Synopses & Reviews
In the early 1970s, Corey Sifter, the son of working-class parents, becomes a yard boy on the grand estate of the powerful Metarey family. Soon, through the familys generosity, he is a student at a private boarding school and an aide to the great New York senator Henry Bonwiller, who is running for president. Before long, Corey finds himself involved with one of the Metarey daughters as well, and he begins to leave behind the world of his upbringing. As the Bonwiller campaign gains momentum, Corey finds himself caught up in a complex web of events in which loyalty, politics, sex, and gratitude conflict with morality, love, and the truth. Ethan Canins stunning novel is about America as it was and is, a remarkable exploration of how vanity, greatness, and tragedy combine to change history and fate.
Review
"This novel of character...is powerful and haunting, a major work....It's the journey, not the arrival, that matters, and the journey is an enthralling one." Kirkus Reviews
Review
"Ethan Canin's best novel... Canin, who teaches at the Iowa Writers' Workshop, has written before about the seductive and transformative power of people with extraordinary wealth, but never with such sensitivity.... We've waited a long time for a worthy successor to Robert Penn Warren's All the King's Men, and it couldn't have arrived at a more auspicious moment than this season of potentially epochal political change." Ron Charles, Washington Post
Review
"[A] summer novel that will have you turning pages faster than Barack Obama is pocketing delegates....America America is a timely, engaging novel about power and influence in the land of opportunity. In Canin's adept hands, the tale makes for a lively summer read against a backdrop of true political meanderings that, we can only hope, never escalates to the tragedy and intensity of Canin's Saline, N.Y." Rocky Mountain News
Review
"It's refreshing -- and almost quaint -- to see someone try to write a Great American Novel in the 21st century. These days, writers are more apt to pursue the Great American Screenplay or the Not-So-Great American Ironic, Postmodern Fiction. But Ethan Canin's sixth book, with its flag-waving title, America America, is a big, ambitious, old-fashioned, quintessentially American novel about politics, power, ambition, class, ethics and loyalty." Heller McAlpin, Los Angeles Times (read the entire Los Angeles Times review)
About the Author
Ethan Canin is the author of six books, including the story collections Emperor of the Air and The Palace Thief and the novels For Kings and Planets and Carry Me Across the Water. He is on the faculty of the Iowa Writers Workshop and divides his time between Iowa and northern Michigan. He is also a physician.
Reading Group Guide
1. This novel makes many assertions about the American political landscape in the early 1970s. What are some of those assertions? In what ways have American politics changed since then? And how does Henry Bonwiller compare to todays politicians, in terms of his political demeanor and beliefs as well as in his sense of both personal and public morality?
2. Structurally, the novel is braided from several strands–the political story, the personal story, the story about economic class and social station, and the story of the town itself. Which of these stories, in your opinion, provides the novels bulwark? How does each contribute to the novels themes?
3. Corey has two father figures in the novel, his own father and Liam Metarey. Despite the differences in their social and economic stations, the men are similar in several ways. How? How do the two of them influence the man that Corey becomes?
4. Very early in the novel, an elderly man hobbles to the grave of Senator Henry Bonwiller, where he breaks down and weeps. Corey says he recognizes the man but never reveals a name. Why not? Who is this man? Why is it important to Corey that he is weeping? Why are we left to discover for ourselves the mans identity?
5. Trieste Millbury, the intern at The Speaker-Sentinel, clearly reminds Corey of himself. What role does she play in Coreys retelling of his past with the Metarey family? Why does he tell her his story?
6. At one point in the novel, Corey says: “It struck me again, the way it had just begun to do in those days, how diligently privilege had to work to remain oblivious to its cost.” Then he adds, “Im speaking of myself now, too, of course.” What are the costs, both to himself and others, of the privileges that have been bestowed upon Corey? Has he in fact worked to remain oblivious to these costs?
7. Newspapers play an important role in Coreys life–in their pages, he first learns about politics, and during the Bonwiller campaign he becomes obsessed by journalism and journalists; he interacts with reporters like Glenn Burrant and G. V. Trawbridge in significant ways; and, of course, in the end he becomes a newsman himself. In what ways has news reporting changed during the span of this novel–from the time of Eoghan Metareys rise, through Coreys childhood, up until the present day? In what ways has it remained consistent? What effects have these changes and these consistencies had on our democracy?
