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Carter Beats the Devil Paperback – September 18, 2002
| Glen David Gold (Author) Find all the books, read about the author, and more. See search results for this author |
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Nothing in his career has prepared Charles Carter for the greatest stunt of all, which stars none other than President Warren G. Harding and which could end up costing Carter the reputation he has worked so hard to create. Filled with historical references that evoke the excesses and exuberance of Roaring Twenties, pre-Depression America, Carter Beats the Devil is a complex and illuminating story of one man's journey through a magical and sometimes dangerous world, where illusion is everything.
- Print length496 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- Publication dateSeptember 18, 2002
- Grade level8 and up
- Reading age13 years and up
- Dimensions5.25 x 1.69 x 8 inches
- ISBN-100786886323
- ISBN-13978-0786886326
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Editorial Reviews
Review
"Glen David Gold is one of the most entertaining appearing acts of recent years." -- New Yorker
"Gold creates an exuberant feeling of expectation and mystery." -- Los Angeles Times
"Mesmerizing." -- People
"Riveting . . . tender . . . fabulous." -- Boston Globe
"Simply magic . . . Glows with harmonious elegance." -- New York Times Book Review
"Tantalizing." -- Washington Post Book World
About the Author
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Product details
- Publisher : Hachette Books; Reprint edition (September 18, 2002)
- Language : English
- Paperback : 496 pages
- ISBN-10 : 0786886323
- ISBN-13 : 978-0786886326
- Reading age : 13 years and up
- Grade level : 8 and up
- Item Weight : 1.22 pounds
- Dimensions : 5.25 x 1.69 x 8 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #536,959 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #1,817 in Alternate History Science Fiction (Books)
- #6,995 in Historical Mystery
- #9,870 in Contemporary Literature & Fiction
- Customer Reviews:
About the author

Glen David Gold is the author of the best-selling novels SUNNYSIDE and CARTER BEATS THE DEVIL, which has been translated into 14 languages. His short fiction, essays and journalism have appeared in Playboy, McSweeney's, Tin House, Wired, the New York Times Sunday Magazine and Zyzzyva. He has written comic books for DC and Dark Horse, and his essays about creator Jack Kirby accompanied the landmark MASTERS OF AMERICAN COMICS and COMIC BOOK APOCALYPSE museum shows.
With Ben Acker and Ben Blacker (no, really), he wrote several episodes of THE THRILLING ADVENTURE HOUR, a fake radio show available on iTunes and wherever else fine fake radio shows are hosted, and with Jeffrey Cranor and Joseph Fink, he wrote four episodes of WELCOME TO NIGHT VALE, also available where podcasts are...podcast.
Burying the lede somewhat, his memoir I WILL BE COMPLETE, a three-volume examination of his simultaneous attempts to find connection and autonomy, is now available from Knopf on this platform and cough cough others. The Washington Post calls it "a banquet of vivacity, shrewdness and wit, a soiree of heart-wreck wised up by humor" and the Los Angeles Times calls it "an audacious, boundary-shattering work that will be talked about for a very long time."
He lives in Southern California and if you happen to be a showrunner on an hour-long, he's really good at structure, world-building and layering in character flaws, and his personal hygiene is excellent. He hits his head on something roughly once a week, and is fairly sure that's how he's going to make his exit.
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The book's one great weakness is the fourth-act showdown with a murderous rival (who is conveniently in the pay of other unrelated adversaries of Charles Carter). After all the careful planning and skill that has characterized our protagonist to this point, the sprawling battle plays out largely by chance. The entire battle feels misplaced, like it comes from a different book, and the denouement to the fight was wasted opportunity.
However the book is creative and fun to read and I'm giving it five stars.
"Carter" reminds one of "Ragtime" and "Dreamland;" historical figures have significant or cameo appearances. Such luminaries as President Harding, Philo Farnsworth and Harry Houdini involve themselves in the intricacies of the action. Gold also involves the Secret Service and introduces a particularly affecting agent, Jack Griffin, whose tortured conscience matches his selfless devotion to a public service whose highest-ranking officials reek with moral corruption. Even the craft of stage magic receives scrutiny. The villainous Mysterioso, whose tendency towards mendacity is matched only by his cynical vanity, also comes to represent any talented individual who has lost passion for the beauty of his/her abilities but manipulates those skills for personal gain. "Carter" is an intensely moral novel, and no character better represents the quest for moral certainty than its protagonist, Charles Carter.
