The Spectator Bird (Contemporary American Fiction) (Paperback)

by Wallace Stegner (Author) "On a February morning, when a weather front is moving in off the Pacific but has not quite arrived, and the winds are changeable and..." (more)
Key Phrases: little baron, toe joints, Miss Weibull, Karen Blixen, Ben Alexander (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description
Joe Allston is a retired literary agent whose parents and only son are dead, and who feels that he has been a mere spectator through life. Then a postcard from a friend causes him to return to the journals of a trip he took to his mother's birthplace to search for his roots; memories of that journey reveal that he is not quite spectator enough. Winner of the National Book Award.

Product Details

• Paperback: 224 pages
• Publisher: Penguin (Non-Classics) (November 1, 1990)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0140139400
• ISBN-13: 978-0140139402
• Product Dimensions: 7.7 x 5 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 5.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars See all reviews (27 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #171,035 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

62 of 62 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 (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

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.

33 of 35 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)

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.

21 of 21 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)

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.