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A Moment in the Sun Paperback – February 28, 2012

by John Sayles (Author)

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It’s 1897. Gold has been discovered in the Yukon. New York is under the sway of Hearst and Pulitzer. And in a few months, an American battleship will explode in a Cuban harbor, plunging the U.S. into war. Spanning five years and half a dozen countries, this is the unforgettable story of that extraordinary moment: the turn of the twentieth century, as seen by one of the greatest storytellers of our time.

Shot through with a lyrical intensity and stunning detail that recall Doctorow and Deadwood both, A Moment in the Sun takes the whole era in its sightsfrom the white-racist coup in Wilmington, North Carolina to the bloody dawn of U.S. interventionism in the Philippines. Beginning with Hod Brackenridge searching for his fortune in the North, and hurtling forward on the voices of a breathtaking range of men and womenRoyal Scott, an African American infantryman whose life outside the military has been destroyed; Diosdado Concepcíon, a Filipino insurgent fighting against his country’s new colonizers; and more than a dozen others, Mark Twain and President McKinley’s assassin among themthis is a story as big as its subject: history rediscovered through the lives of the people who made it happen.

Print length

968 pages
Language

English
Publisher

McSweeney's
Publication date

February 28, 2012
Dimensions

6 x 2.5 x 9 inches
ISBN-10

1936365588
ISBN-13

978-1936365586
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Editorial Reviews

Review

A New York Times Notable Book 2011!

A Chicago Tribune Best Book of 2011.

"[A Moment in the Sun's] true importance lies not in its rearview relevance but in its commitment to recalling in heroic detail a little-known and contradictory historical moment, a sunny time of American pride but also of hubris in sun-beaten locales? Sayles is not a neutral channel, but in his respect for facts both documented and extrapolated, he is devoted to offering us a new understanding of the past."
?Tom LeClair, New York Times Book Review

"A brutal picaresque complete with melancholy whores, militaristic robber barons, desperate cutthroat prospectors, and puppet soldiers... His period slang rings dead-on perfect. [Sayles's] great achievement is to illuminate the parallel between imperialism and racism in turn-of-the-century America?indeed, to shine so glaring a light on it that even if we screw our eyes shut, the horror remains."
?William T. Vollmann, Bookforum

?Independent filmmaker John Sayles has managed to create a work that is both cinematic and literary in its scope and style?a blend so entrancing that you could polish off its 955 pages in one long weekend. It begins in 1897 during the Yukon gold rush and takes us into the Spanish-American war, the Filipino fight for independence, racial injustice and the plight of working people throughout the United States. Short, powerful chapters follow four unconnected characters to create a mosaic of America as a nascent superpower, underscoring the personal and cultural consequences of its ambitions. If you only read one book this summer, make it A Moment in the Sun.”
?Lucia Silva, NPR’s Morning Edition

?Following four major characters and dozens of sharply drawn smaller ones, Moment jumps from a horse thief’s prison break to a Filipino revolutionary secretly photographing a government execution, creating a story so big that even the larger-than-life characters that Sayles weaves into his narrative are dwarfed by comparison. Pick up McSweeney’s gorgeous mock-leather-and-gilt tome?taking care to lift with your knees?and you’ll find that the 950-page book moves far more quickly than its bulk might suggest.”
?Sam Adams, The Onion A.V. Club

?John Sayles may be better known as a filmmaker (Lone Star, Eight Men Out, and my favorite, Return of the Secaucus 7) than as a novelist, but this drama spanning five years, and stretching from Cuba to the Philippines, proves him to be a great fiction writer. The conscience that infuses his earlier work is evident in this novel, and if you're looking for a summer reading challenge with a big payoff, this may be your book. Sayles tells a story of American racism and American imperialism at the turn of the century, through a kaleidoscope of imaginary and real-life characters, including Joseph Pulitzer, William Randolph Hearst and Mark Twain.”
?Elizabeth Taylor, Chicago Tribune (Editor’s Choice)

?Sayles is a terrific writer. His breathtaking precision and attention to detail can make E.L. Doctorow's historical novels look puny and slapdash by comparison. His ability to map the intersections of scores of plots and hundreds of fictional and real-life characters is truly stunning.”
?Adam Langer, San Francisco Chronicle

?A Moment in the Sun's moment is now, a strapping 935 pages, a sprawling U.S.A.-style novel that, something like the John Dos Passos classic, follows a group of characters in parallel tracks as they traverse the America of 1897, taking in the Yukon gold rush, the Spanish-American War in the Philippines, and the advent of movies. Like all Sayles films and novels, it's drenched in a detailed, loving awareness of time and place.”
?Philadelphia Inquirer

?Absolutely vivid... Sayles’s creative strengths are on full display.”
?Newsweek/The Daily Beast

"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.? 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 (starred review)

