reading The Peaceable Kingdom requires time and energy — time and energy well spent. JEANY R. PONTRELLI Truckee Meadows Community College Gold: Being the Marvelous History of General John Augustus Sutter. By Blaise Cendrars. Translated by Nina Rootes. (New York: Michael Kesend, Ltd., 1984. 128 pages, $8.95.) Blaise Cendrars’ fictional biography of John Sutter, first published in French in 1965, begins in Switzerland where Sutter skirmishes with legalities and officialdom after deserting his wife and children. Sutter then goes to California where he creates an empire which collapses when gold is found on his land and his employees and slaves depart. The book ends on the steps of the Capitol in Washington, where Sutter as a broken old man battles official­ dom again, this time in futile attempts to be repaid for his loss. 180 Western American Literature Cendrars’ characterization of Sutter is flat, partly a result of the book’s brevity. The journey westward from Berne to California might as well be a journey from Berne to Bordeaux, or perhaps that frantic train journey Cendrars was said to have taken around Germany when at seventeen he fled his parents’ home. Sutter’s character is diminished by this superficial treat­ ment of the long and formidable journey west, and it is also flattened by Cendrars’ abrupt and overly dramatic style. Each sentence, paragraph and chapter is short, and many are hollow. These two passages make up more than one-third of Chapter 9: During the three months he has just spent at Fort Independence, John Augustus Sutter has matured his plan. He has made up hismind. He will go to California. Who dares all, wins all. Sutter must seize his opportunity. He isready. [26] This self-consciously simple style emphasizes Sutter’s plans and hopes instead of what his senses tell him; Gold contains few vivid images and an unfortu­ nately large number of European and 19th-century romantic fictions and clichés. For example, as a dim backdrop to Sutter’s ride toward the “sequoia trees of Snake River in Idaho” [32] we are told that the “Redskins are on the warpath” [29] a reasonably accurate if uninspired translation of “Les Peaux Rouges sont...