Shanghai'd

Despite my ostensible opposition to literary trends, I find myself uncomfortably often following in their wake. McSweeney's released a massive novel by John Sayles, an auteur I was introduced to about 15 years ago and who I've followed ever since. The subject hovers about race and labor relations around the US from 1897 to 1902 (I believe), the Spanish-American war, and the subsequent Filipino insurrection against the Yankee "liberators." The NYTBR charged it was guilty of having equal inspiration in both Pynchon (there is a great deal of singing in the novel) and the sentimentality of Harriet Beecher Stowe. I am just under half way through, there can be no judgement, just yet, but I find the novel cares but refuses to simplify or distort, whatever the consequences.