Customer Reviews

Angle of Repose

5 star:		(127)
4 star:		(27)
3 star:		(21)
2 star:		(10)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

Angle of Repose is a commentary on marriage, what makes it work and what makes it fail. A severely disabled (wheelchair bound) professor, whose marriage has failed, researches and writes the saga of his pioneer grandparents, a couple whose marriage lasted in spite of tremendous adversity and tragedy. The professor's attendant, the woman who bathes and dresses him, gets him up each morning and to bed each night, also has a failed marriage.
Stegner won the Pulitzer for Angle of Repose; even a casual reading of the first half of the book tells you why. It's a big, long, lush, slowly progressing story that weaves the distant past with the near past with the present beautifully and seamlessly.
Superb. Read this one and savor it. Don't rush yourself.

One of Wallace Stegner's greatest peeves as a Western writer was the myth of the West that was promulgated in the bulk of the books about the region. The vast majority of Western novels and movies tended to perpetuate utter myths about the West, instead of grappling with the West itself. Perhaps no American writer knew the West as well as Stegner, not excepting his student Edward Abbey. An inveterate hiker and explorer, he camped or walked nearly every area in the West. He wrote innumerable books about the West and took time to visit every spot he wrote about. For instance, in writing of John Wesley Powell's trip down the Colorado, he retraced his route to gain the greatest possible grasp of what he saw. He traveled the trails that the Mormons and others took in relocating to the West. He was one of the few people to hike along Glen Canyon before Lake Powell consumed it. Moreover, he was raised in the West, spending his childhood on what remained on the frontier.

Given all this, I find it utterly astonishing that a couple of reviewers should have the impression that he does not know whereof he wrote. For instance, one reviewer wrote, "Bottom line: the West has a geography, and its denizens a temperament, that demands that we write and read about it in a way that does justice to the hard realities of life in a barren place." Why he would imagine that Stegner, who was intimately familiar with the geography, was one of its denizens, and knew first hand the hard realities of the place by spending his childhood in a variety of barren places, utterly baffles me. I suspect that it is because the book writes about the REAL West and not the West of the Imagination.

Lyman Ward, distinguished historian (Stegner himself, though primarily a writer of fiction, was the author of several works of history, though the character was based on former colleague of his who suffered from a physical condition precisely like Ward's) is studying family documents with an eye to writing a book detailing the story of his grandmother and grandfather. The novel is brilliant on multiple levels. It is a fascinating study of the travails of an invalid struggling with his own enormous physical sufferings. It is a vivid and accurate retelling of a story of what life war actually life in the frontier in the late nineteenth century. But primarily it is a powerful and overwhelming reflection on the nature of human frailty, love, and the healing power of forgiveness. Although Ward reflects on the marriage of his grandparents, this is actually a surrogate for confronting the tragedies in his own, and whether he will rigidly refuse to forgive his wife for her wrongs against him, or whether he will allow redemption and healing to take place.

The novel has aroused considerable controversy among some feminist writers, for an interesting reason. Stegner himself was a very strong supporter of women's rights (indeed, although he was uncomfortable with the youth movements of the sixties, he remained an old school liberal all his life, with powerful convictions about toleration and acceptance of all people regardless of race, creed, or gender). Stegner became aware of the unpublished letters of the 19th century writer and painter Mary Hallock Foote. He gained permission from a family member to incorporate portions of those letters in a work of fiction, and he did so in ANGLE OF REPOSE, Foote providing the explicit model for Susan Burling Ward. The controversy has rested in whether Stegner used too much of the prose of Mary Hallock Foote in his book. Some have estimated that as much as 10% of the entire text might stem from Foote. My own take is that his use of Foote's letters was far more creative than plagiaristic. For one thing, he didn't so much take the story he tells from Foote's letters as builds a brilliant story around them. Also, some of the details of the novel of greatest import--such as the question of Susan Ward's possible adultery--were not part of Foote's story at all. Moreover, while the letters that Stegner uses are quite good, they do not match the other sections of the book where Stegner writes in his own voice. Stegner is clearly a better prose writer than Foote, and why a better writer would be thought to have need of a lesser one to generate a novel is difficult to explain. Moreover, Foote in no way contributed to the architecture of the novel as a whole, and she obviously played no role in the contemporary sections of the book. Finally, to the degree that Ms. Foote is remembered at all today, it is entirely because of Wallace Stegner. He not only included some of her work in anthologies he did earlier, but elevated part of her story to a central place in this very great novel. Given all this, I'm not sure how Stegner can be justly accused of any wrongdoing.

