Runestruck by Calvin Trillin (.PDF)
File Size: 12.1 MB
Runestruck by Calvin Trillin
Requirements: .PDF reader, 12.1 MB
Overview: Could it be that a typical American town like Berryville, Maine, is really Leif Ericson’s fabled Vinland? Could it be, for that matter, that Berryville, Maine where the man tourists point out as a classically taciturn old Yankee salt happens to be a Genoese who speaks no English, where the only black resident operates Wong’s Garden of the Orient restaurant —is really a typical American town?
There is no doubt, at least, that what appears to be a Viking artifact, a stone with runic writing on it, was discovered off Sandy Thumb by Duane Minnick — a grease monkey with country-music ambitions, the composer of “It’s True the Coveralls I Wear Are Green, but I’m the Bluest Car Mechanic You Have Ever Seen.” If Leif Ericson had nothing to do with the stone’s appearance — and subsequent disappearance—there are plenty of people around town who might have reason to help history along. They include:
• Sam Brewster, the president of the Berryville Archeological Society, who once identified as an ancient Indian entrail-cooking device a discarded hibachi from Abercrombie and Fitch.
• Gerald Baker Manley, a Boston civil-liberties lawyer known in Berryville mainly for having surrounded his summer property with an electrified fence.
• George Gustafson, a Minnesota beer distributor so certain that America was discovered by his Scandinavian forebears that he customarily dismissed Christopher Columbus as “some Italian punk.”
The true nature of the runestone seems, briefly, to become a bit clearer after the spectacular climax of the First Annual Berryville Runestone Festival. The true nature of a typical American town is thrown into antic confusion by the entire book.
Genre: Fiction > General Fiction/Classics
Free Download links: