Sunnyside

Zusatztext 77495796 Informationen zum Autor Glen David Gold’s first novel, Carter Beats the Devil, has been translated into fourteen languages. His short stories and essays have appeared in McSweeney’s, Playboy, and The New York Times Magazine . He lives in San Francisco with his wife, Alice Sebold. Klappentext A quintessentially American epic! Sunnyside stars the one and only Little Tramp! Charlie Chaplin. It's 1916 and! after an extraordinary mass delusion where Chaplin is spotted in more than eight hundred places simultaneously! his fame is at its peak but his inspiration is at a low. As he struggles to find a film project as worthy as himself! we are introduced to a dazzling cast of characters that take us from the battlefields of France to the Russian Revolution and from the budding glamour of Hollywood to madcap Wild West shows. The result is a spellbinding novel about dreams! ambition! and the birth of modern America. At its northernmost limit, the California coastline suffered a winter of brutal winds pitched against iron- clad fog, and roiling seas whose whiplash could scar a man’s cheek as quickly as a cat- o’- nine- tails. Since the Gold Rush, mariners had run aground, and those who survived the splintering impact were often pulped when the tides tore them across the terrible strata of the volcanic landscape. For protection, the State had erected ascore of lighthouses staffed with teams of three or four families who rotated duties that lasted into the day and into the night. The changing of the guard, as it were, was especially treacherous in some locations, such as Crescent City, accessible only by a tombolo that was flooded in high tide, or Point Bonita, whose wooden walkway, even after the mildest storm, tended to faint dead away from the loose soil of its mountaintop and tumble into the sea. Until the advent of navigational radio, communication with the mainland was spotty. God help the man who broke his leg on the Farallon Islands between the weekly supply- ship visits. But the peril of the European War had meant Crosley crystal- receiver radio sets and quenched spark systems with an eight- hundred- mile range for all who lived and worked on the coastlines, and so, on Sunday, November 12, 1916, just below the Oregon border, at the St. George Reef Lighthouse, eight miles off the California coast, there began an explosion of radio, telephone, and telegraph operations unprecedented in American history.At high tide, roughly five o’clock in the morning, it was over an hour before dawn. The sweeping eighty- thousand- candlepower light from the third- order lens cast the frothing sea from shore to horizon into the high contrast of white against black for some moments, then back into full pitch- darkness. Two strong men in caps and slickers rowed the station boat toward the crown of stone upon which the lighthouse stood. Their passenger, her corpulent form bundled beneath a treated canvas sail, her arms crossed around her morning pitcher of coffee, was the Second Assistant Keeper, Emily Wheeler. As the light rotated, there was a stroboscopic effect which illuminated her progress cutting across the sea foam that lay like frosting above the crags and crevasses of the ancient reef. Emily Wheeler, in the third generation of a family of California lighthouse keepers, was a difficult woman, but, as with all difficult women who could demand such isolated work, her desire was immediately granted. Of course, send her to a rock miles off the coastline, go with the governor’s blessings.But, unlike other such women, she had thought to make her own uniform. She wore it under the sail and her layers of slickers and inflatable vests. It was navy wool, with simple gold braid at the throat, and there was a smart, matching cap under which she tucked the foundry- steel braid of her hair. After considerable thought about stripes—she didn’t want to seem conceited, yet she...

Dettagli sul prodotto

• Autori: Glen David Gold, Glen David Gold
• Editore: Vintage USA
• Lingue: Inglese
• Formato: Tascabile
• Pubblicazione: 04.05.2010
• EAN: 9780307454980
• ISBN: 978-0-307-45498-0
• Pagine: 688
• Dimensioni: 132 mm x 203 mm x 32 mm
• Categoria: Narrativa > Romanzi