"Though known best as a filmmaker (Eight Men Out), Sayles is also an accomplished novelist (Union Dues), whose latest will stand among the finest work on his impressive résumé. Weighing in at nearly 1,000 pages, the behemoth recalls E.L. Doctorow's Ragtime, Pynchon's Against the Day, and Dos Passos's USA trilogy, tracking mostly unconnected characters whose collective stories create a vast, kaleidoscopic panorama of the turn of the last century."
?Publishers Weekly (starred review)

"Sayles’s cat-squasher of a book... pulls all his characters onto a huge global stage, setting them into motion as America goes to war against Spain and takes its first giant step toward becoming a world power. The narrative is full of historical lessons of the Howard Zinn/Studs Terkel radical-revisionist school, but Sayles is too good a writer to be a propagandist; his stories tell their own lessons and many will be surprises... [A Moment in the Sun is] a long time in coming, with an ending that's one of the most memorable in recent literature. A superb novel.”
?Kirkus (starred review)

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ McSweeney's; First Trade Paper edition (February 28, 2012)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 968 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1936365588
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1936365586
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 2.53 pounds
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6 x 2.5 x 9 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #1,351,621 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #4,282 in Military Historical Fiction
- #11,754 in War Fiction (Books)
- #58,756 in Literary Fiction (Books)

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4.3 out of 5

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Hack Steele

Filmmaker John Sayles Is Also a Great Novelist

Reviewed in the United States on August 5, 2014

Verified Purchase

This is a neglected masterpiece neglected, no doubt, for political rather than aesthetic reasons. It's structure is a bit challenging and jumbly, I concede, but that's because Sayles has assumed the highly difficult task of weaving several stories of U.S. males who found themselves swept into our country's first imperialistic escapades. Both aggressive actions were taken against Spain-- in the Cuban and Philippine struggles. And both were the first instances of U.S. militarists, corporate barons and media tycoons cloaking greedy objectives with lots of "patriotic" blather about leading oppressed people to freedom and democracy.
U.S. troops were pulled from the masses of men run hungry and ragged by sweat-labor jobs, anti-union goons, and racism. Sayles illustrates these historic forces through deeply backgrounded stories of gold prospectors, minors, Black youths hoping to prove their mettle via military service, and both Fiipino and Cuban freedom fighters seeking to liberate their colonies from Spain.
Sayles depicts each of the characters' stories with cinematic zest as seemingly unrelated strands pull together in a pattern of mounting suspense, violence and disillusionment.
The Filipino and Cubans thought the U.S. was getting Spain off their necks so they could develop their own countries through using their natural resources and social energies to that end. Both were double-crossed. As for the Yanks, they swallowed the notion that they were making the world safe for democracy.
My guess is, this book has not get its due because the same elements who misled the USA into those wars are ruling the roost today. Sayles obliterates all of the pretty myths that the U.S. establishment has woven about itself around figures such as Teddy Roosevelt, Captains of Industry, William Randolph Hearst and so on. Dennis Lehane treats a later phase of this era somewhat similarly and capably in THE GIVEN DAY, but Sayles's gaze is more penetrating and withering, and more politically committed. His novel is a corrective to mass miseducation.

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Amazon Customer

A masterful novel of a lesser know period in U.S. history.

Reviewed in the United States on May 25, 2016

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John Sayles is a multi-talented artist who's films are among my favorites. I discovered this novel after reading his bio here, and being a U.S. history major in college, wanted to read a "faction" novel about the Spanish American War (a subject well known to Sayles). The characters come alive immediately, and you get a rich view of American society and foreign policy in the late 19th century as told through the lives of several characters. It's a tome, to be sure, but once you have a handle on the characters, you'll likely not want this book to end. I've read it twice now, and I'm looking forward to my third read when enough time has elapsed. The stories revolve around a period in our history most Americans know little or nothing about, and if you've read Stanley Karnow's "In Our Own Image: America's Empire in the Philippines," this novel will resonate. Sayles does a masterful job of revealing events here and abroad that shaped American attitudes and beliefs for decades to come. Know that the paperback is nearly 3" thick, with relatively small print; for this reason, I opted for the eBook the second time around. In any format, this is a wonderful novel for those who enjoy reading about the humanity of the history. When you've finished it, check out the author's short stories, which are equally well written. Highly recommended!

5 people found this helpful

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Steven Zoraster

Too Long for the Message, Whatever That Is

Reviewed in the United States on August 12, 2011

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I was less than one fourth the way though this novel when I started skipping. The book starts in 1897 and continues through the the end of the Spanish American war. When I started skipping, John Sayles, the author, had already taken me to Alaska for the Yukon gold rush, to Havana to witness the sinking of the USS Maine, to Manila to witness the brutal execution of a Filipino rebel against Spanish rule, and somewhere in the American South to a prison camp where chained convicts are being used to tap resin from trees. Later the author takes the reader back to Manila to see the American fleet destroy the Spanish fleet in Manila Bay. I was already confused.

In the Alaskan episodes, I learned a lot about the training and corruption of illegal boxing, and various scams to rip off new arrivals hoping to try their luck at gold mining. Here we meet one of the continuing characters, a hard rock miner, turned boxer and all around scam artist.

