The Wall Street Journal-20080216-WEEKEND JOURNAL- Books- A Revolutionary Romp
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WEEKEND JOURNAL; Books: A Revolutionary Romp
Full Text (400 words)Johnny One-Eye
By Jerome Charyn
Norton, 479 pages, $25.95
PARSON Mason Weems, hagiographer of George Washington and inventor of the cherry-tree fable, might not recognize his subject in Jerome Charyn's audacious and fantastical novel "Johnny One-Eye," a brothel- centered view of the Revolutionary War narrated by Washington's "putative love child."
Johnny One-Eye, as the narrator is indeed called, is a whoreson whose mother, Gertrude Jennings, is an erudite madam for whom the father of our country, it is said, carries an inextinguishable flame. Gertrude's bordello is "Washington's outpost" in British-occupied Manhattan, a nest of revolutionary agents working undercover. Our monocular hero is raised therein, as is his true love, Clara, an idealized doxy who nurses the smallpox- infected, feeds starveling slaves and acts as the fearless courier of Gen. Washington's secrets.
Johnny is distinctly not Everyman, but he is everywhere. He fights in Quebec alongside the pompous and brilliant Benedict Arnold ("I still loved the filthy traitor," he says after Arnold's betrayal). He flirts with Arnold's perfidious wife, Peggy ("Satan's strumpet," a charming deceiver with "Philadelphia airs"). He spends 20 harrowing months aboard the Jersey, the floating hell of lice and death on which the British warehoused patriot prisoners. And he is a kind of secretary to the Revolutionary Stars, writing love letters for Arnold and, improbably, reading fairy tales to the "farmer in chief," the great Washington.
"A changeling like myself did not belong to any house or farm, village, country, or continent," despairs Johnny at one of his numerous nadirs. But he is wrong, for he belongs to the wayward, patriotic women of his native tenderloin. If the nickname that Johnny earns aboard the Jersey -- "Captain America" -- strikes a forced note, Mr. Charyn's depiction of George Washington does that extraordinary man reverently irreverent justice.
"Johnny One-Eye" is a satisfying romp through the Revolution, distinguished by its depiction of Washington as "Goliath in a wig," a man thoroughly human and thoroughly heroic, a protector of runaway slaves and prostitute spies and despised bastard sons. Mr. Charyn is not burlesquing our past; he is reimagining it as an uplifting fable of his own, complete with acts of valor and humaneness in the teeth of bestial cruelty. Omit a few of the gruesome scenes and seamier details and maybe even Parson Weems would approve.
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Mr. Kauffman's latest book is "Ain't My America," due out in April from Holt/Metropolitan.
