Joy, purification, renewal, death-the sea is all of these things in Manhattan Beach, Jennifer Egan’s intricately patterned and visionary new novel.
A symbol of solace and rejuvenation, in Paul Valéry’s poem “The Graveyard by the Sea”: “The sea, the sea, always beginning anew.” A source of fear and violence, in the famous monologue of Molly Bloom in Ulysses: “That awful deepdown torrent O and the sea the sea crimson sometimes like fire.” c., when they finally glimpsed the Black Sea, and thus their salvation, on their way back from fighting in Persia, in Xenophon’s telling. The shout of mercenary Greek soldiers-“ Thalatta! Thalatta!”-in 401 b. “The sea, the sea!” It’s the jubilant, elemental cry of a child released from a hot car on a summer day, but also a phrase with deep historical and literary roots.
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