The Spectator Bird (Penguin Classics) [Paperback]

Wallace Stegner (Author), Jane Smiley (Introduction)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 27, 2010 | Series: Penguin Classics

Joe Allston is a retired literary agent who is, in his own words, "just killing time until time gets around to killing me." His parents and his only son are long dead, leaving him with neither ancestors nor descendants, tradition nor ties. His job, trafficking the talent of others, had not been his choice. He passes through life as a spectator.

A postcard from a friend causes Allston to return to the journals of a trip he had taken years before, a journey to his mother's birth­place where he'd sought a link with the past. The memories of that trip, both grotesque and poignant, move through layers of time and meaning, and reveal that Joe Allston isn't quite spectator enough.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. Edward Herrmann is perhaps best known to younger audiences as kindly, patrician Richard Gilmore on the television series Gilmore Girls. Here, Herrmann uses his same elegant persona to amplify and underscore the bittersweet nuance of Stegner's novel about a retired man who travels to his mother's Danish hometown. There are hidden reserves of frustration and displeasure in Stegner's tale, and Herrmann aptly conveys these emotions with short, sharp bursts of dialogue matched with longer, more drawn-out ellipses of exposition. He even manages a serviceable Danish accent to top off his flawless performance. (Feb.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Audio CD edition.

Review

"It is the autobiographical nature of Stegner''s work . . . that makes it so compelling. In every novel, the narrator has all the gifts of language, empathy, and philosophy, but he nonetheless can never free himself from the torments of the past."
-Jane Smiley, from the Introduction

"Elegant and entertaining . . . every scene [is] adroitly staged and each effect precisely accomplished."
-The Atlantic

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Reading level: Ages 18 and up
  
• Paperback: 224 pages
• Publisher: Penguin Classics; Revised edition (July 27, 2010)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0143105795
• ISBN-13: 978-0143105794
• Product Dimensions: 7.6 x 5.3 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 6.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (31 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #56,515 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

102 of 102 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Another Stegner Masterpiece, January 6, 2001

By 

Paul McGrath (Sacramento, CA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Spectator Bird (Contemporary American Fiction) (Paperback)

The plot of this novel is deceptively straightforward: a postcard from a long-lost friend reminds retired, and tired, Joe Allston of the Danish trip he took with his wife twenty years earlier. He goes to his study and retrieves the diary that he wrote at the time. His wife, Ruth, asks him to read it aloud, so that she can relive these memories as well. And as we share in their moments together, both currently and on this memorable Danish trip, we realize that there had been some unspoken questions between the two of them dating from this journey. Bringing it into the open resolves their uncertainties with one another, and causes Joe to recall the emotional turmoil he went through which has never entirely gone away.

This is a book about love, about duty, about the sweet fulfillment of an enduring marriage, and about the sad futility of age. It is about kindness and despair; about joy and the bittersweet sadness of unrequitted love. It is filled with intelligence and wit and written by a man who was an absolute master of his craft.

It is pointless for me to go on. There is no superlative I can use which will ever do justice to this lovely, poignant novel. Despite the fact that we know what the inescapable conclusion is going to be, the last five or six pages are nevertheless like a series of hammer-blows to the heart, and I don't recall another novel bringing tears to my eyes as this one did at its end. It is only January the 6th, and I know I will not read a better novel this year, or perhaps for many years to come.

49 of 51 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Very highly recommended, March 12, 2003

By 

V. J. ELIA "Veejer" (Cape May, NJ United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: The Spectator Bird (Contemporary American Fiction) (Paperback)

When people ask who my favorite author is, Wallace Stegner is invariably one of the four or five names I toss out. And often I get the same response... "I've never read any Stegner" or even "I don't know the name". Stegner seems to be one of American literatures best kept secrets.

This book won the National Book Award in 1977. It's about Joe Allston, a retired literary agent, who lives with his wife in California. He is 69 years old and looking back at his life with a sense of discontent. He and his wife relive a trip they took to Denmark 20 years before, by reading a journal that Joe kept while they were there. The plot line switches back and forth from the present to the past.

This book is about the choices we make in our lives and how they affect everything that comes after. It's about aging and death, and foremost about life. Stegner writes about real life in such intimate terms that it makes the hair stand up on the back of your neck (at least it does that to me). Needless to say, a very highly recommended read.

34 of 35 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Perfect, Funny, and Wise, May 5, 2005

By 

John Sollami (Stamford, CT) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Spectator Bird (Contemporary American Fiction) (Paperback)

In all the entangled limbs, passionate melodrama, wild fantasy, and bloody gore of today's pop and contemporary fiction, there is no match for this fine masterwork. In just a little over two hundred pages, Wallace Stegner manages to present a brilliant portrait of a real marriage, an entertaining story of a husband's pursuit of his mother's memory, and an astonishing portrayal of a bereft Danish countess whose beauty and elegance is haunting and sad. Stegner also gets in his digs about the so-called hip writers of his time, while maintaining a wonderful sense of humor and a poetic and rich style second to none. And, in perfectly chosen prose, Stegner describes what it's like to age and to know that one is aging. In his America of the 1970s, anyone past 65 was just plain forgotten and invisible, except when it came time to vote or be bait for a swindle. Nothing on that score is different today. In fact, this novel is filled with universal truths and with a steady current of wisdom that will make your reading it one of the most rewarding experiences you've had in a long time. I guarantee it.