Customer Reviews

The Big Rock Candy Mountain

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Reading fiction does not get better than reading Wallace Stegner (1909-1993). His Pulitzer Prize winner, ANGLE OF REPOSE (1971) is my favorite novel, and the earlier BIG ROCK CANDY MOUNTAIN (1943) (hereafter "BRCM") is an equally moving book.

There is no one-sentence way to summarize Stegner's somewhat autobiographical BRCM. It is as much a novel about family as it is about transience, rootlessness, and a nation that has been "footloose too long" (460). The Masons are a family troubled with tensions. They move frequently throughout the American West in the early 1900s--from North Dakota to Seattle, Salt Lake City to Reno--always in chase of their dreams.

As in his other books, Stegner's characters resist description inasmuch as they are often subject to contradiction by their own characteristics. In BRCM, the Masons are no different. Bo Mason is the book's most dominant character, later eclipsed by his son, Bruce. Bo is a bootlegger, haunted all his life "by dreams of quick wealth" (p. 437). As a husband and father, he is miserly, impatient, "easily irritated" and abusive, yet not without "occasional spells of intense good spirits" (p. 437). Feminist readers may have a problem with his wife, Elsa Mason. "Misused" (p. 439) by her husband, Elsa is a "self-sacrificing" and "kindly-wise" wife and mother (p. 442). Despite her husband's faults--and the list is long--Elsa is unceasingly loyal to Bo. Even after "a dozen years of living among bootleggers and pimps and bellhops and all the little scummy riffraff on the edge of the criminal class," Elsa remains untouched by that way of life. "She only gives up her wishes," her son, Bruce notes, "never herself" (p. 447).

BRCM is also a father-son story. Stegner shows his reader Bruce's dark and tormented childhood, the hatred he feels toward his father, and Bruce's lifelong attempt to come to terms with his troubled family. "If a man could understand himself and his own family," Bruce reflects, "he'd have a good start toward understanding everything he'd ever need to know" (p. 436). Bo's domination of his son even after his death, and the "incurable damage" done to Bruce become the subjects of Stegner's sequel to BRCM, RECAPITULATION (1979).

BRCM is also about finding one's home, establishing roots, and living life authentically in a nation otherwise obsessed with finding "the Big Rock Candy Mountain," where "the bluebird sings to the lemonade springs" (p. 461), a land of futile dreams. We find Bruce questioning, "so when . . .do we get enough sense to quit looking for something for nothing?"

Although it moves with powerful feelings, BRCM is by no means a "feel-good" novel. Rather, it is a "feel-real" novel full of conflict. Stegner's writing here is honest, rich with human experience, and marked with many memorable moments.

G. Merritt

Wallace Stegner is different than most famous American writers, eschewing colorful literary activities like drug use, wife-swapping, and gross public displays of antisocial behavior. After a most difficult childhood, which is essentially chronicled in The Big Rock Candy Mountain, he married and stayed married, and received appointments to the faculties of prestigious universities. Yet Stegner's childhood, on the harsh plains of Saskatchewan, in the timber camps of the Northwest, and as the son of a bootlegger, marked Stegner as the survivor of a headlong and foolhardy quest after the American dream. That dream, and the belief that it could easily be found in the Plains and mountains of the North American West is abstracted in the mind of Bo Mason, the literary doppelganger for Stegner's father, as the Big Rock Candy Mountain. Much of Stegner's work focused on the choices we make in life, and the effect those choices have on our loved ones. In many ways, his urge towards moderation in personal affairs mirrored his burgeoning interest in conservation, and both were born of his childhood, where he saw precious commodities like love and timber misused and wasted. The Big Rock Candy Mountain captures the drive, much lost in recent years, towards the frontiers of our existence. The frontier myth--and after reading Stegner's work you'll realize it is to a certain extent a myth--is perhaps the single defining attribute of what it means to be American. Stegner realizes this, and he realizes what can happen to our reality when the quest for a dream is taken too far.

