Pete Dexter's novel voice is loquacious and colloquial, somewhat stiff and formal, though supple. It is not a contemporary voice, and it's kin to Twain, with some paring down of his flourishes, a la Hemingway. The voice is omniscient, though it hovers intimately in the minds of many of the characters at different points, showing different facets of what it means to be in Deadwood. Largely, though, the story is Charlie Utter's. He is sidekick and guardian to his friend and legend, Will Bill Hickock. Utter, however, is fated to live a long life, ending, as does the novel in its final coda, in 1912. The three years that Utter spent in Deadwood are the primary stuff of his dying dreams, the stories that he tells the young children whom he teaches to read.There is no single story, and it's the intertwining of the several characters and their plights that compose this novel's portrait of Deadwood. Along with Wild Bill Hickock (and his murderer Jack McCall), there is the sad figure of Calamity Jane (an ugly half-witted galoot of a woman who carries with her smallpox and claims Hickock had been her husband), Al Swearingen (the hotel owner, whore master whose cruelties and subsequent guilt and paranoia set him to run from Deadwood, broke and gibbering), Malcolm Nash (Charlie's brother-in-law who is laid up in a coma for several months before waking, then becoming the preacher of the manichaen Bible of the Black Hills [the way to salvation is through evil]), Sol Star (whose infatuation with the beautiful young China Doll leads to her death, his revenge on her master, and the conflagration that annihilates Deadwood), Agnes Hickock (Wild Bill's circus tumbling wife whose arrival for Hickock's funeral stirs in Utter thoughts and feelings he never acts on, but never forgets), Jack Crawford (self-proclaimed captain and braggart whose vigilantes fail to succor a woman and her children), the bottleman (a "soft-brain" whose bathhouse Utter visits most mornings, and whose compulsion is to collect bottles), Elizabeth Langrishe (cultured wife to a theatre owner whose avocation is casual sex), Lurline (the prettiest of Swearingen's whores, whom Boone the bounty hunter and odd jobs man frequents), et al.It's a large cast, and Dexter keeps the characters and their stories juggling, one after another becoming fully lit, while others momentarily fall into shadow. The town of Deadwood is fated, however, to end by the economies of the mineral concern in adjacent Lead sooner or later, but fire comes first, levelling the town whose brickwork kilns had yet to be put into operation.Charlie acts as steward to drunken, dying Hickock, never really understanding the man, only finding that their usually silent company is sufficient. After his death, Utter begins to see that there was an absence in Hickock, and he wonders that such a legend could have been built up around such a vacancy. The novel itself seems to muse in the same way about Deadwood. In the 1912 section, Dexter's voice is elegiac, signalling a passing both of man and a history, one whose grimy, violent, sordidness was fading, even as record. Deadwood and Wild Bill Hickock persist in appearing on the schematic timeline of history, but without depth or breadth. Dexter amends that and gives this small point in time the dignity of a fully-imagined reality.
Like, I presume, a lot of people -- I came to this book decades after it was written, as a fan of the HBO TV series of the same name. I'm also a casual fan of well-written westerns with original voices (my two favorite being True Grit and Butcher's Crossing), and I knew Dexter's reputation for creating memorable characters. Yes, I know Jonathan Franzen says we should not regard the book as a "Western," but it's a work of historical fiction about the American West, so I'm inclined to ignore Franzen's words as the protestations of an anti-genre snob who needs to justify enjoying so-called "low" literature to himself.Anyway -- set mainly in 1876, the book comes in four parts, starting with 150 pages titled "Bill", followed by 80 titled "China Doll", 70 titled "Agnes", 55 titled "Jane", with a brief coda in 1912. Although the celebrity hook is the tale of the final months of "Will Bill" Hickcock, that's more or less just an entry point for an elliptical exploration of characters and themes of the frontier life, mostly narrated via Bill's boon companion, Charley Utter. Charley is an observer of life who manages to combine both deep insight and empathy with measures of total incomprehension and separateness. The book is less about plot and action that it is about the relationships that propel action, and there are plenty of interesting pairings. The "China Doll" section spends time visiting the Chinese part of town, and exploring the placid Solomon's desire for a beautiful Chinese prostitute, the consequences of which only fully resonate near the very end of the book. Calamity Jane is a figure of chaos and disgust until a smallpox epidemic visits town and she recasts herself as healer. There's thread after thread, character after character, to draw the reader into this foreign land, and Dexter's language is sometimes deadpan, sometimes bleak, sometimes violent, sometimes darkly funny, as he moves between the people. By the end, one is somewhat exhausted by the richness and ripeness of the writing, and you are left less with the feeling of having read a story than the imprint of having looked long and hard upon a painting of an exotic landscape.
What do You think about Deadwood (2005)?
