Sayles Upcoming Novel: A Moment in the Sun

[rich]

how can Pynchon not review this novel. in any case it will be
interesting to contrast and compare with AtD

“In his most spectacular work of fiction to date, filmmaker Sayles
combines wonder and outrage in a vigorous dramatization of overlooked
and downright shameful aspects of turn-of-the-nineteenth-century
America. Fascinated by the roiling nation’s multicultural spectrum and
human impulses corrupt and altruistic, Sayles re-creates the ferment
and conflicts of the Yukon gold rush, hobo life, New York’s
sweatshops, the race riot and white supremacist coup in Wilmington,
North Carolina, and the covered-up horrors of the Philippine-American
War (the focus of Sayles’s forthcoming film, Amigo). Real-life figures
appear, including President McKinley and his assassin and
anti-imperialist Mark Twain, but it is Sayles’ vital invented
characters who rule, from sweet, hapless Hod, who survives the
brutality of mines, the boxing ring, jail, and the military without
losing his faith in romance, to his wry Native American road buddy,
Big Ten; the Luncefords, a cultured African American family that
suffers an appalling reversal of fortune; Mei, a Chinese woman forced
into prostitution; and Diosdado, a young Filipino rebel. Crackling
with rare historical details, spiked with caustic humor, and fueled by
incandescent wrath over racism, sexism, and serial injustice against
working people, Sayles’ hard-driving yet penetrating and compassionate
saga explicates the ‘fever dream’ of commerce, the crimes of war, and
the dream of redemption.”

Donna Seaman, Booklist