The Amalgamation Polka (Vintage Contemporaries) [Paperback]

Stephen Wright (Author)

Book Description

Series: Vintage Contemporaries | Publication Date: June 12, 2007

Born in 1844 in bucolic upstate New York, Liberty Fish is the son of fervent abolitionists as well as the grandson of Carolina slaveholders even more dedicated to their cause. Thus follows a childhood limned with fugitive slaves moving through hidden passageways in the house, and the inevitable distress that befalls his mother whenever letters arrive from her parents. In hopes of reconciling the familial disunion, Liberty escapes--first into the cauldron of war and then into a bedlam more disturbing still. In a vibrant display of literary achievement, Stephen Wright brings us a Civil War novel unlike any other.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. The author of the Vietnam classic Meditation in Green (1983) here channels Liberty Fish, a fictional member of a real, still-prominent upstate New York family, for a gruesome Civil War picaresque à la Candide. Roxana Maury, the daughter of Carolinian slaveholders, turns against the "peculiar institution," disowns her parents, Asa and Ida and marries northerner Thatcher Fish, who shares her abolitionism. Their son Liberty is born in 1844, and his liberal education is enhanced by his parents, and the oddball metaphysicians and charlatans with whom they surround themselves. When war breaks out, Liberty joins up, participates in a series of horrific battles, deserts and travels South to his mother's ancestral home, Redemption Hall. There, he finds his grandfather, Asa, practicing ghastly homicidal experiments with his slaves. As Union forces approach, Asa abandons his invalid wife and more or less kidnaps Liberty, and the two ship aboard a blockade runner, bound for Nassau. Liberty functions more as Gump than protagonist, and ultimately learns Candide-like lessons through similarly unlikely adventures. Roxana's background and the (unconnected) doings of a curious Uncle Potter in Kansas occupy a large portion of the story; the grotesque piles on top of the macabre in depicting slavery; highly humorous banter flows throughout. This book, rich in an appropriately fatuous, overblown period style, is the morbidly comic counterpoint to Doctorow's The March.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Bookmarks Magazine

Is it a curse or a blessing that the work of idiosyncratically original writers prompts the most divisive reviews? There's no preordained slot for Steven Wright (Going Native; Meditations in Green), so his fictions have to be read with an open mind and, perhaps, a predisposition for his "dark, hallucinatory world" (New York Times). The main point of dissension centers on whether Wright has balanced the strains of parody and the grotesque carefully enough. Critics also disagree about whether the author's verbal prowess, sometimes so powerful, overwhelms the story. In the end, with some critics' accolades set against others' criticisms, most critics are impressed enough by the author's accomplishment to warrant it a success.

Copyright © 2004 Phillips & Nelson Media, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 336 pages
• Publisher: Vintage (June 12, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0679772944
• ISBN-13: 978-0679772941
• Product Dimensions: 7.9 x 4.9 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (19 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,361,709 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

23 of 25 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars "The bearded ladies were dancing in the mud.", March 8, 2006

By 

Mary Whipple (New England) - See all my reviews
(COMMUNITY FORUM 04)    (TOP 100 REVIEWER)    (HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)   

This review is from: The Amalgamation Polka (Hardcover)

With this opening sentence, the reader knows immediately that this Civil War novel is no Gone With the Wind. Dense, suggestive, and impressionistic in style, it focuses on the Fish family--Thatcher Fish, a traveling preacher and abolitionist from Delphi, New York; his wife Roxana, formerly of Redemption Hall in Charleston, South Carolina; and their son Liberty, around whom most of the action revolves. Dividing the novel into three parts, the author first shows Liberty as a child absorbing his parents' values, sometimes being ostracized by other children, and, in his loneliness, finding comfort with Euclid, an escaped slave who lives in the family's root cellar.

Wright is particularly effective in revealing life from the point of view of Liberty, a child whose house is an "enchanted domain," filled with hidden passageways, sliding panels, floor traps, and peepholes, all part of "the train Mother told me about, that runs under the ground." Moving back and forth through Liberty's childhood and that of his mother, the narrative is filled with extravagant descriptions and quirky characters--Uncle Potter, who is always seeking excitement; Ma'am L'Orange, Liberty's mad teacher; Arthur Fife, aged 146, a former pirate who lives in a hole in the ground; Captain Erastus Whelkington of the canal boat Croesus; and Stumpy, the hoggee, a child who keeps the mules moving along the towpath of the Erie Canal.

Liberty's enlistment in the Union army when he is sixteen begins the second part of the book, filled with the carnage of battle, the devastating accidents of fate, and the horrors of hand-to-hand combat. Following "Uncle Billy" Sherman, Liberty joins Major Pickles, who travels with his own casket (filled with whiskey).