8. In a key scene near the conclusion of the book, Liam Metarey makes a gruesome discovery, then a fateful decision, while driving his tractor through an apple orchard in a blizzard. Why, after making this discovery, does he make this decision? The scene is a pivotal one, yet Corey is not in fact present when it takes place. Since nobody has explicitly told him what happened, Coreys depiction of the events seems to come largely, or perhaps entirely, from his imagination. What evidence does Corey have for what he deduces? Has Liam Metarey attempted to communicate to him what has occurred? If so, when? And what else might he have been trying to explain to Corey?
9. In many ways, the interactions of important characters drive the circumstances that result in Liam Metareys death. Do you think the principal catalyst for his actions and death was JoEllen Charney? Henry Bonwiller? Andrew Metarey? Or was it something deeper in Liams character?
10. Coreys description of the relationship between the town of Saline and the Metarey family is one of mutual trust and dependence. How does this relationship change over time, especially with respect to the influence of larger social forces like unionization and the rise of giant corporations? How does the opinion each party has of the other change over time?
11. Though Corey mentions his wife numerous times early in the text, the reader does not learn who he has married until much later. What is the purpose of delaying this information? And why, when Corey finally reveals his wifes identity, does he do it with so little fanfare? What is the significance of the information Corey shares with the reader and the information he omits, not only in regard to Clara but to other plot elements as well? Is it fair for Corey to withhold vital parts of his story? Does he leave clues about them nonetheless?
12. More than once in the novel, the narrator mentions a quotation from Francis Bacon: “If a man shall begin in certainties, he shall end in doubts.” How is this idea reflected in the lives of Liam Metarey, Eoghan Metarey, Granger Sifter, Henry Bonwiller, and Corey? Bacon was no doubt referring to the advent of the scientific method during the seventeenth century, but how might his words apply to our current culture?
13. Throughout the novel, Corey remembers and retells past events without adhering to chronological order. How does the lack of a linear chronology influence the readers experience? Is there a logic to the manner in which he recalls the scenes? Why does he tell the story like this?
Author Q&A
A conversation with Ethan CaninRandom House Reader’s Circle: America America is an ambitious novel that embraces the great themes of politics, power, family, class, integrity and love; even the title suggests we are in for a monumental read. How did this novel begin for you personally, and what does it represent for you as a move in your own life as a writer?
Ethan Canin: America America began for me as a smaller idea. Originally, it was only the story of Corey Sifter, a working-class boy, who falls in love with Christian Metarey, an aristocratic girl. I’d written about 250 pages of that novel when the attacks occurred on September 11, 2001; and that morning, as it turned out, was the last time I wrote fiction for close to two years. I put the novel aside and didn’t pick it up again until 2003. And when I began writing again I found myself much more urgently involved with history and politics and the nature of power. A senator made his way into the story, then a presidential campaign. The novel’s evolution began to reflect my own, and that of many others who on that day became more serious about the world.
RHRC: Many have commented on the unmistakable parallels between Senator Bonwiller and Senator Ted Kennedy. In creating the novel’s “man of history,” did you intentionally draw upon the 1969 Chappaquiddick affair and Senator Kennedy’s prominent career?
EC: I was certainly aware of Chappaquiddick as the book took form, but it was far from the front of my thoughts. For me, that incident merely brought up the more general problem of what to do about the great public-minded man or woman whose private behavior is dubious.
I should also say that although the incident in America America is in some ways similar to what happened off Martha’s Vineyard in July 1969, it’s not Senator Kennedy I think of when I think of Senator Henry Bonwiller. It’s much more Lyndon Johnson, actually; Johnson, that seismic paradox of public generosity, social vision, and political ruthlessness.
RHRC: Corey Sifter says several times in the novel that he is, in a sense, telling his story for his children. I loved the remark that “children change your past. . . . All one’s deeds live doubly” (12—13).
