Gesta Regum Anglorum The History of the English Kings Book

Like Dan Yack, this was a madcap tale, although far less over-the-top Frenchy/like a Decemberists song, and more about the tragically funny fate of noted accidental American legend John Sutter who curses out what gold does to a man, Treasure of the Sierra Madre-style. Of course, it's a wildly fictionalized picaresque, but you'll likely enjoy it in the same way you enjoyed (if you did) Mason & Dixon, The Public Burning, or any other thoroughly overboard, comic exploitation of historical personages. And the fact that I'm comparing this to high-postmodern novels written several decades later should tell you how far ahead of his time Cendrars was.