Wallace Stegner wrote "The Big Rock Candy Mountain" relatively early in his career (1943, at age 34), and the book reflects the author's enormous talents, which were still developing at that time. Stegner tells the tale of Bo Mason, who leads a rootless life on the fringes of the law. Mason is a bootlegger, gambler and precious metals speculator. Each peak he achieves is higher than his last, and each valley is deeper. This is true both financially and in his relationship with his wife, Elsa, and two sons, Chet and Bruce. Some reviewers point out that the story is somewhat autobiographical. That's probably a safe assumption. But it's also the story of the American West a century ago, where raw optimism, the struggle for acceptance, and harsh realities shaped people's existence.

The harsh reality of "The Big Rock Candy Mountain" is that it isn't one of Stegner's best works. Of course, that's a very high standard. Readers will understandably have great expectations when diving into this book, and some may be disappointed. For example, the younger son's seething hatred towards his father is introduced early in the book and is central to the conclusion, but is poorly developed in the interim chapters. Likewise, the voice of the book drifts between the 3rd person and the 2nd person. This gives the reader a voyeuristic glimpse into each character's personal thoughts. It's a nice gimmick, but awkwardly executed.

On an absolute scale, this book is a no-brainer 5 stars. But relative to other Stegner novels, "The Big Rock Candy Mountain" has some minor flaws. Read it and you'll certainly enjoy it. But you'll appreciate even more the experience of reading the early efforts of one of America's greatest 20th century writers.

I read Wallace Stegner's "Angle of Repose" and liked it very much, so I decided to try this one, his first major novel. I enjoyed this book even more than the later, Pulitzer Prize winning work. "The Big Rock Candy Mountain" is a more straightforward narrative than "Angle of Repose." It is obviously a memoir of Stegner's own childhood, along with extensive material based loosely on his parents' lives.

Stegner's descriptions of life in the upper western plains during the first two decades of the twentieth century read with an amazing freshness and clarity. The scenes of childhood and family life around the time of the First World War leave unforgettable impressions. The details are lively and crystal clear.

Stegner structures his novel with a sure knack for keeping the reader's interest. He has an instinct for creating tension within discrete episodes, which are well paced throughout the book. You live through blizzards, droughts, an epidemic, and even a car chase with bootleggers. There are also beautiful descriptions of the west and plenty of psychological and ethical dilemmas to ponder.

In some ways this book reminded me of the Nebraska novels of Willa Cather and the works of John Steinbeck. However, the characters in "The Big Rock Candy Mountain" don't always show the nobility of Cather's pioneers; nor are they primarily victims of natural and economic disasters like the Joad family in "The Grapes of Wrath." The people in Stegner's novel make decisions, often tragic ones, and live out the their responsibilities for those decisions not only as they affect themselves, but also as they impact on those around them.

As is widely acknowledged, this novel is about the American Dream - the drive for status, wealth, and easy money -- the golden opportunity just beyond the rainbow. Looking at shows like "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire" or "The Apprentice," it is easy to see that these beliefs are still alive and well in our popular culture. Stegnar is unambiguous in his condemnation of this mentality. Yet, he expresses his views with compassion and understanding. Stegner describes forces that are integral parts of our heritage and tradition, and he does so in a way that even today should appeal to readers of any political persuasion.

This is probably one of the darkest, most merciless books I've ever read -- exceeded only in bleakness by Sigrid Undset's "Master of Hestviken." I picked it up expecting a book about pioneers, but "Little House on the Prairie" this is not, though it was written around the same time (early 1940's). Imagine pioneering not with the gentle, kind, intelligent, and progressive Charles Ingalls as your father -- but with his unstable, bipolar, obsessive-compulsive, violent, abusive and sadistic twin. This book could serve as a nifty handbook for women on the perils of marrying a sexy baseball-playing "bad boy." The mother suffers, and suffers, and suffers some more -- the father acts horrible, and more horrible, then redeems himself somewhat, but eventually devolves into one of the most truly despicable characters in modern fiction, whilst mom is martyred by her own bad choice in a man. Seriously, there were moments in this book when I was shocked -- SHOCKED! -- and I don't consider myself a lightweight. All the same, I just couldn't put this book down! It's an incredibly interesting portrayal of the tragectory of a f***ed-up American family 1880-1920, including the infamous 1918 flu epidemic. And the father really is a fascinating character; if you are an amateur psychologist it's fun to identify his various pathologies.

