Moments Captured: A Novel

by Robert J. Seidman

Moments Captured is the captivating story of two indelible individuals and a shattering murder in latenineteenth-century San Francisco. An epic saga of young America flexing its muscle, it is roughly based on the life of the great photographer Edward Muybridge. Crossing the country with his camera and outsized ambition, Muybridge meets the emancipated young dancer Holly Hughes, and inexorably she becomes the true focus of his life- though a corrupt robber baron interested in Muybridge's talent for technology comes between them.

Through Seidman's finely drawn prose, we witness nation-building on a colossal scale, along with the politics of wile, greed, and seduction. With an intense love affair at its center and a true-to-life narrative of art and technology, this novel brings to life one of the most picaresque settings in American history.

Genres: Fiction

384 pages, Hardcover

First published October 25, 2012

Reviews

[Lucille Day · Rating 5 out of 5]

Moments Captured, by Robert J. Seidman, is a delightful blend of fact and fiction. The main character is Edward Muybridge, the nineteenth-century photographer who showed that all four hooves are sometimes off the ground when a horse trots or gallops, and whose groundbreaking photography laid the foundation for the development of motion pictures. Although this really happened, much of the story described by Seidman did not. In the character of Holly Hughes, Seidman has given Muybridge a beautiful companion and love object. Holly is a dancer, feminist, and all-around brilliant woman. Had she actually existed, I’m sure Muybridge would have fallen hard for her, just as Seidman describes. Along with the story of capturing motion on film, the story of Edward and Holly’s love affair is what holds the book together and ensures that the reader will keep turning pages.

By imagining into the lives of Edward and Holly, as well as that of Leland Stanford, Seidman captures significant realities of nineteenth-century America, including the development of the suffragist movement, which Holly joins, and the construction of the Transcontinental Railroad, which Edward photographs and Stanford builds. Seidman shows how women from all walks of life banded together to fight for women’s right to vote, and how Chinese laborers toiled for low wages, under conditions Europeans would have found intolerable, blasting tunnels and laying rails to connect the Atlantic and Pacific coasts.

The real Muybridge never photographed the Transcontinental Railroad. No matter. Moments Captured is a compelling story. If Muybridge could read it, I think even he would wish it were true.

[Elizabeth · Rating 5 out of 5]

The story of young America flexing its muscle, this novel is roughly based on the life of the great photographer Edward Muybridge. Seidman includes famous characters of the time from Leland Stanford and Thomas Edison to Thomas Eakins, who was a friend of Muybridge's and who worked with him when they both taught at the University of Pennsylvania. The major character he adds is Holly Hughes, a fictional character who Seidman imagines as the model for the SLAVE MARKET, a famous painting by Jean Leon Gerome, and Muybridge's lover. The history and the fiction are seamlessly woven together in this book, so though the reader learns much of great interest about America in the beginning of the 20th Century, the characters and their relationships, for the most part, remain front and center. The novel held me from beginning to the very last page because the author developed the characters so skillfully.

[Jules Quinlan · Rating 5 out of 5]

This dynamic fast moving novel captures the historic period of the beginning of moving pictures, the building of the railway and striving of women for their equal rights. Moments Captured is set primarily in the Wild West, but it is a west that is juxtaposed to the East, from which money, art and science flows. The famous characters are vibrant or appealing. Robber baron Leland Stanford is vibrant. Edward Muybridge and Holly Hughes are both vibrant and appealing. Their love story is filled with passion and intimacy as well as tragedy. The rich details about science and art and race make this continuously interesting reading.

[James Watters · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a real page-turner with plenty of momentum. It's the story of a period in the life of Edward Muybridge the early photographer - mainly fictional but based on his personal history.

The most striking character in it is a fictional feminist and dancer Holly Hughes with a significant sexual appetite which is fairly explicitly and enjoyably portrayed. All the main characters are well-drawn against the the vivid background of the Wild West and San Francisco. There's plenty of fascinating historical detail too. All in all a very good read.

[Sarah · Rating 4 out of 5]

As one who enjoys photography it hard to fathom life when camera were just being invented and improved and the birth of the ability to capture movement. The book as a little bit long towards the end. Even though this is fiction an interesting look at building the transcontinental railroad and the invention of capturing movement to record and show in photographs.

[Runnread · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fabulous

[Lisa · Rating 3 out of 5]

When I first picked up this book and looked at the summary on the flyleaf, I saw "Gilded Age," "San Francisco," "photographer," "moving pictures," "politics": How could I not love this book? Well, here are a few reasons.

First, Edward Muybridge is a historical figure, a photographer, and he did work with Leland Stanford. But so much of his life story was changed in this book that I don't understand with the author even chose to use Muybridge's name. Muybridge was from England and was a bookseller in San Francisco. At age 41, he married a 21-year-old divorcee and they had a son. In this novel, he was from Baltimore. He never married or had children.

I won't bother going into more details about the actual life of the actual Muybridge, but none of the above facts are in evidence in the book. It's largely a love story, or an obsession story, about his relationship with one Holly Hughes who, as far as history records, never existed. A fair amount of the story is told from her point of view. Why not either write a novel about the real Muybridge or a work of complete fiction about a photographer and a dancer? This juxtaposition of fact and fiction didn't work for me.

And while it's no surprise that Thomas Edison turns out to be kind of a jerk, I can't imagine his saying to another inventor, "Have you seen my light bulb?" sounding more like a 1950s-era housewife showing off her new mixer to a neighbor.

[Robert J. Seidman · Rating 5 out of 5]

It's a bit hard to comment. I wrote the novel.

Robert J. Seidman

[ryan beggs · Rating 2 out of 5]

A SCHOOL book, ugh...