American Goliath: Inspired by the True, Incredible Events
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Book Overview
World Fantasy Award Finalist for Best Novel!A fantastical novel based on the story of America's greatest hoax, "the Cardiff Giant"-shows up even the legendary P.T.Barnum! All with a great twist from award-winning and regular F&SF author Harvey Jacobs, called "one of the country's most accomplished authors" by Kirkus Reviews.Gaze upon the ancient giant turned to stone! Hear him speak!In 1868, George Hull heard a sermon proclaiming America to be the land of Genesis, home to the "Giants in the earth." Scion of a wealthy New York family of cigar makers, Hull set out to prove that sermon right.And thus was born the Cardiff Giant. "Found" on Stubby Newell's farm in Cardiff, New York, in 1869, Goliath soon created more of a stir than any of P.T.Barnum's great exhibits - which, of course, piqued the interest of the Great Showman himself, who was never to be outdone when it came to separating suckers from their riches...The tale of Goliath and his creator is a witty, raucous, and bawdy tale of American life at its finest.Step right up and see!PRAISE FOR AMERICAN GOLIATHAn inspired novel.-TIME MagazineA masterpiece...arguably this year's best novel.-Kirkus Reviews.A wonderfully engrossing read. It is an enlightenting and life-enhancing read. It is the best novel of a very fine writer and I recommend it to everyone who has given up of ever again being entertained at such a high level of aspiration.-SFWA Grandmaster Michael MoorcockIf Mark Twain and Isaac Bashevis Singer went on a bender and collaborated on a novel, it would be American Goliath! Harvey Jacobs's masterpiece is a bawdy, joyous romp. It's a wonderful book.-Jack DannBells clanging, lights aflash, the plot's ball bangs and rebounds. . . . A wonderful and wonderfully funny book.-James SallisLA TimesHis characters are haunting. . . . I have rarely enjoyed finding a writer as much as I have enjoyed my own discovery of Jacobs.-Robert CromieChicago TribuneHe manages to satirize our all-too-human foibles and failures without becoming too blackly unforgiving.-Thomas M. DischWashington PostQuietly amused, wry approach that gives distinction to Mr. Jacobs' work . . . his dry humor would be hard to improve on.-Elizabeth EastonThe Saturday ReviewStep right up, ladies and gentlemen! Here in our wonderful American past you will find wonders rarely glimpsed before. Behold the greatest showman in the history of the ages! Gaze upon the ancient giant turned to stone! Marvel at our hero, as entertaining in his own way as Little Egypt! Look upon the amazing world of Harvey Jacobs! Come one, come all, for an experience never to be forgotten!-Fred ChappellLike Doctorow's Ragtime and George R. R. Martin's Fevre Dream, it's one of those totally realized, hallucinated pasts. It's swell.-Howard WaldropA great book should aspire (and succeed) in making you laugh, making you cry and just maybe, making you think. . . . Harvey's novels will do all that.-John PelanAbout Harvey JacobsHarvey Jacobs is the award-winning author of "American Goliath" ("An inspired novel"-TIME Magazine). His short fiction has appeared in a wide spectrum of magazines in the USA and abroad including Esquire, The Paris Review, Playboy, Fantasy & Science Fiction, New Worlds, and many anthologies. In addition to the novels and short stories, he has written widely for television, the Earplay Project for radio drama, and helped create and name the Obie Awards for the Village Voice. He was publisher of the counterculture newspaper, East. He received a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, a New York Arts Council CAPS award for drama, a Playboy Fiction Award, and a Writers Guild of America script award.
Format:Paperback
Language:English
ISBN:1542640121
ISBN13:9781542640121
Release Date:January 2017
Publisher:Createspace Independent Publishing Platform
Length:298 Pages
Weight:0.97 lbs.
Dimensions:0.7" x 6.0" x 9.0"
Customer Reviews
4 ratings
Brilliant. The best!
Published by Thriftbooks.com User , 23 years ago
Is this giant too big for America to see ? I first read about it in an English magazine in a piece I think by Michael Moorcock or Martin Amis, who claimed Jacobs as one of America's funniest writers. Well it took the Brits to see Chandler, Faulkner, Welty and a dozen others before we did, so maybe I shouldn't be surprised. A prophet in his own land indeed! This is a superb, mordant, intelligent, clever and wonderfully funny novel which should be on every literary studies syllabus in America. I can't add much to the other reviewers -- except to join in the applause. Jacobs is a first rate writer. This is the first book I have read of his and I'm desperate for more. A great American novel, nothing less.
An American Original Alright!
Published by Thriftbooks.com User , 24 years ago
Sly, randy, and splendidly researched, Harvey Jacob's novel is one for the ages.I did not expect this story to be told with so much humor or such understated insight into what our country - and many of its denizens - was like circa 1869. Marvelous descriptions, amusingly deft characterizations, some startlingly intuitive depths where one would least expect them to appear. This novel does not at all suffer to compare with the magnificent RAGTIME. I was most amused and impressed by the fast, witty dialogue, particularly between Barnum and Tom Thumb - what used to be called "crackling good" dialogue during the old screwball comedy days. Other scenes reminded me of the logical nonsense of CATCH 22. In other words:a hoot and a real pleasure to read - made me want to start it all over again once I finished. Harvey Jacob's marvelous imagination and talent has provided us with a celebration of American craziness and craftiness. Very funny and something else. So read it, already!
What a joy this book is!
Published by Thriftbooks.com User , 25 years ago
Based on an all-American hoax, it tells an all-American story of suckers and entrepreneurs and proves that, here at least, one of each is born every minute. But beyond the hilarity--somewhere between the fictional spin on the factual fun-- Mr. Jacobs is making a point about what made America "great" and lo! it's that tension between suckers and entrepreneurs. And all of this is wrapped in a delicious, rollicking prose that makes you look up from your reading and say,"Honey, listen to THIS..." In other words, I'm giving it three thumbs up.
Brilliant comic tour de force - lots of fun!
Published by Thriftbooks.com User , 27 years ago
The royal monster mavens, Mary Shelley, who created Frankenstein's monster, and Rabbi Judah Low ben Bezulel, who popularized the Golem (a monster out of Jewish mythology) now have a crown prince to share their throne room - Harvey Jacobs, author of the wholly absorbing, outrageously funny novel, "American Goliath." What a farce this is to get lost in! It is based on a true event: the faked discovery in 1869 of a 10-foot stone statue of a man buried on a farm near Cardiff, NY. The entire hoax - from sculpting the statue through burying and uncovering it - was cleverly staged. The statue was claimed by its fake discoverers to be the petrified remains of a giant who lived when giants walked the earth, particularly on the land that became the United States. The Cardiff Giant, often called Goliath, became renowned all over an America desperate for diversion from the agonized memories of the recent Civil War. The giant was viewed by thousands of paying Ameicans for reasons that varied from simple curiosity to anticipation of a religious experience. Goliath is still with us, big as ever in his permanent home in the Farmer's Museum, Cooperstown, NY. The flimflam artists who conceived Goliath and established him in American history found their modern mythologizer in Harvey Jacobs. In "American Goliath," as in his dazzling previous novel, "Beautiful Soup," Jacobs reveals superb writing qualifications for telling the story of the Cardiff Giant and for contributing inspiring flimflam of his own. Each of the monsters of literature has his own personality. Frankenstein's monster, for instance, is both violent and pathetic. The Golem exhibits terrifying power. Like these predecessors, the Cardiff Giant has strength but is distinguished from them by sexual power and sexual inquisitiveness. A sexy fossil? Isn't that too far out? Not at all because Jacobs' comic inventiveness depends greatly on his his demonstrated talent for making the far out seem plausible. Here is an example. Terms like mass medium, mass hysteria, mass production, mass market, mass murder, and even Mass card are widespread with nothing inherently funny in any of them. In fact, the word "mass" has a lethargic quality. Against this common linguistic experience, Jacobs suddenly confronts us with his own mass phenomenon, which occurs, without warning, in a crowd gathered around Goliath. "Mass tumescence!" Don't ask. You will find it described on page 168, where you will also discover that you can relieve this condition by "communal prayer and the singing of familiar hymns." Philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson, politician Boss Tweed, actor Edwin Booth, financier Cornelius Vanderbilt, and justice Oliver Wendell Holmes are a few of the potpourri of fascinating peronalities from real life that help move the story from one imaginative and funny episode to the next. Great showman P.T. Barnum unsuccessfully tries to buy Goliath. Frustrated but persistent, Barnum hires a sculptor to make a copy of G
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