Crossing to Safety (Modern Library Classics) [Paperback]

Wallace Earle Stegner (Author)

Book Description

Release date: April 9, 2002 | Series: Modern Library Classics

Introduction by Terry Tempest Williams
Afterword by T. H. Watkins
 
Called a “magnificently crafted story . . . brimming with wisdom” by Howard Frank Mosher in The Washington Post Book World, Crossing to Safety has, since its publication in 1987, established itself as one of the greatest and most cherished American novels of the twentieth century. Tracing the lives, loves, and aspirations of two couples who move between Vermont and Wisconsin, it is a work of quiet majesty, deep compassion, and powerful insight into the alchemy of friendship and marriage.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

It's deceptively simple: two bright young couples meet during the Depression and form an instant and lifelong friendship. "How do you make a book that anyone will read out of lives as quiet as these?" Larry Morgan, a successful novelist and the narrator of the story, poses that question many years after he and his wife, Sally, have befriended the vibrant, wealthy, and often troubled Sid and Charity Lang. "Where is the high life, the conspicuous waste, the violence, the kinky sex, the death wish?" It's not here. What is here is just as fascinating, just as compelling, as touching, and as tragic.

Crossing to Safety is about loyalty and survival in its most everyday form--the need to create bonds and the urge to tear them apart. Thirty-four years after their first meeting, when Larry and Sally are called back to the Langs' summer home in Vermont, it's as if for a final showdown. How has this friendship defined them? What is its legacy? Stegner offer answers in those small, perfectly rendered moments that make up lives "as quiet as these"--and as familiar as our own. --Sara Nickerson --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Publishers Weekly

Adding to a distinguished body of work that already has earned him a Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Awardand on the 50th anniversary of the publication of his first novelStegner's new book is an eloquent, wise and immensely moving narrative. It is a meditation on the idealism and spirit of youth, when the world is full of promise, and on the blows and compromises life inevitably inflicts. Two couples meet during the Depression years in Madison, Wis., and become devoted friends despite vast differences in upbringing and social status. Hard work, hope and the will to succeed as a writer motivate the penurious narrator Larry Morgan and his wife Sally as he begins a term teaching at the university. Equally excited by their opportunities are Sid Lang, another junior man in the English department, and his wife Charity. They are fortune's children, favored with intelligence, breeding and money. Taken into the Langs' nourishing and generous embrace, the Morgans have many reasons for gratitude over the years, especially when Sally is afflicted with polio and the Langs provide financial as well as moral support. During visits at the Langs' summer home on Battell Pond in Vermont and later sharing a year in Florence, the couples feel that they are "four in Eden." Yet the Morgans observe the stresses in their friends' marriage as headstrong, insufferably well-organized Charity tries to bully the passive Sid into a more aggressive mold. Charity is one of the most vivid characters in fiction; if she is arrogant, she is also kindhearted, enthusiastic, stalwart and bravean ardent liver of life. Her incandescent personality is both the dominant force and the source of strain in the enduring friendship Stegner conveys with brilliant artistry. He is also superb at expressing a sense of place, and his intelligent voice makes cogent observations on American society in the decades of his setting. But most importantly, he speaks to us of universal questions, reflecting on "the miserable failure of the law of nature to conform to the dream of man." In doing so, he has created a believable human drama the dimensions of which reach out beyond the story's end and resonate in the reader's heart. BOMC and QPBC alternates; Franklin Library Signed First Edition Society selection.
Copyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 335 pages
• Publisher: Modern Library; Reprint edition (April 9, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 037575931X
• ISBN-13: 978-0375759314
• Product Dimensions: 5.2 x 0.9 x 8.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (221 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #4,631 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

183 of 185 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Brimming With Wisdom And Love August 31, 2004

By prisrob TOP 500 REVIEWERVINE™ VOICE

Format:Paperback

I was about to be captive on a 7 1/2 hour plane trip- I went into Powell's bookstore in the airport, and somehow I was drawn to this book. I had heard about this book from a friend, and as soon as I saw the title I knew this was it! What a wonderful plane trip- I was on the next to last page as we landed and read the last two pages while waiting for my luggage. Whoopee, what a book, what a read, I hated for it to end. It is one of those kinds of books.

