The Son
Philipp Meyer, 2013
HarperCollins
560 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780062120397
Summary
Part epic of Texas, part classic coming-of-age story, part unflinching portrait of the bloody price of power, The Son is an utterly transporting novel that maps the legacy of violence in the American West through the lives of the McCulloughs, an ambitious family as resilient and dangerous as the land they claim.
Eli McCullough is thirteen years old when a marauding band of Comanche storm his homestead and take him captive. Brave and clever, Eli quickly adapts to Comanche life, carving a place as the chief's adopted son, and waging war against their enemies, including white men. But when disease, starvation, and overwhelming numbers of armed Americans decimate the tribe, Eli finds himself alone.
Neither white nor Indian, civilized or fully wild, he must carve a place for himself in a world in which he does not fully belong—a journey of adventure, tragedy, hardship, grit, and luck that reverberates in the lives of his progeny. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—1974
• Where—Baltimore, Maryland, USA
• Education—B.A., Cornell University
• Currently—near Ithaca, New York; Austin, Texas
Philipp Meyer is an American fiction writer, born in 1974, and is the author of the novel American Rust, as well as short stories published in McSweeney’s Quarterly, The Iowa Review, and Esquire UK. He grew up in Hampden, a blue-collar Baltimore, Maryland, neighborhood often featured in the films of John Waters. His mother is an artist; his father is an electrician turned college biology instructor.
Meyer attended Baltimore city public schools, including Baltimore City College High School, until dropping out at age 16 and getting a GED. He spent the next five years working as a bicycle mechanic and occasionally volunteering at Baltimore’s Shock Trauma Center.
At age 20, while taking college classes in Baltimore, Meyer decided to become a writer. He also decided to leave his hometown and at 22, after several attempts at applying to elite colleges, was admitted to Cornell University. Meyer graduated Cornell with a degree in English but then took a job on Wall Street to pay off his student loans.
With the Swiss investment bank UBS, Meyer trained in London and Zurich and was given a position as a derivatives trader. After several years at UBS, he had written most of a novel (no relation to American Rust) and decided to pursue his dream of becoming a writer. When attempts at publishing that novel failed, a book he has called “an apprentice-level work,” Meyer took jobs as an emergency medical technician and construc-tion worker. He was preparing for a long-term career as a paramedic when, in 2005, he received a fellowship at the Michener Center for Writers in Austin, Texas, where he wrote the majority of American Rust.
Not long after arriving in Austin, Meyer drove to New Orleans to do relief work during Hurricane Katrina. He arrived in the middle of the hurricane and spent several days doing emergency medical work for a local police department.
American Rust was an Economist Book of the Year in 2009, a Washington Post Top Ten Book of 2009, a New York Times Notable Book of 2009, a Kansas City Star Top 100 Book of 2009, and an Amazon Top 100 Book of 2009. Reviewers in the London Telegraph, Cleveland Plain-Dealer, and Dayton Daily News have suggested it fits the category of "Great American Novel."
The book is a third person, stream-of-consciousness narrative influenced, according to Meyer, by writers such as James Joyce, William Faulkner, Virginia Woolf, and James Kelman. While a reviewer in The Baltimore Sun compared the novel to the work of Faulkner, various other reviewers, including Michiko Kakutani of the New York Times, Ron Charles of the Washington Post, and Taylor Antrim writing in the Daily Beast, have favorably compared Meyer to a wide variety of more traditional writers, including Cormac McCarthy, Ernest Hemingway, John Steinbeck, J.D. Salinger, and Dennis Lehane.
The Son, published in 2013, has been hailed a classic, even the "Great American Novel," by reviewers. It is a saga of the Texas Mccullough family—"the tale of the United States written in blood across the Texas plains, a 200-year cycle of theft and murder that shreds any golden myths of civilized development." (Ron Charles, Washington Post).
Meyer currently lives in rural areas outside Ithaca, New York, and Austin, Texas. (Adapted from Wikipedia..)
Book Reviews
What a pleasure it is…to see Meyer confirm all that initial enthusiasm [for American Rust] with a second book that's even more ambitious, even more deeply rooted in our troublesome economic and cultural history. With its vast scope—stretching from pre-Civil War cowboys to post-9/11 immigrants—The Son makes a viable claim to be a Great American Novel of the sort John Dos Passos and Frank Norris once produced. Here is the tale of the United States written in blood across the Texas plains, a 200-year cycle of theft and murder that shreds any golden myths of civilized development.
Ron Charles - Washington Post
The Son isn't just one of the most exciting Texas novels in years, it's one of the most solid, unsparing pieces of American historical fiction to come out this century.
Michael Schaub - National Public Radio
(Starred review.) In chronicling the settlement and scourge of the American West, from the Comanche raids of the mid-19th century into the present era, Meyer never falters. The sweeping history of the McCullough dynasty unfolds across generations and through alternating remembrances of three masterfully drawn characters.... Like all destined classics, Meyer’s second novel (after American Rust) speaks volumes about humanity—our insatiable greed, our inherent frailty, the endless cycle of conquer or be conquered.
Publishers Weekly
Eli McCullough, the first male child born in the Republic of Texas, is kidnapped at age 13 by Comanches, and from then on his life becomes a study in conflict.... [B]y the time he turns 16...he is set free. ... His son, Pete, is cut from a different cloth and rebels against his family's history of violence and....Pete's daughter, Jeanne Anne, struggles to be taken seriously as a rancher and oil tycoon. The broody McCulloughs gain in wealth but often pay dearly....Meyer (American Rust) brings the bloody, racially fraught history of Texas to life. Call it a family saga or an epic, this novel is a violent and harrowing read. —Keddy Ann Outlaw, formerly with Harris Cty. P. L., Houston
Library Journal
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