Customer Reviews

Jamestown: A Novel

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(7)

 

 

The "Today" show and Anne Tyler's praise first brought my attention to Matthew Sharpe. I bought "The Sleeping Father," his last novel, and was completely floored--a satirical and wry comment on American life that at it heart still has heart, such a rare artistic achievement. So I'll admit, I was predisposed to enjoy whatever came next. Jamestown is more than I could have hoped for. The first thing I love about it--something I love about all great works of literature--is that you have a difficult time describing it. I want to say it's a road book, a little like Cormac McCarthy's "The Road," in that respect. But it's so much more. On the surface, it takes us into the future, at a point when Manhattan and Brooklyn are at war, in the post-apocalyptic ruins of America. A company of men is dispatched to Jamestown, Virginia, where they come in contact with the local tribe of Native Americans, about whom I can say no more without giving too much away. Suffice it to say that in an acid rain world of polluted waters, poisonous air, and species evolution gone wild, the "Indians" seems to have learned how to survive. Jamestown has love stories, war stories, and an underlying analysis of humans in struggles for power. As far as women go, the teenage Pocahontas, diary writing to the world on wireless, is a character that, if I have it right, will go down in literary history: she is a joy to be with, a page-turning treat. The book has so many levels that I don't even know how to communicate them--Sharpe writes sentences that almost comment on themselves but never end up being anything less than lyrical and just beautiful. Jamestown is about America, war, and ultimately about love. It's beautifully crafted and, despite its intellectual and analytical heft that hits you when its all over, it reads like a thriller, each small chapter racing you ahead on the road into that runs simultaneously into the past and the future of America. I'm probably not being clear, so let me say this about it before I wrap up: amazing! I just have one question about the book, and that is: why isn't everyone reading Jamestown? Right now?

Matthew Sharpe's America here is the America of Blood Meridian, a childlike, exuberant, and reflexively violent America. The writing is simultaneously coarse and refined, broad in its obsessions, but cutting and precise in its arch vocabulary. It also keeps its sense of humor all the way through. As absurdist and outlandish as this post-Apocalyptic mashup is, it remains true to the metaphors of the Jamestown settlement. The characters are well-delineated, and it's easy to relate to both the "native" populations and the interlopers as they struggle with cross-cultural communication, one's responsibilities to one's society, and what it's like to fall for a stranger who can scarcely conceive of your roots. John Rolfe's stoned reading of a Rorschach inkblot is a tour de force, moving deftly from the scatological to the heartbreaking, all the while hewing to the novel's own self-made mythos. Sharpe is conscientious about paying off his enigmas, like the red skin of the tribesman, their ability to speak English, and the nature of the war between Manhattan and Brooklyn. He's also good about slipping in historical and cultural nuggets, both ancient and modern. My only issue was with the obvious difficulty of sustaining such an over-the-top narrative. The relentlessness did get to be a little wearing on the backside of the arc.

In order to appreciate this book, you have to get over the idea that it's either "about" the present or the past. It's what Sharpe calls an "ahistorical fantasia": he puts not only the Jamestown story but bits of Shakespeare, blackface minstrelsy, Disney's Pocahontas, sketch comedy routines, Wallace Stevens poems, a bunch of flatulence jokes, and other bits of detritus into a blender and then serves up the mix in a weird, "Children of Men"-like futuristic context. It's WAY over the top -- but if you like to laugh while your head is spinning around, this may be the one for you.

Matthew Sharpe's Jamestown takes a story that Americans are at least tangentially familiar with--the disastrous founding of Jamestown in Virginia in 1607--and transforms it into a post-apocalyptic satire. All the familiar names are here Smith, Rolfe, Powhatan and Pocahontas, but now these adventurers and Indians, the survivors of some terrible past doom, find themselves in a blasted brave new world full of violence and uncertainty. This might not sound like the stuff of fall-on-the-floor-laughing comedy, but in Sharpe's hands, it is. Divided into several first-person chapters, Sharpe allows his characters to reveal this re-hashed history in every terrible detail, from the execrable conditions at the colonists' camp to the fatally hilarious encounters between the two groups. It isn't easy to juggle so many characters, but Sharpe does so ably with a mixture of wit, cynicism, and linguistic brio, not seen in letters since Nabokov. The first-person narratives by turns are terrifying, funny, and sad (and usually all of those at once), and it is to Sharpe's credit that even the most repugnant characters are not above our sympathies. Sharpe saves the real lit fireworks, however, for his Pocahontas, who here, is a fast-talking, intelligent, vulnerable, monologist. Trust me when I tell you won't find any "Color of the Wind" fluff, here. (The character's e-mail and instant message exchanges with her sort-of beloved, Johnny Rolfe, are hilarious send ups of e-culture.) She is the funny, cynical, tragic center of this novel and one of many, many reasons why you should pick it up.

Mr. Sharpe writes an "end of the world" novel to set the stages for his retelling of the Jamestown myth. In an interview, the author explained the fall of America on Republican public policies (which go unexplain in the book), especially the environment. He goes on to explain that he wanted to recreate the desperate times of the original Jamestown settlement. Mr. Sharpe certainly does that. Image the original settlement with cell phones and the reader has an idea of what the author is attempting to do. The book should be read tongue in cheek for it is more a satire than it is a thriller.

I got halfway through this book before realizing that it had no structure,no sense of time, and no continuity. That being the case it didn't seem to matter what part of the book I read first. The story line, if you want to call it that is so convoluted I had to keep re-reading chapters just to keep the characters and events straight. I finally gave up and decided to skip forward to the last three chapters just to see what happens. Not much. If I had not read the blurb on the back of the book I would not have understood that it is about establishing an outpost called Jamestown. Alright, alright, the title helped too. The blurb also let me know that Pacahontas speaks Valley girl, ebonics, Elizabethan english etc. It comes across as a Writers' Conceit rather than a development of character. Every creative work must have a purpose behind it. What does the artist want us to get about life? Not a clue in this book. To make matters worse I got so screwed up on Amazon's One Click Ordering I wound up ordering it twice. Paid for two, got two, dumped two.

I was really dissappointed in this book, but in all fairness, I stopped reading it after trying twice to get into the story. I was turned off by the random and unnecessary violence that seemed like a "trick" the author was using to get the reader's attention. I knew when I bought the book that it was based on irony, but rather than a clever look at current issues through a historical event, it was more like "Escape from New York" with a bunch of trash talking characters that I couldn't develop any rapport with. My mistake I guess, but I will be more careful about believing the publisher's blurb.

I am wading through the book and it has finally started to come together about half-way through. The story is disjointed with little character or story development. I don't expect a good book to be an easy, mindless read but it shouldn't be a chore to get through it either. But, I love post-apocalyptic stories and will continue to muddle through it. The second half is a bit better at least and I would give it 1 1/2 if it was an option.

I realize my title is rather blasé, but I can't garner much enthusiasm for this novel. While I did really like small sections of the book, characters may be more accurate, overall I did not enjoy it. I thought of giving up like a previous reviewer but stuck with it only to be very confused and disappointed. I really like the two main characters and Powhatan, but that's about it.

Anybody who reads this book and utterly denounces it, as far too many seem to have done on this website, is an idiot, and I hope they choke to death on their own enormous ignorance and severe lack of imagination.

This novel is a fiercely wise and loving reflection on the most base elements of human nature, pertinently humane, and made me laugh till I peed not just once, but countless times. It is the first book I think to lend to people, besides Brautigan's Trout Fishing in America.

I cannot wait to read it again and again. You suckers.