Angle of Repose (Contemporary American Fiction)
Wallace Stegner's Pultizer Prize-winning novel is a story of discovery—personal, historical, and geographical.
Work Information
Wallace Stegner's Pultizer Prize-winning novel is a story of discovery—personal, historical, and geographical.
Wallace Stegner's Pultizer Prize-winning novel is a story of discovery—personal, historical, and geographical. Confined to a wheelchair, retired historian Lyman Ward sets out to write his grandparents' remarkable story, chronicling their days spent carving civilization into the surface of America's western frontier. But his research reveals even more about his own life than he's willing to admit. What emerges is an enthralling portrait of four generations in the life of an American family.
Book Information
- Publisher
- Penguin Books
- Published
- 1992-05-01
- Pages
- 576 pages
- Language
- 英語
- Size
- 14.15 x 2.64 x 20.8 cm
- ISBN-13
- 9780140169300
- ISBN-10
- 0140169300
- Price
- 1657 JPY
- Category
- 洋書/Literature & Fiction/Genre Fiction/Family Saga
Wallace Stegner's Pultizer Prize-winning novel is a story of discoverypersonal, historical, and geographical. Confined to a wheelchair, retired historian Lyman Ward sets out to write his grandparents' remarkable story, chronicling their days spent carving civilization into the surface of America's western frontier. But his research reveals even more about his own life than he's willing to admit. What emerges is an enthralling portrait of four generations in the life of an American family.
Wallace Stegner was born in 1909 in Lake Mills, Iowa. The son of Scandinavian immigrants, he traveled with his parents and brother all over the West-to North Dakota, Washington, Saskatchewan, Montana, and Wyoming-before settling in Salt Lake City in 1921. Many of the landscapes he encountered in his peripatetic youth figure largely in his work, as do characters based on his stern father and athletic, outgoing brother. Stegner received most of his education in Utah, graduating from the University in 1930. He furthered his education at the University of Iowa, where he received a master's and a doctoral degree. He married Mary Stuart Page in 1934, and for the next decade the couple followed Wallace's teaching career-to the University of Wisconsin, Harvard, and eventually to Stanford University, where he founded the creative writing program, and where he was to remain until his retirement in 1971. A number of his creative writing students have become some of today's most well respected writers, including Wendell Berry, Thomas McGuane, Raymond Carver, Edward Abbey, Robert Stone, and Larry McMurty. Throughout his career and after, Stegner's literary output was tremendous. His first novel, Remembering Laughter, was published in 1937. By the time of his death in 1993 he had published some two dozen works of fiction, history, biography, and essays. Among his many literary prizes are the Pulitzer Prize for Angle of Repose (1971) and the National Book Award for The Spectator Bird (1976). His collection of essays, Where the Bluebird Sings to the Lemonade Springs (1992), was nominated for the National Book Critics Circle award. Although his fiction deals with many universal themes, Stegner is primarily recognized as a writer of the American West. Much of his literature deals with debunking myths of the West as a romantic country of heroes on horseback, and his passion for the terrain and its inhabitants have earned him the title 'The Dean of Western Letters'. He was one of the few true Men of Letters in this generation. An historian, essayist, short story writer and novelist, as well as a leading environmental writer. Although always connected in people's minds with the West, he had a long association with New England. Many short stories and one of his most successful novels, Crossing to Safety, are set in Vermont, where he had a summer home for many years. Another novel, The Spectator Bird, takes place in Denmark. An early environmentalist, he actively championed the region's preservation and was instrumental-with his now-famous 'Wilderness Letter'-in the passage of the 1964 Wilderness Act. Honest and straightforward, educated yet unpretentious, cantankerous yet compassionate, Wallace Stegner was an enormous presence in the American literary landscape, a man who wrote and lived with ferocity, energy, and integrity.
Reviews
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solid fine novel
The characters in Angle of Repose are all very believable and interesting. Sometimes I did skim quickly through the parts that were written because I did not find them very interesting. The description of mining and a man that was true to his heart was really good. Susan was an interesting character too. The ending was really well done and you feel the pain in Lyman when he tells the final opinion to his ex wife about his Grandpa and how he could never forgive someone close to him betraying him. Good book overall.
