Sunnyside by Glen David Gold
Pure Gold
Book Description Glen David Gold, author of the best seller Carter Beats
the Devil, now gives us a grand entertainment with the brilliantly realized
figure of Charlie Chaplin at its center: a novel at once cinematic and
intimate, heartrending and darkly comic, that captures the moment when
American capitalism, a world at war, and the emerging mecca of
Hollywood intersect to spawn an enduring culture of celebrity. Sunnyside
opens on a winter day in 1916 during which Charlie Chaplin is spotted in
more than eight hundred places simultaneously, an extraordinary delusion
that forever binds the overlapping fortunes of three men: Leland Wheeler,
son of the world’s last (and worst) Wild West star, as he finds unexpected
love on the battlefields of France; Hugo Black, drafted to fight under the
towering General Edmund Ironside in America’s doomed expedition
against the Bolsheviks; and Chaplin himself, as he faces a tightening vise
of complications—studio moguls, questions about his patriotism, his
unchecked heart, and, most menacing of all, his mother.

The narrative is as rich and expansive as the ground it covers, and it is
cast with a dazzling roster of both real and fictional characters: Mary
Pickford, Douglas Fairbanks, Adolph Zukor, Chaplin’s (first) child bride, a
thieving Girl Scout, the secretary of the treasury, a lovesick film theorist,
three Russian princesses (gracious, nervous, and nihilist), a crew of fly-by-
the-seat-of-their-pants moviemakers, legions of starstruck fans, and Rin
Tin Tin.
By turns lighthearted and profound, Sunnyside is an altogether
spellbinding novel about dreams, ambition, and the dawn of the modern
age.
Glen David Gold on Sunnyside
Charlie Chaplin became the repository of the soul of the 20th
century through an especially mysterious alchemy. In trying to explain this,
most commentators eventually turn their eyes away, as if wrapping their
heads around it is too impossible, too much like explaining, well, magic.
Which is where I come in. Im a fan of the inexplicable. When Chaplin
became the most famous man in the world, he surpassed the previous
most famous man in the world, Houdini. And yet no one has really tried to
grasp—in a novel&mdash:the consequences of the very first uncontrolled
frisson of fame. Perhaps because few authors grew up among Hollywood-
style genius and madness, Chaplin has rarely been used in fiction. But I
lived in Hollywood (the very hospital I was born in later became the
Scientology West Coast headquarters). My great aunt Ingrid, a journalist,
was Chaplins neighbor in Switzerland; family legend has it that he dictated
parts of his autobiography to her.
So: in 1914, Chaplin was barely even a film comedian, Hollywood was a
farm town where the lights went out at 8 oclock, and America was more or
less a great big cornfield with an occasional city poking among its rows.
And in 1918, Chaplin was a genius, Hollywood was the worlds aspirational
mecca, and America... well, America was in serious trouble, in that it
thought it had won the War.
Sunnyside is the story of this rapid transformation as Chaplin and his
adopted country lose, one more devastating time, their innocence.
While I was working on Sunnyside, I realized to my embarrassment I
was writing about something of importance. Try as I might to keep it light
entertainment (and yes, there are train chases, dancing princesses, clever
jewel robberies, crossbow executions, rescues at sea and battles with
flamethrowers), it turned out that I was writing a novel of ideas. It relies
less on plot than character, less on explosions (but I did mention the
flamethrowers, no?) than on epiphanies, less on clever twists than on an

ever-deepening worldview. I wanted to explain how only America both wins
and loses wars at the very same moment.
Sunnyside plunders film theory, fairytales, arcane Hollywood business
practices and the private lives of its most famous citizens so I can question
in the end whether the universe actually has meaning, or if narrative is our
last, best attempt to beat back a crushing loneliness that almost none of us
can comprehend.
Oh, almost none of us—except Charlie Chaplin. —Glen David Gold
(Photo © Jonathan Sprague)
Personal Review: Sunnyside by Glen David Gold
What is one to make of Glen David Gold's second act, "Sunnyside," which
comes more than seven years after his much praised first novel, "Carter
Beats the Devil"? As with Carter, Gold again demonstrates his
extraordinary gifts - characterization, humor, and perfectly metered prose,
as well as exceptional research - are not for this author tricks but sheer
magic. Yet where Carter followed a story that was linear and easily
deciphered, "Sunnyside" follows not one track but several. And if like most
readers you follow these various paths expecting that Gold will eventually
bring them together in some tidy ending, you are sure to be disappointed.
Instead these separate stories circle each other and occasionally almost,
but never quite touch, having in common the period leading up to
America's involvement in World War I.
Gold gives us one story of handsome Leland Wheeler, the son of a woman
lighthouse officer and a Wild West scoundrel who dreams of Hollywood
fame against his mother's wishes; a family of Russian Jewish grifters who
dream of riches; Hugo Black, an intellectual who searches for glory but has
the misfortune of being sent to Siberia as part of the Allies ill conceived
plan to undermine the new Bolshevik regime, and, of course, Charlie
Chaplin. One hardly knows what to say about the Chaplin story, as it
engages so many other varied plots, sub-plots and characters (and so
many characters! Doug Fairbanks, Goldwyn, McAdoo, Zukor, Mary
Pickford, Rin tin tin , etc, etc, etc) as Gold attempts to present and critique
Hollywood's formation.
I cannot sufficiently praise either Gold's prose or his research. Here is
historical fiction presented by a master, who weaves a spectacular tapestry
of facts, fiction, and opinion creating a whole that runs through with pathos
and humor. His sentences sing and his observations often give a reader
pause. So what is one to make of Sunnyside's strange disassociated
structure? From the novel's outset Gold makes very clear that he sees in
this period the birth of modern mass culture, with Chaplin filling the
essential role of that culture's celebrity. Perhaps that is why he organized

the novel in this way, to demonstrate how disjointed society has become
and reflect the impact of celebrity on its members.
One cannot know for sure what this author intended, and at times one may
become frustrated by the novel's seemingly obtuse structure. One thing is
certain, in the hands of a lesser writer, the attempt would have sunk into a
disastrous morass and it is a testament to Gold's tremendous talent that he
can keep this work afloat and his reader engaged. One may puzzle over
Gold's intent, but Sunnyside offers no room to doubt his gifts.
By any standard, Sunnyside is an unconventional piece of story telling and
I am reticent to attach the word novel to a work so unusually structured.
Many readers will find the work to not be their cup of tea and will wonder
whether they should dive into its 500+ pages. I suspect even that those
who enjoy it will find that it more than once leaves them scratching their
heads. One thing is certain, Gold here undertakes something both
unusual and memorable and I for one took considerable satisfaction in the
trip.
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