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Flashback: Carter Beats the Devil 2/5/2015 6:49:21 AM
This post originally appeared on thunderalleybcp.com
Carter Beats the Devil was one of those novels you hate to see end.
The 2001 work by Glen David Gold is hard to categorize. Carter Beats the Devil focuses on Charles Carter, a stage magician in 1920s San Francisco facing a career crossroads. Beset by a taunting rival, with the entertainment revolution represented by movies gathering steam, Carter grapples with the need to pull off something amazing to save his career. Flashbacks to earlier points in Carter’s life trace his development from a privileged youth, his discovery of magic and his romantic travails. Along the way, the story intersects with the death of President Warren Harding and the invention of television.
Carter Beats the Devil has an interesting central plot, but it’s not really a plot-driven book. Carter manages to interact with numerous real world personalities on his journey (including Harding, Philo T. Farnsworth, Harry Houdini and the Marx Brothers, among others) and to intersect with real world events. The prospect of career ruination provides the motivating force of the story. But really, Carter Beats the Devil is about the emotional journey of Charles Carter.
Gold crafted a rather compelling central character. Carter isn’t always easy to like. Indeed, there are points where he’s rather self-involved and careless of those around him. But Gold locates a relatable point of view in this complicated man with a singularly distinctive profession and outlook on the world. Gold’s construction of the world of period revue shows and stage magic is dazzling. The details, the language of that world, the ups and downs, all come vividly to life. And Gold is a master of immersing the reader in the story’s period setting. He incorporates real world events and people not to show off his research, but because they truly enhance the story. It’s a period novel where the period is almost a character in and of itself.
And that, more than anything, may be why Carter Beats the Devil lingers in my mind so strongly 14 years after I first read it. Gold crafted characters and an atmosphere that were transporting and absorbing. While the plot was interesting enough and provided decent payoff, it is the characters and their world that really pull the reader in. I could have gone on reading about them for many more chapters, enjoying the clear love that Gold had for what he was writing. The language, the details, the effortlessness. When a book is crafted with as much heart as was Carter Beats the Devil, it just radiates through.
Gold hasn’t been prolific. His only other novel was the relatively disappointing Sunnyside in 2009. That was another period frolic whose many interesting parts never quite came together. One can only hope fans will see another book from him someday.
Until then, Carter Beats the Devil is highly and enthusiastically recommended.
