Remembering Laughter [Paperback]

Wallace Stegner (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 1, 1996

Back in print: an early novel by the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Angle of Repose and Crossing to Safety. When her younger sister Elspeth comes to live with Margaret and her husband, Alec, on their Iowa farm, Margaret finds her generous spirit tested as a friendship developes between Alec and Elspeth.

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

Published in 1937, Remembering Laughter launched the Pulitzer Prize-winning Stegner's career as a novelist. The plot follows a love triangle among a farmer, his wife, and her sister, which becomes even more disastrous when the sister becomes pregnant. A Shooting Star also deals with marital infidelity as protagonist Sabrina Castro seeks the meaning of love outside the arms of her husband (LJ 4/15/61).
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review

''Adroit and moving . . . has the quality of a rueful ironic legend.'' --New York Times

''There is no use to mention the assurance and calm that Mr. Stegner brings to his first book -- it has to be read to be believed.'' --Saturday Review

''I thought Remembering Laughter a perfect little novel, clean, swift, and assured, and I can still feel the weight of the disaster in it.'' --Wendell Berry, author of That Distant Land --This text refers to the Audio Cassette edition.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 160 pages
• Publisher: Penguin (Non-Classics) (November 1, 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0140252401
• ISBN-13: 978-0140252408
• Product Dimensions: 7.7 x 5.1 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 5.1 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #349,274 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

51 of 51 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Stegner's genesis, June 5, 2002

By 

South Dakota Farmboy "sdfarmboy" (Avon, SD USA) - See all my reviews

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This review is from: Remembering Laughter (Paperback)

About five years ago I stumbled onto Wallace Stegner, and I haven't been able to leave him behind. I just got around to reading _Remembering Laughter_ this past winter, mainly because it was usually not even listed among his better books; that is too bad.

Stegner is one of the best American writers that hardly anybody knows, and this is probably one of his most underrated works. "Haunting" and "poignant" are two words that I almost always find myself using when describing Stegner's novels, and this novella is clearly in that category. This book is a great intro to Stegner. _Crossing to Safety_ and _The Spectator Bird_ are better, but in economy of words, this one holds its own.

For those of you who have never read Stegner, this is a great place to start. For those of you who have read Stegner, this is a delight to read. It's possible to see in this book the genesis of all of the stylistic techniques that Stegner would later employ to such great effect.

I regularly give this book to friends as a gift, usually in the hopes that they will also discover the joy of reading Wallace Stegner.

38 of 40 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Remember this novel:, June 5, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Remembering Laughter (Paperback)

Stegner's brief, taut novel tells a haunting story of infidelity and the destruction of life that happens in the midst of shameless behavior. Set in the rural Iowa around the turn of 20th C., Alec and Margaret meet her sister Elspeth, arriving from Scotland, at the train station. Before long, Alec and Elspeth are romantic and the child from their liaison becomes the source of constant pain and love between the embattled, embittered three.

Stegner writes a straight-forward tale, giving personality to Iowa landscape and seasons much like Willa Cather did in her novels and stories. For this, he is clearly one of the West's better writers.

What stays with you after reading this tale is the horror of shame and then the loneliness of shamelessness. Each character lives in his or her shadows until the spell is broken by the son: Malcolm.

This story is the iceberg's tip in morality and the shame that lost decisions bring with them. Just because this novel is brief does not mean that it is light. Read it for a quick study in morality, grief, shame, and love.

16 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A Stegner to remember., January 29, 2002

By 

G. Merritt (Boulder, CO) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Remembering Laughter (Paperback)

Illustrating Tolstoy's observation that "all happy families are alike, each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way," Wallace Stegner's first novel, REMEMBERING LAUGHTER (1936), travels from the heighths of laughter (p. 13) to the depths of family grief in just 150 pages. Along the way, Stegner introduces us to Margaret Stuart and her younger sister, Elspeth, and then reveals the dark secret of infidelity binding them together in a constantly eroding relationship. While only in their forties, Stegner observes the twin-like sisters "were two old women sentenced to the prison they had made for themselves, doomed to wear away slowly, toughly; to fade and wither and dry up inch by inch in the silence of their house" (p. 150). Although it lacks much of the depth of Stegner's BIG ROCK CANDY MOUNTAIN (1943), ALL THE LITTLE LIVE THINGS (1967), and his Pulitzer-Prize-winning ANGLE OF REPOSE (1971), three novels which reveal a writer at the heighths of his talent, REMEMBERING LAUGHTER nevertheless offers a compelling tale you won't soon forget.

G. Merritt