- Hardcover: 219 pages
- Publisher: Faber & Faber (May 1994)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0571198325
- ISBN-13: 978-0571198320
- Product Dimensions: 20.6 x 14 x 2.8 cm
- Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 1,910,296 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
I am not a fan of modern fiction generally - I find most novels written in the last 20 years fail utterly to move me in the way that older, genuine works of art have done. These days publishers seem fit to lionise mere collections of dialogue with weak characterisations and even weaker plots and I leave these works disappointed, feeling that the author has little interesting and meaningful to say.
Percival Everett is beginning to restore my faith in the modern novel. After reading 'Erasure' and the more recent 'American Desert' - novels that are at once tragedies, comedies and searing indictments of modern American values - I feel confident that the spirit of Rabelais (and perhaps Mark Twain) is alive again!
Annoyingly, however, most of Mr Everett's works (15 novels, 2 collections, 1 childrens book) are unavailable this side of the pond so it is ridiculously difficult to explore his back catalogue. Thanks to Amazon Marketplace I have begun that journey with 'Gods Country' and - while it is an earlier and less confident work that 'Erasure' - it did not disappoint.
'Gods Country' is a kind of road movie set in the Wild West. It is the story of a less-than-perfect cowboy who sets out to avenge the killing of his dog (and the not quite so important kidnapping of his wife) by unidentified thugs. He is assisted in this task by a smart-mouthed black tracker (Bubba) and a troublesome child (Jake) who insists on tagging along. Thus begins a picaresque journey into 1870s America, warts and all - a sort of literary 'Deadwood' in which prospecters, hookers, less than Godly preachers and army officers compete for wealth and glory while the Injuns and former slaves look on bemused.
In short this hugely entertaining novel succeeds both in being very funny as well as in asking some uncomfortable questions about the attitudes of the 'heroes' of the West.
(A final thought: it occurs to me that it would make a great film or TV movie! Prospective film-makers out there, please take note!)
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Percival Everett's 'God's Country' is a witty romp-ride with pins in the saddle. Narrated by good-for-nothing, talentless, sympathy-seeking, backstabbing, gambler/pioneer Curt (Dirt) Marder, it begins and ends with violence. Between those two acts, one in which Curt is the 'victim' and the other in which he is the perpetrator, the book manages to explore the ideals, hopes, dreams and faults of America. Complete with treacherous trails and terrain, barely comprehensible fools, villains, good-time girls, an ambitious, raw-meat-eating Colonel Custer and 'a man who looked a year older than God,' the land is as epic as the people are small - sometimes, small-minded.
There is an element of allegory in the tale if you consider orphaned-by-outlaws boy/girl Jake as America, with Bubba, a free black tracker, a camp of Indians, and a professional whore, Loretta, trying to save her from a preacher/bootlegged-alcohol salesman, Phrensie, who intend to sell her to a pimp. There is also a lovely vignette echo of the Good Samaritan when feckless narrator, Curt, is buried up to his neck in the desert by boys (in his words "stinking beaver turds") and then left for dead by an ageing pioneer and an elixir salesman (who is Jewish, in a reversal of the biblical parable), but saved by a turncoat Indian brave.
Essentially, 'God's Country' is a trip from point A to B, but on the way it illustrates the lawlessness that America - in its pursuit of capitalist goals - never seems very far from. It reminded me a little bit of Ngugi Wa Thiong'o's Wizard of the Crow, a tale set in an equally epic unnamed African country and powered by greed. A mighty entertaining read - fun and thought-provoking.
There is an element of allegory in the tale if you consider orphaned-by-outlaws boy/girl Jake as America, with Bubba, a free black tracker, a camp of Indians, and a professional whore, Loretta, trying to save her from a preacher/bootlegged-alcohol salesman, Phrensie, who intend to sell her to a pimp. There is also a lovely vignette echo of the Good Samaritan when feckless narrator, Curt, is buried up to his neck in the desert by boys (in his words "stinking beaver turds") and then left for dead by an ageing pioneer and an elixir salesman (who is Jewish, in a reversal of the biblical parable), but saved by a turncoat Indian brave.