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One of the Best Novels Ever Written
Several years ago I set out to read the 100 best novels ever written. Using a series of lists available on the internet I have now woven my way through 102 great novels. The "Angle of Repose" was on most of these lists and in my opinion it should be on all of them. Before I begin my review, let me state my bias. There is a huge difference between a book and a novel. A book is (generally) a fast paced and entertaining story. It may deal with geopolitics, romance, horror, murder, or any other topic you can think of. It's primary purpose, though, is to entertain. A novel on the other hand is written with a purpose beyond story telling. It exists to reveal something about the world, the heart, or the human condition. A truly great novel takes this a step further and allows the reader's heart to experience vicariously the heart condition or lesson it is written to convey. In short, it opens the window on the human soul and allows the reader to see in. In this sense, "Angle of Repose" is truly a great novel. It is not a great book in the sense that the reader will rapidly turn the page to find out what happens next. It is not intended to dazzle the reader and carry them rapidly from one entertaining experience to the next. Instead, it seeks to immerse the reader in small slices of the characters routine existence until the reader fully grasps the nature of the characters and the challenges they face. Using a style that is unique the author poses as an author reconstructing his grandmother's life from her collected letters and articles. Thus, both the author and the reader know that her fate is already set even though as the protagonist, she does not know it. This gives the entire book a kind of sad and nostalgic feel as she lives out a predetermined existence that she is not privy to. It is like someone reflecting back over their life even before they have lived it. It is a very powerful literary effect. I often found myself wanting to cry as I turned the pages because I could see where things were heading even when the characters could not. I wanted things to be different than they were, but knew they would not, could not be. This is not only one of the finest historical novels ever written concerning real life in the old west, it is also one of the most soul stirring books I have ever picked up. It deals with some of the deepest issues faced by frail humanity including hardship, failure, unforgiveness, and the fragile nature of the human soul. If you want an entertaining page turning story, this is probably not the book for you. If you want a glimpse into the human soul, this is it. One of the finest novels I have read, and I've read some good ones.
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Excellent novel
This book is a masterpiece
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Fantastic read!
Fantastic read, I bought the book to read on a road trip to the American west. Interesting comparisons between 1970's and late 19th century morality and the reckless ambition of the American West with the civilized established East Coast. Still haven't checked out how closely the book follows Mary Foote's correspondence, but what a great idea using authentic sources as a basis for an historical novel, ensuring the reader gets a true feel for the times.
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Poor copy
Old beaten up copy with flimsy pages. Doesn't appear like a genuine product at all. This has been happening repeatedly in my engagement with Amazon
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A story as big as North America and the lives of three character's that fill it.
Two stories actually. It is set in Northern California, New York's Hudson River Valley, Leadville Colorado, Central Mexico, and Central Idaho during the later half of the 19th Century and 1969. The portrait of the American West Stegner portrays is realistic yet breaks all stereotypes. The portrait of 1969 is classic. In the frame story, a disabled, distinguished professor emeritus of history lives in Northern California in a cabin built by his grandfather in the last years of the Nineteenth Century. He is surrounded by his paternal grandmother's letters, documents and pictures. He is in the midst of organizing this material and using his research to write a book about his grandparent's marriage. The frame story is told in chapter's placed at different intervals within the main story The grandparent's marriage is an unlikely one. Grandmother, a child of well-off parents, develops into an accomplished writer and literary artist. She meets and becomes a part of elite literary society of the latter half of the 1800's. Her best friends are Thomas and Augustus Hudson. These characters are based on American Poet and Editor Richard Watson Gilder and his wife, Helena deKay. The letters between grandmother and Augusta are a principle device to tell grandmother's story. Grandfather is a mining engineer of modest background. The marriage is an unlikely one, but sucessful. Grandfather moves from engineering project to project. Grandmother follows when the local living conditions allow. She returns, with her children, to her parent's home during transition periods. As she moves from place to place she writes short stories and sketches which she submits to Thomas' prestigious literary magazine. She also provides sketches for books authored by the most notable writers of the second half of the 19th Century. Thier marriage is the focus the main story. While there is love, this is not a conventional romance. It is the saga of three lives, the gandparent's and narrator's. Their lives encompass experiences on both sides of conventional marriage vows. The frame story takes up about a third of the novel. About halfway through I began to notice that the aspects of the narrator's life that he was disclosing paralleled the fortunes of his grandparent's lives. As the stories continued, metafictional devices began to appear to weave the stories closer and closer together. Finally, in the last section, Stegner masterfully uses a kaleidoscope of metafiction to bring great stylistic pressure to bear and smash both stories together with great drama and suspense. The result? A new story of one sentence that dissapears into period at the end. Magnificent! Highly recommend as is the excellent Audiobook.