A Moment in the Sun by John Sayles (A Review by Joseph Michael Owens)

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McSweeneys

955 pgs, $24

A Moment in the Sun is a tricky book for me to review. At 955 pages, it’s definitely the longest book I’ve read since McSweeney’s last “big book,” The Instructions by Adam Levin (which I highly recommend reading!). John Sayles has put together something spectacular here if for nothing other than the sheer scope of this turn-of-the-20th-century epic. And in addition to everything A Moment in the Sun has to offer, perhaps the most surprising aspect of this book was how much it taught me, historically, about a time period I previously clearly knew far too little.

The book begins in 1897, shortly before the sinking of the U.S.S. Maine off the coast of Cuba, and concludes sometime after Leon Frank Czolgosz’s execution for the assassination of President McKinley in 1901. In between covers, the narrative deftly traverses locations such as the Yukon, North Carolina, Cuba, the Philippines and New York City.

And while there might be something of a conflict of etiquette here, I want to cite a passage from William Vollmann’s review for Bookforum here:

As for [the bloody coup in] Wilmington, that victory commences thus: “Now, I hear you got a few overeducated niggers up here in North Carolina . . . but if they so smart, they’ll learn to stay clear of the polling places soon enough!” A chapter relating the ethnic cleansing of the city is immensely powerful and provokes the reader’s grief and anger. Here we see the gains of the Civil War undone, and black Americans stamped back down into peonage.

I should also probably just put this out there right away: whenever I read a book that features a minority narrative complete with period dialect and was written by an affluent white person, I tend to cringe immediately and fret about the implications of cultural imperialism. Consider how insensitive Kathryn Stockett’s The Help is (despite its inexplicable popularity). When parts of Sayles’s book really zooms in on the lives of Royal Scott, his brother Jubal and the Lunceford family (e.g.), I was worried it might send the wrong message and distract from the overall narrative (I mean, honestly, we can really only stomach books like The Help once in a very long while).

However, it’s clear from how well the scenes are handled that Sayles is not simply just a better writer than Stockett (he is), he is also infinitely more skilled at balancing scene, characters, setting and the reader’s expectations. Aaron (Junior) Lunceford is easily the most eloquent speaker in the book; Royal Scott is arguably the bravest, though a case could surely be made for Junior’s younger sister, Jessie. Sayles manages, in these scenes, to make you forget about the color of these characters’ skin and truly feel for them as fellow human beings.

But why, as Rion Amilcar Scott asked me, is forgetting these characters’ color such a noble goal?

I suppose what I’m trying to get across is that Sayles has really leveled the playing field with his characters and none are really more compelling than others, i.e. he’s not doing the “white guilt” thing by short-changing Hod Brackenridge, and likewise, he’s not over-inflating the Black American characters to compensate for the poor portrayal of Black America in other period pieces. I mean, of course—just like there is actually no such thing as “always” and “never” as far as qualifiers go—the attention given to all characters isn’t split exactly in proportion—part of which, I’d argue, might come from the reader’s own background and perspective. However I’d definitely say everything might be as balanced as one could hope for in a 955-page epic.

Cultural imperialism actually seems to be met head on by the diversity of the main cast of characters. I have only so far mentioned the blacks in A Moment in the Sun, but one of the other main characters (there are three) is Diosdado Concepcíon, a Filipino insurgent preparing to fight against his country’s new colonizers (after the Spanish are unceremoniously forced to leave): the Americans. This book could easily slip into frustrating jingoist propaganda but it manages to stay neutral like Switzerland, simply observing the events and reporting on them.

I really like a particular line on the reverse cover of A Moment in the Sun: “this is a story as big as its subject: history rediscovered through the lives of the people who made it happen.” There is no room for choosing sides here. Sometimes you are possibly going to root against the Americans. Other times you will feel ashamed for things your country did in the past. But never will you lose sight of the individual plights of each character.

And I’ve barely even touched on the character of Hod Brackenridge who begins the book searching for his fortune in gold up in the Northern reaches of Canada before his poor financial situation forces him into military service that propels him across a half dozen countries over the next five years. Hod is probably the book’s central character if I was forced to pick one but he isn’t the most compelling.

My personal favorite character, however, is Big Ten, a Native American who just seems along for the ride but steals nearly every scene he’s in. A good example of this is when Lieutenant Niles Manigault charges Hod and Big Ten with disposing of the corpses of enemy soldiers:

They heave the body.

“What’s that, thirty-four?”

“I just shoot em,” says Big Ten. “Don’t ask me to keep count too.”

He used fourteen rounds in the fight, hit fourteen men. The other fellas say they just shoot into the crowd, sitting ducks, they say, but Big Ten can see what kind of weapon they’ve got and if they’re an officer or not and whether they close their eyes when they fire…

“We’re supposed to be counting.” [Hod says.]

“Make up a number. Manly Goat aint gonna climb down in here and check.”

The next one they got to toss in pieces.

“Shell must of fell right on him.” Hod is looking queasy.

“He’s not any deader than these others. Grab them feet.”

Eerily reminiscent of 21st century America, A Moment in the Sun depicts a period in American history where extreme jingoism disguised as patriotism, an insatiable thirst for unchecked capital gain, as well as some truly horrifying racial “science” were significant factors that were weighed in foreign policy and executive decisions. Aggression masqueraded as liberation. Minority lives were considered expendable. The bottom line was all that matters. Unfortunately, it’s sad that we can’t say all of that has changed after 100 years.

In the end, A Moment in the Sun is definitely a worthy read as well as a significant reminder of where we’ve been as a nation and where we could be again some day without a fully functioning system of checks and balances within the power elite.

*

Joseph Michael Owens has written for PANK Magazine, The Rumpus, The Houston Literary Review, InDigest Magazine and Grey Sparrow Journal (CELJ’s Best New Literary Journal of 2010), where he is a regular contributor to its “Man on Campus” section and an associate editor. Additionally, his short story “We Always Trust Each Other, Except for When We Don’t” was nominated for both Dzanc Books‘ Best of the Web 2011 anthology and storySouth‘s Million Writers Award. Joe lives in Omaha with five dogs and one wife.