Heartbreak, hope during Nixon era
America America
By Ethan Canin, Random House, 2008, 458 pp.
Ethan Canin's new novel is about endings, the heartbreak that comes with them and the hope that they engender. It is also his best work to date, a lament for what was and an embracing of what remains.
America America begins in 2006 with the funeral of former senator and presidential hopeful Henry Bonwiller, and it is Bonwiller's death that is the impetus for the compelling saga of America during the Nixon era.
Among those attending the funeral is Corey Sifter, now publisher of a small newspaper. In the early 1970s Corey is the 16-year-old son of a working-class family. Through his work ethic, he slowly establishes an unexpected relationship with Liam Metarey, head of a prominent family in a small town in western New York State. Mr. Metarey takes an instant liking to Corey and eventually allows him a view of the national politics that invade the Metarey estate.
Corey works there whenever time permits, becoming a tentative family member. He is taken with Christian, the older Metarey daughter, bemused by her outspoken sister Clara, and accepted by their brother Andrew. For a time the reasons for Corey's acceptance into the family aren't clear, but his being around them will have a profound affect on the family as much as it will on him.
Any time Corey spends with the Metareys means less time with his own family, and these moments are beautifully rendered. Canin shows them as a part of the American push towards that age-old belief that success is the reward of hard work. Yet that hopefulness comes at a price.
Such dichotomies are the stuff at the crossroads in Corey's world. They are also the stuff at the crossroads facing America of the Nixon era, as Canin seamlessly moves back and forth among Corey's adolescent years working for the Metareys, his prep-school and college years, and his middle age memories of that time ("I'd lost track of where I'd come from," he tells us.)
In the novel's poignant and significant final pages, Corey will recognize what he's learned, things he terms "the old verities" about family, love and friendship, power and desperation, the past and the future — about life "spinning one way, then the other, exactly as fast as you do, always staying behind you somehow, always just managing to vanish from your eye."
America America is an important book, one that shows us, without irony, what we once had, one that — if Ethan Canin has taught us anything — we'll always keep near at hand.
Steven Whitton is a Professor of English at Jacksonville State University.