EC: As the novel grew, and even as it became more overtly political, this nonetheless remained the abiding question that drives Corey Sifter: his contemplation of how all his own acts–those acts, as he says, of “honor” and “duplicity” and “veniality” and “ruin”–of how all those acts now “live doubly.” As a young man he was able to ignore his own questionable deeds; but now, as a father, and in his case as a father of daughters, he is obligated to reimagine them.
RHRC: The Washington Post called America America a “masterful feat of literary Photoshop.” I loved this observation because it’s impossible not to marvel at the brilliant way in which fictional characters are superimposed onto the news of the 1960s and 1970s. Was this difficult to pull off convincingly?
EC: As a matter of fact, the historical background is one of the easier aspects of writing a novel. Far more difficult is dreaming up the smaller, character-based scenes, scenes that rise entirely from one’s own imagination. The reason that writing from history is easier, I think, is that historical incident limits the imagination; and although it may not seem obvious that limiting the imagination would help a writer, in fact it does. In my experience, at least, limiting it is the surest way to free it.
One of my favorite ways to find fictional inspiration, by the way, is to browse historical timelines. I also like world atlases– any country with a squiggly coastline seems to inspire me, as do visual dictionaries, those reclusive creatures of the reference shelf.
RHRC: I was delighted by your apparent passion for presidential history, as evidenced by Mr. Metarey’s meditations on philosopher Isaiah Berlin’s “The Hedgehog and the Fox.” Is this a field you delved into while researching the novel, or are you a closet presidential history junkie?
EC: I’m fascinated by political campaigns–which is not to say I’m not disgusted by them, too–but I have to admit that much of the knowledge in that particular scene came from research. I wish I could say it came from memory.
RHRC: Did you ever have the urge to fly a biplane like Aberdeen Red? How did you research the technicalities of flight for the novel?
EC: To research the flying bits I went up in small planes with a couple of pilots who were friends of mine. One of them took me up on a flight from northern Michigan, over the Great Lake, toward Chicago, and when we were well over water he let me take control of the plane from the right-hand seat. It was a cloudy day and I concentrated on keeping the wings level with the horizon. This seemed rather easy. In fact, I was just getting slightly bored with it when he mentioned in his calm pilot’s voice that we were in the early stage of “the death spiral.” I was too inexperienced to notice the altimeter, which, as he then pointed out to me, was moving steadily downward in the dial. It was an eye opener, to say the least. I thought I’d been keeping us on a level course; I hadn’t felt the least hint of the fact that we’d begun circling down toward the water.
RHRC: As your fans might know, you wear many professional hats: not just that of a writer, but also of a teacher and a physician. Which career is most challenging?
EC: I no longer practice medicine, but I can say that for me medicine was easier, and certainly less emotionally turbulent, than writing. In medicine there’s a fairly large but still finite body of knowledge that you need at hand for most of your daily work. It takes a few years to learn it, but once it’s there, it’s there. With writing, on the other hand, every new book–indeed every new story–is a fresh and terrifying reinvention of everything. I don’t think you ever fully figure out how to do it; at least, I haven’t. Teaching brings me back to some of the things I most enjoyed in medicine. As a writer, what I miss most about being a doctor is the intimate contact I had with all kinds of people. Teaching gives me back some of that contact–in my own case, the chance to engage with impressively talented, energetic, and devoted students (which is what we have, generally, at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop)–students who are similarly embarked (and most of them realize it) on what is probably an un-understandable and certainly an unmasterable endeavor.
RHRC: America America is a political novel and a character novel but also in some ways a mystery novel. Yet Corey never tells us exactly what happened between Senator Bonwiller and JoEllen Charney and Liam Metarey, as he might have in a standard mystery. Why does he not reveal everything he knows?
EC: Corey indeed never gives us access to the major dark events of the book the way, say, a detective narrator might have; but to my mind he has nonetheless deciphered most of them. I think he’s fully aware of his own role in Senator Bonwiller’s dealings, for example, and is also well aware of the role of Liam Metarey, a man whose kindnesses are in large part responsible for the life Corey now leads. To my mind, in fact, that is why Corey can never fully bring himself to tell us everything–out of loyalty to a generous and lifelong benefactor. But just as Liam Metarey has left clues for Corey, so Corey has left them for the reader.
From the Trade Paperback edition.