The author's characterization of Charles Carter is at once both sympathetic and critical. Gold's comprehensive research into Carter's life permits him to draw a character whose isolated childhood induced the study and practice of magic. A terrifying episode with the family's garderner provides the impetus for what becomes a life-long courtship with illusion, escape and misdirection. Detached from his family's wealth but unsure of his own direction, Carter works his way from the bottom up as he sharpens his craft. Assiduously respectful of the artistry of illusion, he develops a respect for the ethics of magic -- whose core tenets involve self-discipline, an honoring of the participants (including animals) in a show and a consuming desire to create original material. Charles Carter is such a fully-developed character that it becomes easy to see how he would not fit into today's glitzy, self-absorbed culture. Carter is simply too honorable, too self-deprecating to mesh with the "superstar" mentality of our current era.
In honoring the magician's admonishment that no details can be shared about the third act, this reviewer will abstain from details about Charles Carter's personal life, the inner and external conflicts he must wage in order to gain a sense of harmony on and off the state, and the implications that he may have been involved with the death of a President. The colorful cover of "Carter Beats the Devil" should lure passersby to purchase this marvelous novel and enter a world where the impossible becomes the expected and illusion supplants reality. Once you enter the domain of Charles Carter, you will surely be enthralled.
Any attempt to describe the story with any depth might ruin some of the twists and turns that make reading it such a pleasure. So, without betraying anything, I can tell you that the novel is loosely about a real magician, Carter the Great, whose performance President Harding attended the day he died. Anything more about the story would deprive you of some of the joy that you will derive from reading it. However, what I can tell you is that with the covers of this well researched novel you will encounter any number of real historical characters as well as a variety of details about life in San Francisco at the turn of the century. Even more importantly, I can tell you that this is, indeed, an old fashioned entertaining read and a window into a bygone era.
Trust me, it is well worth the price of admission.
Top reviews from other countries
It's a very long book and, as Fathers' Day was only just over a week ago, it's a credit to Glen David Gold that he got me turning the pages fast enough to have finished already. Opening with a spectacular magic show "Carter Beats The Devil" in which Carter The Great and "The Devil" perform a series of outrageous illusions, each one more mind blowing than the next before ending in a magnificent finale involving audience member President Harding coming to a theatrical end in Grand Guignol style, the novel does nothing by halves.
Many of the characters in the book are real; Carter The Great was a famous illusionist, Houdini makes a brief appearance and President Harding was visiting San Francisco at the time that the story begins. As I am not particularly familiar with any of the real characters I simply read it as fiction. After reading the book I checked out Harding and Carter and I think it's fair to say that fiction is the best way to describe it - there's plenty of hocus pocus.
After the opening extravaganza we have several story strands involving secret agents, rival magicians, Carter's childhood and his career and love life and Gold plays tricks with the reader as we try to second guess what is real and what is an illusion.Some of the illusions appear far fetched but the author explains in his notes that all of them were performed (or attempted) during the magical music hall heydays that preceded the movies and television. The same feeling of implausibility applies to the plot but I urge you to suspend your cynicism as you would if attending a performance by Derren Brown or David Blaine and simply settle down to be entertained.
Its all quite brilliantly done - well written with plenty of humour and it comes together in a wonderful, breathless and exciting finale. And that's where I felt that the novel should have ended as my only minor gripe was in the lengthy epilogue in which the author ties up a large number of loose ends. I felt that this was unnecessary and could well have been left to the reader's imagination.
By now you know the plot and what other reviewers think but if you are still hesitating because 'magic' isnt a subject you'd normally like to read about, then forget that and BUY THIS BOOK! The plot is fantastic, compelling, and a magical mystery tour indeed.
Previously a huge fan of horror, I was terrified beyond words at the chapter when Jenks the gardener attacks Charles and his brother, terrified at the 'home alone' chapters and terrified by the missing knowledge of Carter's final act, when he beats the devil.
I beg you to buy this book, and sit back, comfy chair, cup of tea, pile of choccy biscuits, no children, winter's night, cosy duvet, and dont stop until you've read it!
I'm just glad I've still to finish it!
Highly recommend it.
One of the reviews on the back of the book compared this novel to Wilkie Collins' The Woman in White. It's good, but it ain't that good.