"Crossing to Safety" by Wallace Stenger is the kind of book that you read once in a life time. The characters become so real and so alive. You like these people; you do not want any of life's mysteries and sadness to befall on any them. Well, maybe that couple that was so nasty, no, no, not even them.

Larry and Sally Morgan move to Madison, Wisconsin in the 1930's to start their life. Sally is pregnant, and Larry is about to start a teaching job at the university. They have little money and his job is a lifesaver. Larry's dream is to be a writer and he has published one article. At a faculty party they meet Charity and Sid Lang. Sid comes from big money and they have all they need besides two children and one on the way. Charity and Sally get along famously, and Sid and Larry develop a bond.

This novel follows these two marriages, the ins and outs and the personal issues they each face. We are rarely allowed into a marriage to see all the warts. Over the next many years we follow both families from Wisconsin to Vermont and Cambridge and Italy. We see the friendships between the couples develop. We learn that Charity must manipulate and control- and that Sid needs the push she gives him. Larry becomes a well read author with several books and articles. Sally is happy to be a wife and mother until tragedy befalls. Sid is a wonderful teacher but really wants to write poetry. How do these couples help each other discover the truth within them? What does each of these people bring to the group? Why are they destined to love each other for their life? What is so special about these 4 people? How do they react when the greatest tragedy of all hits one of them?

Wallace Stenger allows us to see the real people below the exterior trappings. I came to love these people, to really care about what happened to them. I think what if that had not happened, or what if this had happened? This is the way we think in real life with our memories. Wallace Stenger is a literary genius. Highly recommended. prisrob

113 of 116 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Required reading July 31, 1999

By Absent-minded Professor

Format:Paperback

This is the book my wife and I fell in love with after we fell in love with each other more than 12 years ago. Whenever we talk with friends about favorite books, we INSIST that they read Crossing to Safety. We've had to buy several copies over the years because we keep lending copies out -- and we can't blame any of our friends for not returning this book. It's a keeper. Wallace Stegner said this novel was the closest he came to writing autobiographically, which explains a certain brightness not found in, say, Angle of Repose (although AOR is an equally beautiful story).

This is simply a beautifully told story about how a friendship formed and aged, so powerfully written that you will come to appreciate your own friends -- and how you came to be friends -- all the more for having made the journey with the couples in Crossing to Safety. This is a book you fall in love with and return to. I'm actually online right now to buy another copy.

77 of 80 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars instead, the world has left marks on us February 8, 2001

By Timothy H. Mansfield

Format:Paperback

'Crossing to Safety' is a novel about the intertwined lives of two couples. More generally, it is about the various ways we express the search for meaning, about gradually lost causes, about vulnerability and kindness, about the complicated dependencies of marriage, about coming of age, slowly, over the course of a lifetime. The plot is simple -- two couples meet because the husbands teach for a time at the same campus, and the four become lifelong friends. Although the story spans decades, there are very few dramatic incidents. This lack of external drama may disappoint those who like plots which move steadily forward, driven by significant events and bold action. However that very lack of action and heroism is part of the novel's essence. Our lives are generally prosaic, not epic. Our stories do not end tidily in fifty minute prime-time segments. The narrator speaks to this: "How do you make a book that anyone will read out of lives as quiet as these? Where is the high life, the conspicuous waste, the violence, the kinky sex, the death wish? [...] Where are speed, noise, ugliness, everything that makes us ... recognize ourselves in fiction?" From these quiet lives, Stegner vividly sketches the emotional landscape in which the characters move, making for all its lack of fireworks a surprisingly compelling story. The book has been praised as a wonderful and uplifting portrayal of friendship developed over many years. That might sound a little maudlin or simplistic on the face of it, but it does not come across that way at all. It is difficult to summarize the philosophical tone of the novel. It is at the same time wry, realistic, and sympathetic, generally optimistic about our native toughness and the possibility of grace, and ambivalent about questions of grand purpose. In fact, the story is marked from the beginning with undertones of retrospective melancholy. "[We meant to] leave a mark on the world. Instead the world has left marks on us." In addition to evoking a finely shaded spectrum of emotions, the book is beautifully written. In grade school writing classes we were told to "show, don't tell", but the author both shows and tells with consummate skill. This book strikes me as being the distillation of a lifetime of experience by an acutely sensitive and intelligent writer and a profoundly decent human being. It feels like Wallace Stegner's carefully considered gift to us, and is well worth giving, in turn.