Liberty's discovery of the devastated Redemption Hall and his crazed maternal grandfather constitute the final section of this compelling novel, which achieves additional dramatic strength through the black humor and horror evoked by the unconscionable behavior of Asa Maury, Liberty's grandfather. Long a practitioner of eugenics, Maury has lost all touch with reality, and the torments he inflicts upon his slaves go beyond anything one may ever have read before.

The energy of author Stephen Wright never flags. A parade of oddball characters engaging in wild episodes constantly entertains the reader, but Wright never lets the humor overshadow his serious themes and his message about the emancipation. His descriptions are brilliant and full of local color, and Liberty's emotional reactions to the physical details around him enhance the mood and intensity of each scene. Though the conclusion is a bit didactic, the moralizing occurs within the context of some outrageous concluding scenes, which soften the lesson and make it less obvious. Ultimately upbeat, the novel breaks new ground in historical fiction. n Mary Whipple

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Good Writer Loses Control, September 25, 2006

By 

Ethan Cooper (Big Apple) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

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This review is from: The Amalgamation Polka (Hardcover)

Pro-slavery Americans used the term amalgamation polka to describe what they saw as the inevitable mixing of the white and black races, should abolition occur. Using this as a backdrop, Wright shows Liberty Fish growing up in an Abolitionist household in upstate New York, when amalgamation fears were common. Then, he shows Liberty fighting for the North at Antietam and foraging with Sherman's army, before joining his grandfather, Asa, in the Carolinas. Asa is a violent and sadistic slaveholder and a literal amalgamist, who has an insane and incestuous vision of eliminating Africans from America.

Unfortunately, the stories of these two characters misfire in combination, as the cipher-like Liberty interacts with his Freddy Krueger-like grandfather. Certainly, Wright creates a plausible coming-of-age narrative about Liberty and his three years of military service during the Civil War. But then, the crazed Asa appears and we see a warped and sadistic Southerner trying to cope with his culture and slavery, as well as his anger at his daughter. In a seminar, a professor might tease out the connections. But as a reading experience, Wright seems to seek resolution of Liberty's story with an implausible and gothic tale. The final third of this book certainly has vivid characters. But it felt unconvincing as Wright desperately sought to find the end of his story.

Nonetheless, Wright's writing is often terrific and even Faulknerian at the end of some chapters. Liberty fighting in the Battle of Antietam (Pages 171-191) is excellent. Still, the story seems arbitrary and bizarre when it's driven by Asa. And Liberty, the protagonist, is as flat as a slogan.

19 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Tremendous!, February 18, 2006

By 

C. Gagnon "Rabid Reader" (Danvers, MA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Amalgamation Polka (Hardcover)

Wow!

Came home 2 weeks ago and this book was between my doors. I didn't order any books this week, I thought to myself. I opened it and immediately thought it was a book by the comedian of the same name. This will at least be amusing, I thought. But the insert provided from the New York Times book review caught my eye and tweaked my curiosity. Who is this guy?

First let me say that for anyone who dreams of becoming a writer, this book will do one of two thing for you: it will inspire you to be the best possible writer you can be or it will totally discourage you from ever attempting to bring pen to paper. How the hell can anyone top this? Every paragraph is a carefully crafted work of art unto itself. His mastery of the English language simply defies description.

The tale of Liberty Fish's coming of age in the time of the Civil War jumps off the page in a three-dimensional sensory onslaught that simply transcends the written word. Of contemporary fiction writers, only Anne Rice comes close; and she isn't even in this gentleman's league. How Mr. Wright breathes life and complexity into so many characters within the confines of a 300-page codex is something I'm sure that even he can't rationally break down and explain to the most cerebral listener. This man is the buried treasure for any reader looking to be entertained and inspired while vicariously living his characters' experiences. You feel the emotion, the happiness, the pain. You see and smell and hear and feel all of it. Not a word wasted.

It's not so much where the book takes you as how it arrives there. I was reading it at a local pub where the patrons routinely share new books and authors with each other when I was asked about "The Amalgamation Polka". At this point, I was near the middle of the book. "What's it about?" I was queried. My answer? "I don't know yet, but it's phenomenal." My opinion carries much weight in this makeshift "book club" as I have been the one to introduce the likes of Christopher Moore, Joe R. Lansdale and Chuck Palahniuk (to name a few) to the mostly "best-seller" mind set that pervades the group. And introducing Stephen Wright has been an epiphany. Copies of his first three books are wildly making the rounds as I write this! A typical reaction to his work would be "How is it that I've never heard of this guy?" How is that, indeed.

Writers come and go, but is seems that once or twice a generation a writer comes along whose work leaves us breathless and wanting more and more. Stephen Wright is that author for our generation. He is not Vonnegut, nor Steinbeck, nor Twain, nor Dostoevsky, nor Orwell. He is Wright. And he is sublime.