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The
Most Amazing Thing
by Robert Grudin
a White
Wolf, LLC venture
Nobody has trouble like Desmond Ruck. Shunned by his family, marked for death by Big Crime, hounded by federal, state, county and local law, persecuted and tortured by almost every fringe group that has ever found its way into society, he claws his way from pillar to post in the midst of what looks like the final implosion of the American Dream, finding his only safety in native ingenuity and the huge hoard that he has snatched from the heart of evil. As he endures and prospers, Ruck seeks qualities even more elusive than wealth and security: self-knowledge and self-respect.
This massive adventure story, spanning oceans and continents and bringing forth an abundant cast of characters, delivers famously in terms of thrills, terrors and surprises. Few books can match its breathlessly sustained energy. But beyond this, it is a sharp satire of manners and attitudes in the tradition of Gulliver's Travels and Huckleberry Finn.
Beneath its medley of adventure and satire, The Most Amazing Thing tells the story of a typical American man's search for empowerment and validation, in a world alive with sharply conflicting moral messages. Can Desmond Ruck find dignity in macho power, in romantic love, in philanthropy, in learning how to write or simply in the power and fame of being the world's richest man? In the end none of these social roles proves substantial enough for Ruck, who finds a more profound confirmation of character in the curious thought that "everything has a story."
"A story!" In a more abstract sense, The Most Amazing Thing, with its dizzying multiple plots and its grab-bag of narrative gimmicks, is about the very idea of a story—the nature of narrative as a cultural institution and a psychological revelation. Again and again Ruck's clichéd language can't express the raw intensity of what's happening to him, but his very interpretive failures make his experiences seem realer. And these experiences run the full gamut of traditional narrative material, as well as sweeping across the abundant excesses and phobias of turn-of-the-century American society.