Regardless of the controversy, this remains not merely one of the greatest novels ever written about the West, but one of the finest American novels of the second half of the twentieth century. Stegner remains a staggeringly underappreciated as a writer. He wrote in a beautiful, distinctive, gorgeous prose that not even his extremely illustrious stable of students (Edward Abbey, Wendell Berry, Thomas McGuane, Ken Kesey and Larry McMurtry, Ivan Doig, and many, many others) has been able to match. Edward Abbey said shortly before Stegner's death following an automobile accident that he was the only living American writer deserving of the Nobel Prize, and I believe he was right.

Wallace Stegner's Angle of Repose is simply a wonderful novel--a serious piece of fiction about a marriage and marriage itself. Lyman Ward, a fifty-something professor whose own marriage has disintegrated has returned to his childhood home to write of the marriage of his grandparents, perhaps to determine why their marriage lasted through tremendous adversity when his own could not. His grandparents, Susan and Oliver Ward met in New York the 1870s, where she was a promising illustrator and he an engineer. They marry and travel West, living in various places, California, Idaho. Susan feels that she never quite fits into this "uncivilized" place, expressing her unsettleness beautifully in her letters to her good friend Augusta, who lives the life in New York that perhaps Susan felt she was destined to live. Lyman is fascinated with his grandmother, telling her story as he discovers how it unfolds through reading these Augusta letters, adding what he remembers from his own childhood. Lyman suffers from a degenerative bone disease and must rely on young Shelly Rasmussen to help him construct this book on his grandmother. Shelly has just escaped a failed "marriage" of her own. Lyman tells the story of his grandmother while also telling us both his and Shelly's stories seamlessly. Stegner's writing is beautiful and evocative. Angle of Repose is a big, beautiful, unique novel. Stegner's method of weaving the stories together works marvelously and so many of his sentences are simply perfect. Susan Ward's life(and Lyman's and Shelly's) is the believable story of a flawed human being--it's not picture perfect--there are no rosy endings for us here. However, the novel is very satisfying. Highly recommended.

Wallace Stegner's _Angle of Repose_ (1971) is undoubtedly a rich novel, but it is a challenging book. Many reviewers have commented on the slow pacing, so it is advisable to take up this book braced with patience and energy in reserve. The book must be as much mined and dug through as read pleasurably. The novel, however, bestows a rich ore, which makes the task of finishing it a reward and genuine pleasure.

The book is set in Grass Valley, California, during the spring and summer months of 1970. The novel's protagonist, Lyman Ward, is a 58 year old disabled, physically ailing professor of history who is retired and has taken up residence in his long deceased grandparents' old home, Zodiac Cottage. Despite ill-health, Lyman Ward undertakes to write a biographical novel focusing on his grandparents' lives, Susan Burling Ward and Oliver Ward, from 1868 to 1891. Susan Burling, Lyman's grandmother, was a prolific writer, sketch-artist, and genteel young woman from Milton, New York. Her husband and Lyman's grandfather, Oliver Ward, was a bright mining engineer whose career took his family to California, Colorado, Mexico, Idaho, and back to California.

The grandparents' marriage is a tension of opposites: the talented Eastern sophisticated woman who thrives on high culture and the arts has married a reserved Western explorer and adventurer. Each has entirely different expectations, and the novel explores whether these differences are reconcilable. The title of the novel, "Angle of Repose," refers, at least in part, to this tension as does the metaphor of the keystone(discussed near the end of the book).