In an enticing mix of historical verisimilitude and wild conjecture, Pete Dexter provides a compelling portrait of a wild west town in Deadwood, one that more than lives up to the famous HBO television show of the same name (and in fact, the book predates the show by quite a few years, leading one to believe that David Milch gleefully pilfered from Dexter's excellent novel as he saw fit).The Franzen pull-quote on the book's cover claims that you oughtn't refer to Deadwood as a Western, but I beg to differ; Dexter is expanding and improving upon the genre, but this is by all means a Western. Admittedly, I'm far from an expert, but Deadwood is really everything a Western ought to be: a character-centric story full of dirt, killing, fucking, heartbreak, misery, drunkenness, and limited but necessary moments of austerity. Dexter gives us these in spades, splitting his narratives between Colorado Charley Utter, Wild Bill Hickock, Calamity Jane, Al Swearengen, and others. There's little hope or light to be found here, which is appropriate. The men and women who populate Deadwood find themselves struggling to eke out a living from the Black Hills, whose streams are beginning to carry less and less gold, and whose whorehouses, saloons, and theaters now provide the only limited joy that might be found (unless, of course, you're Mr. Hearst).Perhaps Franzen is suggesting that Dexter employs none of the stereotypes that detract from the popular novels of Louis L'Amour and others, an assertion I'm inclined to agree with, though Wild Bill does fit the stoic man-of-few-words cliché with which you might already be familiar. If these characters do fit a mold that's already been well-established, they're at least given a believable interiority to justify it. Calamity Jane, in particular, is shown as a drunken mess but also an extremely tender woman who cares for the sick during an outbreak of smallpox, and the complexity and inconsistency of her character make her one of the most magnetic in the book. Solomon Star is perhaps the most disappointing in this regard, even if his story is the most interesting; he makes a bevy of bad/interesting decisions, but we never see inside of him enough to know what might compel him to burn down Deadwood and wordlessly shoot the "celestials."Clearly, Deadwood is head and shoulders above any number of similar books, and well worth your attention if you're fond of turn-of-the-century character studies or American history. And you really ought to be.
—Derek
Manchmal habe ich mir Western im Fernsehen gesehen und mir einen Spaß daraus gemacht, die Toten zu zählen. Ich habe auch Achtung vor manchen Klassikern wie beispielsweise Spiel mir das Lied vom Tod. Aber im Grunde ist es nicht mein Genre. Dennoch soll man sich ja von Zeit zu Zeit auch neuen oder ungewohnten Eindrücken aussetzen. Bei der e-Ausleihe der lokalen Stadtbibliothek stolperte ich also über das Audiobook Deadwood von Pete Dexter. Der Roman von 1986 hat außer dem Schauplatz und einige historischen Figuren/Namen nichts mit der gleichnamigen TV-Serie zu tun.Zum Inhalt (Quelle Amazon Produktbeschreibung): Dakota-Territorium, 1876. Der legendäre Revolverheld Wild Bill Hickok und sein Freund Charlie Utter erreichen mit einem Treck, der aus Cheyenne kommt, die Goldgräberstadt Deadwood. Obgleich von Alter und Krankheit gezeichnet, ist Wild Bill immer noch in der Lage, jeden Mann in einem fairen Duell zur Strecke zu bringen. Er aber möchte nichts weiter, als seine Tage in Ruhe im Saloon verbringen. Nur ist Deadwood kein Ort, an dem man Ruhe findet. Hier herrscht das Gesetz des Stärkeren. Und so trachtet bald schon mehr als ein Mann nach Wild Bills Leben. Denn er ist einer der wenigen, die in dieser Stadt noch Recht von Unrecht unterscheiden können ... In "Deadwood" stützt sich Pete Dexter auf historische Quellen und schildert den Wilden Westen so, wie er tatsächlich war: schmutzig, korrupt, voller Gier und roher Gewalt. Doch seine Haltung ist die eines lakonisch erzählenden Chronisten. Und so wird aus einem Tatsachenroman über die Anfänge Amerikas fast beiläufig eine menschliche Komödie voller Melancholie und schwarzem Humor.Leider konnte mich Deadwood nicht begeistern. Sowohl der Schauplatz, die Charaktere und die Handlung blieben mir fremd. Sicherlich sind die Figuren grundsätzlich interessant gezeichnet, fast bizarr könnte man sagen. Aber die Story plätschert so vor sich hin, eigentlich passiert alles und nichts. Der Ort Deadwood ist mir gänzlich unsympathisch geblieben, man preist sich glücklich, nicht zu der Zeit leben zu müssen.
—Inga
Entertaining novel hung on the development of Deadwood, South Dakota in the waning years of the Old West 19th century. The charachters are mostly lively and verbal. Lots of real historical icons, like Wild Bill Hickok and Calamity Jane.By and large Dexter's method of switching point of view characters works and is pretty seamless, except fot the Chinese prostitute, China Doll -- listless and dull.In general, women have presence primarily as prostitutes: depressing and maybe accurate. Women did have an impact in the Old West outside this narrow prism, but maybe not for the characters of Deadwood.On occasion I found myself on the outside looking in.Still, I enjoyed the read.
—Sharon
