Word: fasts
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...While Fast's primary goal in writing the trilogy may not be mercenary, it still seems ambitious. He recalls, "I set out five years ago to lay out a book that would span the entire recent life of California and also be some sort of a history of our time. I've always wanted to write a history of what I've lived through but I'm not an historian, and I thought the best way to do it would be through a novel...
...Fast does not think his plans are as ambitious as they sound. Last week Fast smiled, "It's less ambitious, I think, than lazy. You're got your work laid out for you years in advance...
...Fast's book ends differently. In The Immigrants Lavette is not ultimately consumed by the system through which he rises. For Lavette business is a game that attracts him as poker seduces a compulsive gambler, but Lavette never forgets that he is just the unmannered, uneducated son of an immigrant fisherman. The Depression is therefore a kind of blessing for Lavette, because it stops the game. Instead of jumping out of the window of his office to splatter on the streets of San Francisco when stock prices begin to plummet, Lavette, after a stint as a bum, leaves his business...
...ending of The Immigrants is unexpectedly peaceful and happy after the turbulent and troubled tale Fast spins through most of the 389 pages. Almost any other author would have left Dan Lavette dead, his stomach perforated with ulcers. But Fast leaves him tanned, muscular and poor, smelling of fish and brine, married at last to the Chinese lover he would not wed before. One can almost see Fast the grinning Zen Buddhist, sitting in his solar-heated home, tying off the novel with a quote from Lao Tzu about the wisdom of stepping off the merry-go-round of ambition...
...that it goes beyond the roaring decade to place the era in the stream of human history. And The Immigrants extends beyond the story of Dan Lavette: he is just the character who gives the story its driving force, just as booming industry pushed America through the '20s. Fast creates many rich, three-dimensional personalities in his book--the powerful bankers, the fishermen, the couple who decide to leave the city to operate a vineyard, the girl who leaves for Hollywood in search of stardom, the man who swindles...