Bring the Jubilee
1953
In 1953, Ward Moore imagined an America that lost. When the Confederacy wins Gettysburg and the War of Southron Independence ends in Confederate victory, the United States becomes a diminished, impoverished nation while the slaveholding South rises as a continental power. Our guide to this broken world is Hodge Backmaker, a historian in a New York of gas lamps and ten-storey buildings, a provincial backwater far from any American greatness. But Hodge carries a secret: he has invented a time machine, and he plans to travel back to July 1863 to witness the moment his world changed forever. What he finds there will challenge everything he believes about history, memory, and the stories nations tell themselves. One of the founding texts of alternate history as a genre, Bring the Jubilee is less interested in political speculation than in the psychology of loss. What does it mean to live in the shadow of a catastrophe? What do the defeated owe to their ancestors? Moore's slim, elegant novel poses questions about historical contingency that still resonate today, proving that the best alternate histories are really about the present.
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“Why should you believe your eyes? You were given eyes to see with, not to believe with. Your eyes can see the mirage, the hallucination as easily as the actual scenery.””
— Ward Moore
“One of the most pernicious of folk-sayings is, 'I cannot believe my eyes!' Why particularly should you believe your eyes? You were given eyes to see with, not to believe with. Believe your mind, your intuition, your reason, your emotion if you like - but not your eyes unaided by any of these interpreters. Your eyes can see the mirage, the hallucination, as easily as the actual scenery.””
— Ward Moore
“Truth is absolute and for all time. But one man cannot envisage all of truth; the best he can do is see one aspect of it whole. That is why I say to you, be a skeptic, Hodge. Always be the skeptic.””
— Ward Moore
“The books, always the books. And for themselves, not to become rich or famous like sensible people. Are we not foolish? But it is a pleasant folly and a sometimes blameless vice””
— Ward Moore
“Time, yes … We waste it or save it or use it”
— Ward Moore
“Ay, we are alike, you and I. The books, always the books. And for themselves, not to become rich or famous like sensible people. Are we not foolish? But it is a pleasant folly and a sometimes blameless vice.””
— Ward Moore
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Moore, Ward. Bring the Jubilee. Lex, lex-books.com/book/bring-the-jubilee-1956c0d2-c1c4-4cac-b8bc-1da864ee49c2.Moore, W. (1953). Bring the Jubilee. Lex. https://lex-books.com/book/bring-the-jubilee-1956c0d2-c1c4-4cac-b8bc-1da864ee49c2Moore, Ward. Bring the Jubilee. Lex. https://lex-books.com/book/bring-the-jubilee-1956c0d2-c1c4-4cac-b8bc-1da864ee49c2.
