On my way out, I stopped at reception to pick up a package that had arrived for me. It turned out to be three! One was a CD from a musician friend, one was a Roald Dahl video, and one was my long-awaited copy of The Wind Done Gone. So I came home, put in a load of laundry, and cracked the book. It’s pretty short and I’m a fast reader, so I’m already about halfway through it. Max, you have no need to worry about this book tarnishing the glorious South. I have no problems admitting that it sucks. Big time. I was honestly interested in reading an alternate version of Gone With the Wind, but this version is seriously on crack. If you’re planning on reading this book (and I wouldn’t advise it), skip the rest of this post. If you’re curious, here’s what I’ve learned so far:

• Gerald O’Hara’s slave Pork was the real lord of the plantation. He contrived to get himself won by Gerald in a poker game by poisoning his own master with alcohol, and then he used the same trick to help Gerald win Tara. He and Mammy conspired to get Gerald to marry her mistress. Pork designed Tara himself and built it from the ground up.
• Gerald started sleeping with Mammy on his wedding night. Something about Mrs. O’Hara being frigid and frail.
• Mammy killed all three of Mrs. O’Hara’s infant sons so there wouldn’t be any “sober” white men on the plantation to order them around.
• Mrs. O’Hara and Cynara (the mulatto protagonist) would become so jealous after seeing Mammy nurse Scarlett that Mrs. O’Hara would spontaneously lactate and nurse Cynara in her room.
• Belle Watling was a lesbian.
• Rhett Butler was screwing Cynara a full year before he even met Scarlett. He even slept with her the night his daughter died. They have a special couch that they use when Rhett’s in the mood to “visit the honeysuckle garden.”
• I’m pretty sure there was an allusion to an affair between Prissy and Ashley that somehow led to her brother being beaten to death, which is what made her so “silly”, except she’s not really silly, she’s crafty. Oh, and I think Prissy killed Melanie.
• Mammy raised and taught Scarlett to break men’s hearts as a weapon against men. (Miss Havisham, much?)
• Rhett’s getting old and having difficulty getting it up.

Seriously, was the world crying out to have this stuff told? No. This is not a thoughtful re-write of literary history from a politically correct point of view. This is Gone With the Wind on acid. The “parody” label is fully deserved. This isn’t a novel; it’s the kind of thing you imagine as a dirty joke. It isn’t thought-provoking, it isn’t well-written, and it isn’t a fun read.
 
Of course I’m still going to finish it. I paid $30 for the damn thing. *sigh*