Essentially, 'God's Country' is a trip from point A to B, but on the way it illustrates the lawlessness that America - in its pursuit of capitalist goals - never seems very far from. It reminded me a little bit of Ngugi Wa Thiong'o's Wizard of the Crow, a tale set in an equally epic unnamed African country and powered by greed. A mighty entertaining read - fun and thought-provoking.
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
6 reviews
11 of 12 people found the following review helpful
The Wild Wild West
21 Oct 2005
Format:Paperback
Womanizing and hustling, gambling and drinking, horse-rustling and cross-dressing--Everett sends up the cliches and formulae of every Western novel you ever read. And the narrator Curt Marder, part-time husband and full-time loser, adds an all-important forgotten ingredient: "I had read what I could of the dime novels about the frontier . . . and generally the little books gave a fair account, but always failed to mention the smell." That's why cowboys tended to be quiet loners: "We came together in bars and churches more or less to assure ourselves that our smells were normal and not an indication of coming death."
The action begins when a band of marauders torch Marder's house and barn, kidnap his wife, and kill his dog. ("Killed your dog? What kind of heathens do we have in these parts?" "Efficient.") After gambling away the remains of his ranch, he enlists the help of the local tracker, Bubba, a pensive black farmhand with a reputation for getting things done. This unlikely duo travels the hills and vales of the Wild West, looking for Marder's captive wife--unless something more interesting crops up. Along the way, they have to avoid a country minister selling Bibles with only a few pages missing ("a bout of illness just as we pulled away from Kansas City saw the demise of most of Deuteronomy"), a two-bit hooker seeking revenge on nonpaying customers, inbred locals who will bury folks up to their necks for the entertainment value, and the spotlight-hogging swagger of the local army commander. ("My name is Colonel George A. Custer. Perhaps you've heard of me" "No, sir." "Drat.")
Page after page, the one-liners and the tall tales keep coming. But about two-thirds of the way through the book the tone shifts bracingly and unexpectedly when an ever-present threat in Bubba's life penetrates the fog of Marder's irresponsible tomfoolery--that a posse of vigilantes is often more than happy to lynch the first available black man whenever a crime is discovered. The author relentlessly spoofs the racial dynamics between whites and blacks and Indians; Marder's buffoonery is brilliantly offset by Bubba's gravity and by a local tribe's apprehension. Yet the book never stops being funny: even when the satire becomes acidic and shines a light on uncomfortable truths, Everett keeps the reader laughing at the story's situational absurdities, its characters' foibles, and our own racial attitudes. "God's Country" is one of the most hilarious--and somber--Westerns I've ever read.
The action begins when a band of marauders torch Marder's house and barn, kidnap his wife, and kill his dog. ("Killed your dog? What kind of heathens do we have in these parts?" "Efficient.") After gambling away the remains of his ranch, he enlists the help of the local tracker, Bubba, a pensive black farmhand with a reputation for getting things done. This unlikely duo travels the hills and vales of the Wild West, looking for Marder's captive wife--unless something more interesting crops up. Along the way, they have to avoid a country minister selling Bibles with only a few pages missing ("a bout of illness just as we pulled away from Kansas City saw the demise of most of Deuteronomy"), a two-bit hooker seeking revenge on nonpaying customers, inbred locals who will bury folks up to their necks for the entertainment value, and the spotlight-hogging swagger of the local army commander. ("My name is Colonel George A. Custer. Perhaps you've heard of me" "No, sir." "Drat.")
Page after page, the one-liners and the tall tales keep coming. But about two-thirds of the way through the book the tone shifts bracingly and unexpectedly when an ever-present threat in Bubba's life penetrates the fog of Marder's irresponsible tomfoolery--that a posse of vigilantes is often more than happy to lynch the first available black man whenever a crime is discovered. The author relentlessly spoofs the racial dynamics between whites and blacks and Indians; Marder's buffoonery is brilliantly offset by Bubba's gravity and by a local tribe's apprehension. Yet the book never stops being funny: even when the satire becomes acidic and shines a light on uncomfortable truths, Everett keeps the reader laughing at the story's situational absurdities, its characters' foibles, and our own racial attitudes. "God's Country" is one of the most hilarious--and somber--Westerns I've ever read.
6 of 7 people found the following review helpful
Fantastic & Funny!
18 July 2003
Format:Paperback
It is this reviewer's opinion that Percival Everett's God's Country is nothing short of a mini-masterpiece. Set in 1871 and narrated by a very unlucky cowpoke, Curt Marder, the book shows the good, bad, and ugly aspects of life in God's Country (the proverbial Wild West).
The story opens with marauders burning Curt's ranch, kidnapping his wife, Sadie, and committing the ultimate indiscretion of shooting his beloved dog. Curt, a spineless coward and ardent racist, does nothing to stop them and watches from a distance as his home is destroyed. He hires Bubba, the best tracker in the area (who happens to be African American), to lead him to the culprits (and subsequently Sadie) in exchange for half the ranch. It is in the journey to save Sadie that Curt constantly witnesses and benefits from Bubba's selfless acts of benevolence and humanity, but is blinded by racism, stupidity, and ignorance to realize the errors of his ways. Instead, he consistently lies, steals, and cheats, largely driven by greed and his own self-interests.
Mr. Everett is an excellent writer having pulled off such a spoofy odyssey. Through his words, the reader experiences the sights, sounds, and smells of hard living in hard times. It is a relatively short novel that is richly saturated with dark humor and unforgettable, wonderfully imagined characters with names like Wide Clyde McBride, Pickle Cheeseboro, and Taharry whose speech impediment causes him to preface every word with "ta," thus earning him his unusual name. The book even includes a "cameo" appearance of "Injun killin'" George Cluster and bank robbers reminiscent of the James/Younger Gang.
This book touched on so many issues (the "isms") on a number of levels. Through the misadventures of Curt and Bubba, the author covers the institutionalized racism and social injustices that Native, Asian, and African Americans endured. There are painful scenes of an Indian tribe massacre and a lynching of an innocent black boy. The sexism exhibited against women in the West was evidenced in the Jake and Loretta storylines, and the emerging socio-economic strata (classism) between western landowners was touched upon as well. However, for me, the most powerful messages were saved in the last few pages of the novel's surprise ending. Without revealing too much, I thought it was clever in the way that the author paralleled Bubba's "dream" to live freely without fear or judgment to MLK's desire to be judged by the content of one's character and not by skin color. Curt comments that Bubba's dream did not sound like much of a dream summed up the underlying arrogance and indifference toward his fellow man that resonated throughout the story.
This is the second book I have read by this author and I have not been disappointed yet. I am looking forward to picking up his other works as time permits.
Reviewed by Phyllis
APOOO BookClub, The Nubian Circle Book Club
July 19, 2003
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
A Contemporary Twain
22 Mar 2005
Format:Paperback
"God's Country" is an irreverent farce, one that peels away the romantic whitewashing (pun intended) often given to depictions of the Old West - even depictions that think they are being irreverent. Everett's characters, more often than not, are smelly, boorish, and stupid. More importantly, they are narrow-minded, violent, racist, sexist, and self-righteously hypocritical. Everett masterfully balances coarse humor, a broad and penetrating social critique, and a sympathetic portrait of the far more complex Bubba, a black tracker who struggles to maintain his independence and dignity against this hostile cultural backdrop: "All I want is one day where I ain't got to worry about a white man decidin' I looked crosswise at him, one day where I ain't got to worry just 'cause I hear a rider behind me, one day where I ain't called a boy." I was continually reminded of Mark Twain as I read this novel: it is that funny, and that smart.
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