Customer Reviews

The Spectator Bird

5 star:		(16)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

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.

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.

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.

This is a very rewarding piece of fiction written by the late Wallace Stegner. His writing is accessible, but nuanced and deep.

In this work, the National Book Award winner for 1977, Stegner profiles a few days in the lives of Joe Allston and his wife Ruth, who are in their twilight years, almost 70, and retired in relative comfort near San Francisco. A respected literary agent, Allston feels the pang or sense of not having accomplished much of direct or lasting value or personal satisfaction in his own life, paralleling his own experiences with that of the bird that watches and observes the living of other, more active and involved birds. He sees himself as being on the perimeter of the lives of those writers that he represents and also reads; but whom he both loves and hates.

Having regard to the title and parallels, this is not really a book about birds, for if it was, I doubt I could have stayed the course. It is a story of a man both in part frustrated and satisfied, although not at a point of admitting either emotion fully, who explores a period in his life some twenty years before, which had a profound and lasting impact on his life since. His son having died many years before, he has lived out his life with Ruth, and there are silences, a few secrets, many knowing looks, questions, but also many shared emotions that give their marriage and this story much resonance. A large part of the book follows his journal writing 20 years earlier while on a sabbatical with his wife in Denmark, the land of his mother's birth, and from where she fled at a young age. There are some secrets buried in that place that form the backdrop for this story. This is a story of reflecting and learning, rather than neat thirty minute lessons lived out with happy conclusions. Much that might help Joe is not apparent to him at the time he is experiencing it.

The story captures the irritations of family and over-familiarity with those we love but who can also drive us crazy. And coupled with that, the lure of the unfamiliar and exotic. As his life and the story evolves, Joe rediscovers the deep love he has for his wife and partner, Ruth.

Joe's questions and torment are perhaps reflected well in the following passage:

"What was it? Did I feel cheated? Did I look back and feel that I had given up my chance for what they call fulfillment? Did I count the mountain peaks of my life and find every one a knoll? Was I that fellow whose mother loved him, but she died; whose son had been a tragedy to both his parents and himself; whose wife up to the age of twenty had been a nice girl and since the age of twenty a nice woman? Whose profession was something he did not choose, but fell into, and which he practiced with intelligence but without joy? Had I gone through my adult life glancing desperately sidelong in hope of diversion, rescue, transfiguration."

Joe does not get all the answers to these questions in a neat little bundle, so neither do we. But he acknowledges finally that he has been on part of the journey of life as more than just a spectator.

I had to read another book by Wallace Stegner after reading Angle of Repose. I didn't think this would have a chance of measuring up to Angle of Repose, and it didn't. That's not a put-down though because that just means it is around number two on my all-time favorite list. One reason I thought I would have trouble with The Spectator Bird is that it is about aging and about a long marital relationship, and I'm eighteen. I was afraid that I wouldn't be able to relate to its themes. I was very wrong. Even though I haven't lived seventy years and do not know many of the feelings Joe Alston had, I was able to learn from the novel. The Spectator Bird gave me many insights into the live of my grandparents and even my parents. I have seen my family members grapple with the questions about their own lives that Joe fought with in The Spectator Bird. I have also witnessed relationships like that between Joe and Ruth. The book has helped me to see some of what their existance is like and also what mine will look like in the future. The Spectator Bird is just an amazing book. Nobody writes as well as Stegner. I don't know how many lines of his prose I have written down so that I can remember them. The characters are also so multi-dimensional. It seems like you know them (and the author) so well. The Spectator Bird is just a beautiful and satisfying read which I plan to revisit in the future and which I plan to recommend to any intelligent readers. Stegner needs to be read more often.

This is my third Stegner book and I enjoy him more each time. In this short book he tells a lot about getting/being old, grief of actual loss, wonder for a what-might-have-been relationship and WWII/post-war experiences in Denmark. There is a lot to tell and Stegner does so but with an economy of words that is astounding in the power that it can still achieve. Stegner is able to make the reader see both a man's and a woman's point of view, making one understand and sympathize with each. If you re looking for an introduction to one great and relatively unknown author, this is a powerful, easy-to-read and short way to do it.

It is inevitable that men and women who live long enough to grow old will reach a moment in life when years of regret pose a threat to all of life's meaning. The primary character in this book by Wallace Stegner is a retired literary agent, deeply committed to his lifelong wife. Together, they work through decades of stories, old habits, and a deep, dark secret from earlier years. The conclusion is heart-warming and encouraging, but not without the reader's personal reflection upon the meaning of his/her life. This was my first Stegner novel, but it won't be my last one.

This is a gem of a novel from a great American writer. It is the story of an older couple who are reading a journal written by the man 20 years before. It deals with a painful experience they both went through. When I finished the book, I felt what it must be like to live with and love someone for many, many years. The rewards of being faithful, loyal and caring for dozens of years are repaid many times when we reach old age, if we are fortunate enough to survive with a loved one that long.

I have just finished Angle of Repose, also, and I want to read everything written by this man.

The narrator of this novel has watched all his life as others acted. In one sense this book is about his becoming an active participant in life.

Through his eyes we are introduced first to his present, then through his diary to the past and lastly to the future.

The novel ends with the main character coming to terms with his life and everything good and bad thats happened.

I was most interested in the setting. Why do many Americans look so hard elsewhere for their identity? Not content with being American they are 'Italian American'; or,in this case, 'Danish American'.

In an intricate plot there are many different aspects you might concentrate on. As a recent immigrant to the USA myself, this was the part which spoke most clearly to me.

If only I could write as beautifully as Mr Stegner........

I loved Angle of Repose so was looking forward to The Spectator Bird, but I'm not as enthusiastic as the other reviewers. I had a hard time getting interested in the characters or the story. I liked the narrator's reading of the journal as a story device, but found the actual situation in Denmark to be less interesting, less shocking than I'd imagined it to be. The book is worth reading, but I'd have trouble recommending it to friends as enthusiastically as I did Angle of Repose.