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Hoax of Giants |
| Section: BOOK WORLD / REVIEWS |
| Author: William O'Rourke |
| Publication: The world & I online |
| Issue Date: 2/1/1998 |
| Size: 2,137 Words, 13,110 Characters |
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AMERICAN GOLIATH
Inspired by the True, Incredible Events Surrounding the Mysterious Marvel Known to an Astonished World as the Cardiff Giant
Harvey Jacobs
New York: St. Martin's Press, 1997
346 pp., $24.95
Satire often has two faces. One is Swiftian and savage; the other is Thurberesque and lovable. Among famous contemporary satirists, one might think of, say, Andy Rooney. Or, less well known, the author at hand, novelist Harvey Jacobs. Swiftian satire is scalding: It wants to burn what it satirizes off the face of the earth. The Thurberesque, Andy Rooney sort couldn't live without what it makes fun of, since it needs the material for its own amusement.
Jacobs' new novel, American Goliath, is an entirely successful satire of the second type. It mines the "true, incredible events"...
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...ll, when their scams are revealed and their audiences have dwindled, "The crowd makes its humbugs to order. If we hadn't been there to give them their giants then we'd have cause for guilt. But we were and we did. A pair of American Goliaths clumping out of the fog with hope in their hearts." A satirist with hope! As one of the talking stone men might have said, Look what we all have come to.
(824 of 13,110 characters)
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