When I read that BRCM is 'roughly autobiographical,' I was stunned that a writer of Stegner's magnitude could come from such a pitiless, brutal background. The transient, rootless, poverty-stricken upbringing of the children in the Mason family is rife with tension, resentment, and a level of bleakness that's hard to comprehend. Bo Mason is the most powerful character, by far, a bootlegger always chasing the dream of fast money and instant wealth. It's hard to know exactly how Stegner feels about the character of Bo's wife, a long-suffering, self-sacrificing woman who remains loyal and always seems to be making excuses for him to their children. It's tough reading a story of such an abusive family situation, but it sure reads 'real' in its portrayal of a search for roots, for home, for love, for connection.

"On the Big Rock Candy Mountain
Where the cops have wooden legs,
And the handouts grow on bushes,
And the hens lay soft-boiled eggs,
Where the bulldogs all have rubber teeth
And the cinder dicks are blind
I am a gonna go
Where there ain't no snow
Where the rain don't fall
And the wind don't blow
On the Big Rock Candy Mountain"

Wallace Stegner is such a great storyteller and I love his writing so much that before the year has ended I will have most all of his book in my library. Mr. Stegner delves so deeply into the characters of this book, enabling us to feel their inner wounds and emotions as well as their determination to fight all challenges for the betterment of their nomadic life. We become close to Bo Mason who is the chief character along with his wife Elsa, Bruce and Chet. Stegner shows the length a husband will go to acquire comfort and food for his family.  The way a man would go so close to death's door all for his family's sake. There is a lot of love shown in this story , but there also is a lot of bitterness, self pity, ruthlessness, anger and illness. It is all about the human condition and what we yearn for that is sometime so hard to come by and so far away. Stegner fans will not be disappointed by this book.
Reviewed by Heather Marshall Negahdar (SUGAR-CANE 28/06/04)

Big Rock Candy Mountain is one of the most beautiful and powerful novels I've read. Bo and Elsa Mason are two characters that are so memorable and vivid, you feel as if you truly know them. Stegner is a literary master and one of the most talented and prolific writers of all time. If you enjoy reading about the West, then this book is a necessity. What is so wonderful about this novel is the reality of it - all the characters and events feel so real. You will not be able to put it down. My sister, who doesn't read many novels, stayed in our hotel room to read this book while we were in Italy. What a testament to the greatness of this novel.

I had never heard of Wallace Stegner, but the title, Big Rock Candy Mountain, caught my eye. I'm glad it did. This book is absolutely unforgettable. From the opening scene as young, innocent Elsa fights nausea and goes valiantly westward to escape her joyless father to the last closing moments that you read slowly because you don't want the book to end. This is a book that stays with you. The writing is clean and beautiful and brutally honest. The bleak story is as unforgiving as the dry earth the Mason family wanders fruitlessly. The story of the Mason family is the story of America -- hopes destroyed and riches denied. More than the saga of their lives, I was touched by Stegner's deep understanding that, "man is not a static organism to be taken apart and analyzed and classified. A man is movement, motion, a continuum... He runs through his ancestors." At the end of the book, Bruce, the youngest son (and the voice of the author), takes up the psychic mantle of his ancestor's mistakes. As a tribute to his final insights, I paraphrase, "It was a good book to have been along with. It was good to have shared it. Perhaps that was what it meant, all of it."

Wallace Stegner is an American treasure and one of the great writers of the American west. If you have never treated yourself to one of his books, why wait any longer? If you've read, say, "Angle of Repose" and wonder if his other works measure up, don't worry... they do. In this one, he tells the story of the itinerant Mason family over the course of 30 years, from just after the turn of the century until the early 1930s. You'll follow them from the Dakotas to Saskatchewan to Montana, Nevada, and Utah, as Bo Mason, intent on making it big, involves his family in a variety of get rich quick schemes, (some legal, some not) that emotionally wrench the family from one city to the next. They are always on the brink of either great wealth or abject poverty, of high society or a prison term. Stegner can weave a tale like few other writers. Very highly recommended.