Sayles Upcoming Novel: A Moment in the Sun

[Richard Melo]

I've read a galley of it, and it does compare with Against the Day but it's
a little bit more in the vein of E.L. Doctorow or even Jack London. It has
anarchists and scenes of Coney Island and early fillmaking and Colroado, but
it's more subtle than Pynchon (for example, no hollow earth). While Against
the Day (to me) shows a world with limitless possibilities, A Moment in the
Sun focuses largely on comparisons among the political, international, and
social quagmires of a hundred years ago and the same damn thing happening
today. It's a remarkable book, and it's my hope that it really cements
Sayles' reputation as a novelist.

I think other publishers were scared off because it's 1,000 pages. Good
thing there are still houses out there like McSweeneys who are willing to
take a chance on longer books.

Richard

On Fri, Apr 15, 2011 at 1:21 PM, rich <richard.romeo at gmail.com> wrote:

> think its an indication of today's publishing world that Sayles had
> major trouble getting it published.
>
> On Fri, Apr 15, 2011 at 11:32 AM, Ian Livingston
> <igrlivingston at gmail.com> wrote:
> > 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
> >
>



-- 
. . . . . . .
Richard Melo
Portland, Oregon
http://misconstrue.wordpress.com
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