Early in the novel, Lyman describes his grandmother's views of the West in the following way: "Susan Ward came West not to join a new society but to endure it, not to build anything but to enjoy a temporary existence and make it yield whatever instruction it contained." Oliver's desire is to build in the West and, in fact, to create a new civilization. Oliver feels that "faith can reclaim deserts as as move mountains" and that "there is no limit to what one might do." Within this drama, we have the complementary dramas of day-to-day survival, the raising of children, the couples' friendships, and the dream of the West versus the reality. Interestingly, these dramas play out in the 1880s and 1890s as in 1970.

Lyman Ward sketches out the narrative of his grandparents' relationship by reading his grandmother's letters, viewing her sketches, and reading her publications. The novel skips in time between 1970 and the later nineteenth-century. The settings of the novel also shift, as Lyman ironically follows his grandparents' travels while he struggles himself confined to a wheelchair. One remarkable quality of the novel is its ability to capture all of the voices of lead characters past and present. These voices come alive in the act of Lyman's memory and his will to inhabit and understand his grandparents' lives.

There are numerous intersections of the past and the present, and an underlying sense that time is cyclical. At one point in the novel, Lyman refers to the resulting "rictus" or grimace of the historian when he or she sees how the present is tied to historical precedents. This holds true for families as well as we see traits that have been carried through the Lyman family through four generations.

Here are four final comments about this novel. First, Stegner's command of the English language is always precise. (He uses words like "tumescent," "succubus," and "satyriasis" to create clear images; consulting a dictionary makes Stegner's sentences glow). Second, the ending of the novel is an intense and unique resolution to the plot. Third, in addition to the layers of the novel looms the fact that Stegner based the character Susan Burling Ward on a real person, Mary Hollock Foote (1847 - 1938). This raises all sorts of interesting questions. Fourth, Lyman's comments on the 1960s counterculture are perceptive commentaries.

A metaphor for this novel as a whole is the mineshaft. The reader emerges from the novel, after the toil of tunneling, bearing ample riches and the raw material of lingering ideas to further refine.

This was one of the most thought provoking novels that we have ever read. Stegner captured the thoughts and emotions of his characters with an economy of words that is the mark of an author who understands at a profound level the human condition. Stegner's device of using Lyman Ward to tell the story of his paternal grandparents, Susan and Oliver Ward while sifting through mounds of pictures and letters, enables him to sort through his own troubled loss of limb and wife. We feel Oliver's intense desire to succeed at what he loves best, always falling just short and not understanding why; Susan's desire to please her husband and be content with her choices in life warring against her artistic spirit and the pull to "be somebody". Frank's frustration and unrequited love for his best friend's wife is heartwrenching to watch. The passage of years and evolution of personhood is as real and complicated as life truly is. This juxtaposition of complex relationships both past and present further enriches this generational tapestry woven by Stegner. Angle of Repose, is now one of our favorite books having provoked much thought and discussion. We recommend it without reservation to anyone who loves life and people and the journey that we are all on together.

As our narrator Lyman Ward says, this is a book about a marriage. "A masculine and a feminine. A romantic and a realist. A woman who was more lady than woman, and a man who was more man than gentleman." And it's a story that will keep you turning pages well after you should have turned out the light. Susan Burling and Oliver Ward were probably ill-matched from the start, a genteel Eastern woman who goes west with her husband to the mining camps of the 1870s determined never to bring herself down to the level of mining camp society and a man who will do anything for his wife's comfort except change his own nature. The result is years of wrestling with themselves and their relationship through disappointment and tragedy. Their story is told by their grandson, Lyman, himself living with a crippling disease and a broken marriage. Stegner offers a wonderful contrast between Lyman's anything-goes world of the early 1970s and the strict moral code of Susan and Oliver's time. (Looking at if from the 21st century makes it ever more interesting). The jumps back and forth from Lyman's present to Susan's past are even, well-paced and welcome. Sadness if often dispelled with humor. The descriptions of the west and the camps are beautiful. If it is possible to "write" in technicolor, Stegner does it. Despite the harshness of the untamed frontier there is a movie-quality to the images, wide-angle shots of green and gold prairies and nights in which it is never really dark. Lyman's bone-hardening illness becomes a metaphor for his own inflexibility and that of his grandparent's and in the end we learn that finding a true resting spot - an Angle of Repose - requires forgiveness of oneself and others.

