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Recapitulation
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Recapitulation by Wallace Stegner - 4 stars
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“What is an event? What constitutes an experience? Are we what we do, or do we do what we are?”
In this book, Wallace Stegner returns to one of his characters from The Big Rock Candy Mountain. Bruce is the sole survivor of the Mason family. It is 1977, and he is now a retired diplomat. He has returned to Salt Lake City, where he spent his teenage years, to arrange his aunt’s funeral. He looks back on his adolescence, coming to terms with his regrets and painful past. We meet his abusive father, loving mother, supportive friend, and ex-girlfriend he intended to marry.
“This territory contained and limited a history, personal and social, in which he had once made himself at home. This was his place—first his problem, then his oyster, and now the museum or diorama where early versions of him were preserved.”
It takes place over the course of two days, but the narrative floats back and forth between the present and the past (1920s to 1930s). The writing is exquisite. It is character-driven, quiet, and contemplative. It contains poignant scenes that are easy to bring to envision.
“He feels how the whole disorderly unchronological past hovers just beyond the curtain of the present, attaching itself to any scent, sound, touch, or random word that will let it get back in. As a stronger gust rattles through the tops of the cottonwoods below him, he stops dead still to listen. Memory is instantly tangible, a thrill of adrenalin in the blood, a prickle of gooseflesh on the arms.”
It is about memory. It is about the lucky breaks, choices, and decisions (or postponements) that determine a person’s path through life. While one can enjoy this book for the pure poetry of the writing, I think it is best to read it after The Big Rock Candy Mountain (one of my favorite books and highly recommended).
“He was beginning to discover that the memory had no calendar. Inside there, all was simultaneous. A sense of time had to be forcibly imposed on it.”