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摘要
摘要
Billy Gashade is a wandering musician who crosses paths with the notorious and the legendary, as well as the unheralded. Billy's song is lyrical and at times elegiac, but never sentimental. And his easy, natural refrain remains true to this day: that most folks were neither as bad nor as good as they seemed, and they did the best they could with what they had. He became friends with Frank and Jesse James, he knew Jim and Cole Younger, who rode with the James boys, and he met characters as different as Oscar Wilde, Calamity Jane, Chief Crazy Horse, William "Billy the Kid" Bonney, General Custer, "Wild Bill" Hickok, and John Wesley Hardin. From the ravages of the Civil War to the early innovations of the twentieth century, the piano player who came to be known as Billy Gashade sang for his supper in saloons and bawdy houses from New York to New Mexico.
评论 (4)
出版社周刊评论
In a rousing and entertaining ride through the Old West, Estleman (City of Windows) takes potshots at our conventional understanding of western heroes and their legends. The tale is told by 88-year-old Billy Gashade who, in Hollywood in 1935, relates with much gusto his life on the frontier. Billy Gashade is not our hero's real name. He assumes that name at age 16 from a deceased but otherwise well-satisfied customer in a New York bordello during the New York City draft riots of 1863. Fatefully entangled during those riots with the minions of the infamous Boss Tweed, Billy runs for his life, leaving his wealthy and socially elite New York family for the uncertain sanctuary of an alias in the untamed West. As a musician skilled with the piano, guitar and banjo, he soon earns his keep playing in saloons and brothels, where his music places him in the high company of outlaws, whores, gamblers, gunmen, cowboys, lawmen and others of unwashed western fame. Quick wits, bad luck and good timing somehow keep Billy alive. He barely survives his meeting with Quantrill and Bloody Bill Anderson. He is befriended by Frank and Jesse James. Mountain man Jim Bridger saves his scalp. He crosses paths with Custer, Hickok, Hardin, Billy the Kid and even Oscar Wilde. His astute observations reveal the fact and fluff from which legends are made. Billy winds up in Hollywood, penning songs for the countless singing cowboys in the early days of motion pictures. His entire story is a song, lyrical and alive with biting wit, drama and the grace of a fine tale well told. (Apr.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
《书目》(Booklist)书评
During the New York City draft riots of 1863, 16-year-old Billy Gashade lands on the wrong side of the Tammany Hall crowd and is forced to head West, where he winds up playing piano in a Kansas whorehouse. A visit from Quantrill's Raiders begins a series of adventures in which Billy encounters some of America's most infamous characters: Frank and Jesse James, Calamity Jane, Billy the Kid, Crazy Horse, and General Custer, among others. Echoing Little Big Man, this captivating look at American history through the eyes of an itinerant piano player somehow manages to avoid collapsing under the weight of its epic scope. Spanning American history from the Civil War through the Depression, Estleman combines an economical style with plenty of humor and compassion. From Billy's perspective, we see that the worst weren't as bad as we thought, and the best not nearly as saintly as usually portrayed. An ambitious, well-executed historical novel. --Wes Lukowsky
《学校图书馆杂志》(School Library Journal)书评
YAIn this picaresque novel, a well-to-do Eastern boy of 16 is wrenched from his comfortable New York City home during the Civil War draft riots. Caught up in a mob, he is seen injuring, perhaps killing, a crony of the powerful Boss Tweed. With the approval of his judge father, the teen is provided with an assumed name, Billy Gashade, and propelled into the dubious safety of the 1860s American West. A fairly accomplished pianist, Billy is hired to play in a series of saloons. His adventures offer him a series of encounters with such legendary figures as "Wild Bill" Hickok, Jim Bridger, Billy the Kid, Calamity Jane, Crazy Horse, and a meeting with Oscar Wilde. A fast-paced, lively read.Frances Reiher, Fairfax County Public Library, VA (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Kirkus评论
In a delightful if remarkably unsentimental change of pace, Estleman (Stress, 1996, etc.) offers an engaging account of an innocent abroad in the Wild West. Looking back on a long and eventful life from Depression-era Hollywood, the octogenarian narrator recalls his lost youth. Obliged to flee New York City at age 16 after badly injuring a Tweed crony during the draft riots of 1863, he left behind his privileged status as the only son of a wealthy businessman. Adopting the name Billy Gashade, the well-bred tenderfoot finds refuge in a Kansas brothel where both the soiled doves and their clients fancy his piano-playing abilities. Captured in the course of a brutal attack by Quantrill's Raiders, Billy rides with the guerrillas and is befriended by Frank James. After Appomattox, the wandering minstrel (who learns to play the banjo and guitar on his educational travels) winds up in Fort Riley, Texas, where he encounters commanding officer George Armstrong Custer. By now a self-sufficient rover, the erstwhile aesthete, who's developed a taste for wine and women as well as for the songs he sings to get his supper, treks the frontier. Along his wayward way, the resolutely nonviolent Billy has brief encounters with the likes of William Bonney (a.k.a. Billy the Kid), Chief Crazy Horse, John Wesley Hardin, Wild Bill Hickok, and Oscar Wilde. Having loved and lost (to consumption) the fair young maid to whom he was paroled after running whiskey to Indians in the Oklahoma Territory, Billy returns to Manhattan nearly 20 years after bolting it, just in time to bid farewell to his dying father. Parlaying his musical talents into a low-profile career in Tin Pan Alley, he eventually heads West once again, this time with the infant film industry. A fine picaresque tale that brings to vivid, mock-heroic life many of American history's western icons. (Author tour)