Word: sutter
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Dates: during 1926-1926
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...prospectors of California, we are informed, were fearless and insuperable prevaricators. Also they not infrequently sacrificed their mental balance to the pursuit of gold. Both of these features figure in Blaise Cendrar's "Sutter's Gold." Throughout this tale of Sutter's truly Munchausian career the author in an attempt at sustained tenseness fails to appreciate the differentiation between fact, exaggeration, and fiction. The result is a hodge podge unique, but not altogether barren of interest. The economist might weep over two hundred dollar onions, or choke over a thousand dollar glass of water; the geologist might be alarmed over...
Washington, D.C., knew Sutter for years, enormously fat with age, gripping the Apocalypse in his pocket, supporting a parasitic swarm of lawyers until he had to shine shoes to support himself. It knew Carpenter Marshall of New Jersey, too, whose pickaxe pried loose Sutter's hellgate; Marshall escaped from his asylum once and dug filth from Washington's guttters, screaming, "There is gold everywhere, everywhere!" One June afternoon in 1880, old Sutter sat on the steps of the Capitol, pondering Justice. Malicious newboys ran up and told him that congress had just awarded him 100 millions of indemnity...
When Madame Sutter arrived, Sutter's gold had wiped out New Helvetia. She died of heart failure on the spot, lucky woman. The world, quite mad, had overrun the Sacramento Valley, tearing open its hills for gold, silver, platinum. Sutter's men deserted to wash gravel. His herds died, unmilked. His barns fell. His crops wasted. All his fat lands were squatted on, his fort occupied, by hordes of gold-mad grabbers who had shouted his name from the Mediterranean, across Panama, up to the Golden Gate; from Siberia, Japan, Russia, Sweden, up to the Golden Gate. Gunboats...
...Significance. It remained for a Frenchman, a world-wide knockabout himself, to resurrect this California Midas whom our swarming old-Americana hunters have overlooked. Perhaps Sutter was put from memory for conscience's sake, but now he is back, a mighty, marvelous, golden ghost. Author Cendrars's rushing historical present is a handsome medium for the sweep of such fortunes and fates. If he has anywhere exaggerated, which seems inevitable, who cares...
...SUTTER'S GOLD - Blaise Cendrars-Harper...