The Invisible Circus - Jennifer Egan [0]
Cover
Title Page
Dedication
Acknowledgments
Part One
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Part Two
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Part Three
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Part Four
Chapter Twenty-Two
About the Author
Other Books by This Author
Books by Jennifer Egan
Copyright
For my mother, Kay Kimpton
and my brother, Graham Kimpton
Acknowledgments
I would like to thank the following individuals for their advice, encouragement, and efforts on my behalf: David Herskovits, Monica Adler, Bill Kimpton, Nan Talese, Jesse Cohen, Diane Marcus, Tom Jenks, Carol Edgarian, Webster Stone, Virginia Barber, Jennifer Rudolph Walsh, Ruth Danon, David Rosenstock, Kim Snyder, Don Lee, Julie Mars, Ken Goldberg, and David Lansing.
I am grateful as well to the National Endowment for the Arts, the New York Foundation for the Arts, and the Corporation of Yaddo for their support.
Above all, I owe thanks to Mary Beth Hughes, whose faith, wisdom, and insight are essential to this book.
“… for the present age, which prefers the picture to the thing pictured, the copy to the original, imagination to reality, or the appearance to the essence … illusion alone is sacred to this age, but truth profane … so that the highest degree of illusion is to it the highest degree of sacredness.”
—Ludwig Feuerbach
“Exultation is the going
Of an inland soul to sea,
Past the houses—past the headlands—
Into deep Eternity—…
—Emily Dickinson
part one
one
She’d missed it, Phoebe knew by the silence. Crossing the lush, foggy park, she heard nothing but the drip of condensation running from ferns and palm leaves. By the time she reached the field, its vast emptiness came as no surprise.
The grass was a brilliant, jarring green. Debris covered it, straws, crushed cigarettes, a few sodden blankets abandoned to the mud.
Phoebe shoved her hands in her pockets and crossed the grass, stepping over patches of bare mud. A ring of trees encircled the field, coastal trees, wind-bent and gnarled yet still symmetrical, like figures straining to balance heavy trays.
At the far end of the field several people in army jackets were dismantling a bandstand. They carried its parts through the trees to a road, where Phoebe saw the dark shape of a truck.
She approached a man and woman with long coils of orange electrical cord dangling from their arms. Phoebe waited politely for the two to finish talking, but they seemed not to notice her. Timidly she turned to another man, who carried a plank across his arms. “Excuse me,” she said. “Did I miss it?”
“You did,” he said. “It was yesterday. Noon to midnight.” He squinted at her as if the sun were out. He looked vaguely familiar, and Phoebe wondered if he might have known her sister. She was always wondering that.
“I thought it was today,” she said uselessly.
“Yeah, about half the posters were printed wrong.” He grinned, his eyes a bright, chemical blue, like sno-cones.
It was June 18, a Saturday. Ten years before, in 1968, a “Festival of Moons” had allegedly happened on this same field. “Revival of Moons,” the posters promised, and Phoebe had juggled her shifts at work and come eagerly, anxious to relive what she’d failed to live even once.
“So, how was it?” she asked.
“Underattended.” He laughed sardonically.
“I’m glad it wasn’t just me,” she said.
The guy set down his plank and ran a hand across his eyes. Blunt, straight blond hair fell to his shoulders. “Man,” he said, “you look a lot like this girl I used to know.”
Startled, Phoebe glanced at him. He was squinting again. “Like, exactly like her.”
She stared at his face. “Catnip,” she said, surprising herself.
He took a small step away.
“You were friends with Faith O’Connor, right?” Phoebe said, excited now. “Well, I’m her sister.”
Catnip looked away, then back at Phoebe. He shook