Sayles Upcoming Novel: A Moment in the Sun

[Ian Livingston]

Hey, I look forward to reading this! Sayles has been pretty steady
with the sort of thematic elements mentioned here. Matewan was
terrific.

On Fri, Apr 15, 2011 at 7:02 AM, rich <richard.romeo at gmail.com> wrote:
> 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
>



-- 
"Less than any man have I  excuse for prejudice; and I feel for all
creeds the warm sympathy of one who has come to learn that even the
trust in reason is a precarious faith, and that we are all fragments
of darkness groping for the sun. I know no more about the ultimates
than the simplest urchin in the streets." -- Will Durant