A Review of Snowden Wright’s “American Pop”
The Secret Ingredient
Want to spend a lot of time with a long, involving novel? I have just the thing that will do. I’ve spent the better part of a week and a half with Snowden Wright’s dense Southern Gothic-style American family saga American Pop. It’s the story of the Forster family of Mississippi, who over the course of a century more or less define soda pop for America with their smash PanCola, which gets its zing from a secret ingredient — a bit of a nod to fellow Southerner Colonel Saunders secret mix of 11 herbs and spices. It’s essentially the quintessential rise and fall of the American family story. Here’s the thing, though. Wright sows the novel with little bits of biographical truth to an extent — one of the characters has a fling with Josephine Baker in Paris, for instance — that will have you, at times, guessing what is real and what is merely a product of the author’s imagination. To wit, I’m pretty sure that some of the quotes from biographies and non-fiction works peppers through the story are real. Thought, come to think of it, some are cleverly fake. Who knows?!
Wright has a certain brand of humour that either you’ll take a shine to or not. For instance, take the name of the fictious PanCola. It seems too silly a name to be a commercial behemoth that could take on the likes of Pepsi and Coke. Yet, it kind of works in a surreal fashion. The humour — wet, dripping wit — serves as a reminder that you can’t really take this novel entirely seriously, but that’s what makes it work. The book is a comedic tragedy, given the misfortune that comes into the lives of the Forsters. The secret ingredient? It’s bittersweet. You’ll cry laughing while reading it.
There’s probably enough plot in this work to propel three or four novels, so suffice to say that this is the story that arcs through the First and Second World Wars, and goes to Paris and New York before returning to the American South. A Native American character plays an integral role in weaving together the threads of the tale. The novel takes on the focus on LGBTQ relations by instilling a few gay characters (or at the least bisexual ones) into a period of drama when these types of voices were never heard from. And, sadly, the novel raises the spectre of #MeToo even in this historical setting.
The novel works because you generally care about these characters, even if they do come across as spoiled nouveau riche brats. That’s because in its own way this novel is really the story of America, and who can shy away from liking a book about how pop culture (pardon the obvious pun) rose through the 20th century to be a largely American phenomenon? The novel fascinates as it blurs the lines between fiction and reality, and intersects with larger historical figures every now and then as though getting close to them was a matter of merely crossing the street. American Pop is propulsive and fizzy good fun, even as it has larger ambitions.
I’m willing to give the benefit of the doubt to the larger ambitions, because there are a couple of drawbacks to the novel. There’s a chart at the beginning of the book that shows the family tree of the Forster clam. You’re going to need it, and need to constantly refer to it, as it’s easy to get confused as to who’s coming and going as the novel skips around time like a DeLorean out of hell. The other thing is that there’s a rather unconvincing framing story around a university student writing a thesis who becomes obsessed with the Forster family to the exclusion of everything else. (For good reason, as it would turn out, but this is one character who is too cantankerous to really like — he’s sleeping with his thesis advisor’s wife, after all.)
I suppose that if you were to nitpick, a lot of the novel doesn’t really embellish things such as how certain characters met their demise. Instead, it focuses on moments that are defining in the lives of these people — weddings, hunting accidents, funerals, divorces, and so on. It’s these moments that form the basis of the long-winded narrative at about 400 pages in length — which felt like double that amount for some reason. Still, whether you like that aspect or not, one thing’s for certain: this is a compulsively readable and enjoyable confection, even if it goes on a little too long at times as the novel has a tendency to dwell on certain moments that really aren’t very interesting. (Plus, the Josephine Baker subplot kind of is incredulous to say the least.)
Overall, though, I’m sad to see this story draw to a close despite its blemishes and in spite of its excellence. This is the kind of book winter nights were made for, something to curl up with and get immersed in as the wind chills kick up outside of your door. In essence, American Pop is an epic. It’s the story of one family, one nation, and a multitude of histories — personal and otherwise. It’s the story of how we come to cherish the cheesiest of things. It’s a novel about the bonds of family, even if the glue holding it together is tenuous at best. This volume is about so many things, and I’m glad to have experienced it. American Pop is one helluva book. It feels like a century has passed since I first began to read this wonderfully colourful and rich tale. To say that’s a good thing would be a huge understatement, and an attack on the power of words to convey taste — which American Pop ultimately has in spades. Drink it and see.
Snowden Wright’s American Pop will be published by William Morrow on February 5, 2019.
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