Jamestown

by Matthew Sharpe

Book Overview

A group of "settlers" (more like survivors) arrive in Virginia from the ravished island of Manhattan, intending to establish an outpost, find oil, and exploit the Indians controlling the area. But nothing goes quite as planned (one settler, for instance, keeps losing body parts). At the heart of the story is Pocahontas, who speaks Valley Girl, Ebonics, Old English, and Algonquin--sometimes all in the same sentence. And she pursues a heated romance...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 015603171X
• ISBN13: 9780156031714
• Release Date: May 2008
• Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
• Length: 416 Pages
• Weight: 0.90 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 6.2" x 7.9"

Customer Reviews

Touche, Forever

Anybody who reads this book and utterly denounces it, as far too many seem to have done on this website, is an idiot, and I hope they choke to death on their own enormous ignorance and severe lack of imagination. This novel is a fiercely wise and loving reflection on the most base elements of human nature, pertinently humane, and made me laugh till I peed not just once, but countless times. It is the first book I think to lend to people, besides Brautigan's Trout Fishing in America. I cannot wait to read it again and again. You suckers.

old weird America

Matthew Sharpe's America here is the America of Blood Meridian, a childlike, exuberant, and reflexively violent America. The writing is simultaneously coarse and refined, broad in its obsessions, but cutting and precise in its arch vocabulary. It also keeps its sense of humor all the way through. As absurdist and outlandish as this post-Apocalyptic mashup is, it remains true to the metaphors of the Jamestown settlement. The characters are well-delineated, and it's easy to relate to both the "native" populations and the interlopers as they struggle with cross-cultural communication, one's responsibilities to one's society, and what it's like to fall for a stranger who can scarcely conceive of your roots. John Rolfe's stoned reading of a Rorschach inkblot is a tour de force, moving deftly from the scatological to the heartbreaking, all the while hewing to the novel's own self-made mythos. Sharpe is conscientious about paying off his enigmas, like the red skin of the tribesman, their ability to speak English, and the nature of the war between Manhattan and Brooklyn. He's also good about slipping in historical and cultural nuggets, both ancient and modern. My only issue was with the obvious difficulty of sustaining such an over-the-top narrative. The relentlessness did get to be a little wearing on the backside of the arc.

A Weird and Funny Book

Matthew Sharpe's Jamestown takes a story that Americans are at least tangentially familiar with--the disastrous founding of Jamestown in Virginia in 1607--and transforms it into a post-apocalyptic satire. All the familiar names are here Smith, Rolfe, Powhatan and Pocahontas, but now these adventurers and Indians, the survivors of some terrible past doom, find themselves in a blasted brave new world full of violence and uncertainty. This might not sound like the stuff of fall-on-the-floor-laughing comedy, but in Sharpe's hands, it is. Divided into several first-person chapters, Sharpe allows his characters to reveal this re-hashed history in every terrible detail, from the execrable conditions at the colonists' camp to the fatally hilarious encounters between the two groups. It isn't easy to juggle so many characters, but Sharpe does so ably with a mixture of wit, cynicism, and linguistic brio, not seen in letters since Nabokov. The first-person narratives by turns are terrifying, funny, and sad (and usually all of those at once), and it is to Sharpe's credit that even the most repugnant characters are not above our sympathies. Sharpe saves the real lit fireworks, however, for his Pocahontas, who here, is a fast-talking, intelligent, vulnerable, monologist. Trust me when I tell you won't find any "Color of the Wind" fluff, here. (The character's e-mail and instant message exchanges with her sort-of beloved, Johnny Rolfe, are hilarious send ups of e-culture.) She is the funny, cynical, tragic center of this novel and one of many, many reasons why you should pick it up.

Tour de Tour de Force

The "Today" show and Anne Tyler's praise first brought my attention to Matthew Sharpe. I bought "The Sleeping Father," his last novel, and was completely floored--a satirical and wry comment on American life that at it heart still has heart, such a rare artistic achievement. So I'll admit, I was predisposed to enjoy whatever came next. Jamestown is more than I could have hoped for. The first thing I love about it--something I love about all great works of literature--is that you have a difficult time describing it. I want to say it's a road book, a little like Cormac McCarthy's "The Road," in that respect. But it's so much more. On the surface, it takes us into the future, at a point when Manhattan and Brooklyn are at war, in the post-apocalyptic ruins of America. A company of men is dispatched to Jamestown, Virginia, where they come in contact with the local tribe of Native Americans, about whom I can say no more without giving too much away. Suffice it to say that in an acid rain world of polluted waters, poisonous air, and species evolution gone wild, the "Indians" seems to have learned how to survive. Jamestown has love stories, war stories, and an underlying analysis of humans in struggles for power. As far as women go, the teenage Pocahontas, diary writing to the world on wireless, is a character that, if I have it right, will go down in literary history: she is a joy to be with, a page-turning treat. The book has so many levels that I don't even know how to communicate them--Sharpe writes sentences that almost comment on themselves but never end up being anything less than lyrical and just beautiful. Jamestown is about America, war, and ultimately about love. It's beautifully crafted and, despite its intellectual and analytical heft that hits you when its all over, it reads like a thriller, each small chapter racing you ahead on the road into that runs simultaneously into the past and the future of America. I'm probably not being clear, so let me say this about it before I wrap up: amazing! I just have one question about the book, and that is: why isn't everyone reading Jamestown? Right now?

over the top and back to the future

In order to appreciate this book, you have to get over the idea that it's either "about" the present or the past. It's what Sharpe calls an "ahistorical fantasia": he puts not only the Jamestown story but bits of Shakespeare, blackface minstrelsy, Disney's Pocahontas, sketch comedy routines, Wallace Stevens poems, a bunch of flatulence jokes, and other bits of detritus into a blender and then serves up the mix in a weird, "Children of Men"-like futuristic context. It's WAY over the top -- but if you like to laugh while your head is spinning around, this may be the one for you.