I read this book years ago and have recommended it to friends frequently. Recently I decided to reread it (something I rarely do) and I enjoyed it even more the second time around. Stegner was an amazing person and his books are timeless. This one - perhaps his most famous - is like a comfortable robe - something one wants to wrap around one's self, curl up with by the fire and while away a long winter's day. I wanted to weep with him at the indignities of infirmity and growl with him at the insensitive words and acts of youth. I developed a friendship with his grandmother, his caregiver and raged with him against his ex-wife and son. People either love it or hate it. I love it. I hope I live long enough to read it again in another few years.

As with all of the (rare)great things I've read or seen, once i finished Angle of Repose, I wished I had never read it so that I could read it again. I usually am bored by history but Stegner lured me into knowing about the development of the American West by writing about people who I cared about, related to. Love, lust, forgiveness presented through three generations were, as subjective as those emotions are, presented almost as historical facts which the reader could look at, weigh and, with the help of this brilliant writer, see as the same deeply important choice for each generation. I liked the story when I began, started turning down invitations as I read further, and by the end (the last sentence especially) needed to see the conclusions that these people as instruction for my own life. This is an incredibly well-written, profound masterpiece.

This Pulitzer Prize-winning novel weaves past and present, and four generations of an American family into a masterful tale that combines history and geography with fascinating, psychologically complex characters. I couldn't put it down!

Our narrator, historian Lyman Ward, is a sick and bitter old man. Lyman's marriage has ended and he's confined to a wheelchair. He sets out to write a history of his grandparents' story, as pioneers carving out civilization in the mining camps of the 1870s West. Says Lyman, "I am not just killing time...many things are unclear to me, including myself, and I want to sit and think. Who ever had a better opportunity?" In the end his research tells him more about his own life than he's willing to admit. As Lyman says, this is a book about a marriage. "A masculine and a feminine. A romantic and a realist. A woman who was more lady than woman, and a man who was more man than gentleman."

Susan Burling is an artist from a genteel family in the East; Oliver Ward's a miner and a geologist, passionate about the West. They love each other, but in the end, their differences tear them apart. Susan wants a career and can never accept the rough life in the West as any match for the cultured life and opportunities she gave up. She feels trapped in a marriage on the wrong side of the continent. Oliver will do anything for Susan except leave the West. Neither of them are perfect people, but we sympathize with each and their struggle to understand each other. Two stories, past and present, merge. In the end, Lyman learns that achieving peace in any life's "Angle of Repose" requires the gift of forgiveness.

Wallace Stegner's Angle of Repose is simply a wonderful novel -- a serious and classic piece of fiction about love and marriage. Lyman Ward, a fifty-something professor whose own marriage has disintegrated has returned to his childhood home to write about his grandparents' marriage. He wants to determine why their relationship lasted through tremendous adversity when his own could not. His grandparents, Susan and Oliver Ward, met in New York during the 1870s, where she was a promising illustrator and he an engineer. They marry and travel west, living in various places. Susan feels that she never quite fits into this "uncivilized" place, expressing her unsettledness beautifully in her letters to her good friend Augusta, who lives the sort of life in New York that Susan wanted to live. Lyman is fascinated with his grandmother, telling her story as he discovers how it unfolds. Lyman suffers from a degenerative bone disease and must rely on young Shelly Rasmussen to help him construct this book on his grandmother. Shelly has just escaped a failed marriage of her own. Lyman tells the story of his grandmother while also telling us both his and Shelly's stories. There are some wonderful scenes throughout the novel.

Stegner's writing is beautiful and evocative. Angle of Repose is a big, beautiful, unique novel. Stegner's method of weaving the stories together works marvelously and so many of his sentences are simply perfect. The language enthralled me from beginning to end. Susan Ward's life (and Lyman's and Shelly's) is the believable story of a flawed human being. His story isn't picture perfect. You won't find a rosy, sugarcoated story here! However, the novel is beautiful and memorable. I can see why this novel won Stegner a Pulitzer Prize. I highly recommend this literary classic...