Roughly at the same time as the Alaska episode, but back in the continental United States I am informed about the raising of a regiment of Negro soldiers who are trained on bicyclist hoping they and be used to replace cavalry. Several of soldiers reappear later in the book.

At least twice I have been taken to Wilmington, North Carolina, where great political upheavals are foreshadowed which I know from reading a review in The New York Review of Books, that will end with the overthrow of the last post-Civil War negro political power in the South. (The two Negro soldiers come from Wilmington.)

What else? Well, I learned a bit about the villainy on the railroads, in encouraging the settlement of the American West by farmers on lands not suited for farming. And a brief flashback to 1894 during a nationwide protest by unemployed and under-employed workers leading some to a protest in Washington D. C., and for the character whose point of view the author is using, a brief arrest somewhere in Montana. Or maybe some nearby state. Since this character is traveling with others on series of stolen trains to get from the West coast to the nation's capital, I got a bit confused by about how far they had come.

I also learned about race riots in Tampa involving white and negro soldiers waiting for transport to fight in Cuba after the start of the war against Spain. In fact I must have read - skipped through - twenty pages plus on Tampa and things that happened there as an army gathered to attack Cuba.

Occasionally real people make appearances. General Nelson Miles who led the final Indian wars is the man behind the experiment with bicycle mounted soldiers. Bat Masterson appears briefly in Colorado as a boxing promoter. The Filipino rebel leader Aguinaldo shows up, first in in exile in Hong Kong, next meeting with the American Admiral Dewey after his victory over the Spanish fleet in Manila Bay. And US President McKinley shows up in person just long enough to get assassinated. Even the actor Edwin Booth, brother of the Lincoln assassin, makes a brief appearance.

According to an online review in the NY Times, several of these characters will cross paths later in the book. Including the sometimes Alaska boxer, the two negro soldiers, and the viewpoint character of the execution in Manila. The NY Times thinks I should care. So does The New York Review of Books. In fact, just where I stopped reading the Alaskan boxer has been fired from his job in a mine and had joined the army because he has no other choice for work and food. And I just figure out that one of the less important negro soldiers is the man who escaped from that resin tapping chain gang earlier in the book. In fact skipping ahead, I found the miner and two of the important Negro characters fighting in the Philippines.(Where the miner is still throwing boxing matches.) One of the negro soldiers will die there, and the white soldier will decide to marry a local Chinese woman and stay on after the Filipino insurrection is put down by the brutal American occupation. But I had to skip to get there.

I am tired and bored with this book. Do I - do you? - really care about what the state-of-the-art horse-drawn carriages are like in Wilmington in 1898? Well, that's one of longest passages from the second Wilmington episode.

Now I have no doubt that the author, John Sayles, did his research. Even though many of the events he described are little known, I believe they happened. Heck, the stolen train episode can be documented by a quick Internet search. Another three click search confirms the history of the bicycle riding soldiers. And if one stays with the book long enough, there are bits of redemption for at least two of the principal characters.

Sayles is an excellent writer using the show me rather than tell me approach. His evocations of fighting between Americans and Filipinos is cruel and accurate as far as I know. With echos of the Vietnam war in it.

But, what I an getting is barely fictionalized historical research, without apparent purpose. Maybe what I am supposed to be learning along the way is that circa 1900 the United States was a harsh land, with many poor people, and some rich and powerful individuals and corporations. With an imperialist agenda.

Some reviewers suggest that Sayles is deliberately pointing to parallels between America then and now. Episodes during in A Moment in the Sun that cover the suppression of the people of the Philippines who hoped for freedom out of our Spanish war, and our 21st century lost opportunities in Iraq and Afghanistan are obvious. But it does not require 900 pages to make them clear.

I name several other authors who have dealt with the harsh facts of life in earlier times, while making their chief protagonists sympathetic, while using their lives to portray a rich load of historical information. C. S. Forester and Howard Fast are two who come immediately to mind. Fast was as least as liberal as Sayles, if not more so as a long time member of the American communist party, but he managed to inject some humanity into his worst characters, even if it is mostly fear and jealously. Something Sayles does not bother to do.

Normally I would reject not write a review of a book I have not completed, but I am making an exception for A Moment in the Sun.

The NY Times review has this to say about John Sayles at the end of its review of his book: "in his respect for facts both documented and extrapolated, he is devoted to offering us a new understanding of the past."

Well, that is one way of putting it. But I see little new about it, except excruciation details.

Still, I gave it 3 stars for the accuracy and the fact that I was willing to jump ahead to find out what happened to some of the characters.

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David Jamieson

A Moment in The Sun - Warm and Pleasant

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on October 18, 2014

Verified Purchase

Did take many weeks to arrive, but the book itself is imaginative and relatable. Never going to be remembered as Sayles' greatest work, but there's plenty laughs, wry and out loud, to be wrung here.

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