Classics Corner -- Angle of Repose

[Sherry, Doyenne]

Let's move the discussion of Angle of Repose over here until the webboard is functioning again. Here is a link to our discussion of 1995: http://www.constantreader.com/discuss...

[Sherry, Doyenne]

Somebody please talk about this book. I decided not to do a re-read, but I know some of you have read it recently.

[Ruth]

I decided not to reread it, too. I was hoping that when the discussion got going it would jog my memory so I could at least participate a little.

R

[Mary Ellen]

I did do a re-read, and was surprised that my reaction differed a bit from my original experience, about 15 years ago.

But, to start with the book, not me...

Wallace Stegner won the Pulitzer Prize for "Angle of Repose" in 1971. The introduction to the edition I read (by Jackson J. Benson, who wrote a 1996 bio of Stegner) said Stegner came across the work of Mary Hallock Foote (the real-life Susan Burling Ward) in 1942. He was the first to include her work in his college curriculum, but it took quite a while for him to incorporate her story into a novel. Benson states that Stegner did not want to write a "historical novel" as such; he wanted to write about the present. The device he uses is a present-day narrator, Lyman Ward, who researches the story of his grandparents, Susan & Oliver Ward, as a way of rescuing his own, recently reduced existence from a certain meaninglessness.

I had two questions about the way Stegner structured his book:

1) Do you think the interplay of the Lyman Ward story and the Susan/Oliver Ward stories works? Lyman is an intrusive narrator, letting the reader know when he is making something up. Did that effect your response to the Susan/Oliver story?

2) Stegner quotes heavily (about 10% of the text) from the actual letters of Mary Horton Foote. Because of restrictions placed on him by a Foote descendant, he does so without attribution. When I first learned this, I felt cheated (I was wowed initially by the thought that Stegner wrote it all & got the woman's perspective "right" in those letters...). This decision caused a bit of controversy. What do you think of this choice of Stegner's, both as it affects the book & as an ethical matter?

[Robert]

Mary Ellen,

I'm still reading, but I'd like to comment on your second question. This issue reminds me of Ian McEwan's Atonement in which McEwan heavily utilizes material from an actual diary to bring alive the scenes of Briony as a nurse during WWII. That was the most memorable section in Atonement for me. I recall some discussion about this issue of plagerism, or something similar, when we discussed A Million Little Pieces by James Frey. In Ian McEwan's case, I believe he acknowledges his source but I don't have a copy of the book at hand. Susan Ward's letters are so "real" I'm not surprised to find out they are real! I'll comment more when I've finished the novel, except to say that at this point it doesn't bother me.

Robt

[Mary Ellen]

Robt -- I didn't realize that about Atonement, either! (Where have I been?)
Anyway, my more considered reaction to learning that the SBW letters in Angle of Repose were written by someone else, was amazement that Stegner could integrate them so seamlessly into his novel, and make SBW's voice in dialogue, so consistent throughout.
I look forward to your comments when you're done!

This is such a rich novel!

Mary Ellen

[Sarah]

I have a little bit to go, but...I had no idea the letters were "real." With that knowledge, I agree with you, Mary Ellen--Stegner has an uncanny ability to use her voice in his own sections.
As I've been reading (before I learned the above), I was struck by Lyman providing so much "interpretation" of events, personalities, and thoughts. Maybe interpretation isn't exactly the word I want--I mean the sections where he is creating her inner thoughts & feelings, obviously indirectly informed by her letters but largely made up out of whole cloth. My experience with those kinds of leaps that people make is that they are colored by the "interpreter's" thoughts, feelings and experiences and so cease being a true reflection of, in this case, SBW. If that holds true, where do we see the fusing of who Lyman is and who SBW is? Are there supposed to be connections? For example (for I'm afraid I haven't been too clear, and this seems like a cheesy example) does his rendition of SBW's feelings of being trapped echo his own 'trappedness,' albeit in another dimension?

Foggily, Sarah

[Rob]

I'm still waiting for this to come in, so I may be a little behind the rest of you, sorry.

-Rob

[Anne]

I'm only about 150 pages in. As I read, I remember nothing from my first go 'round with this book 15 years ago. I keep wondering why I loved it so much!

I'll keep going, though, because I'm still interested. Having been to Grass Valley and Leadville, I look forward to more descriptions of the area and the people of the times.

So far, I'm intrigued by the relationships--Susan and Oliver, Susan and Augusta.

Anne

[Jim]

I am having a hard time picking a side. I am the currently the age of the narrator, and the people he is attacking are those people like me who got out of college in the late 60s.

I can't decide whether to be an old grouch or a rebellious kid. Of course, that problem isn't limited to this book.

-- Jim

[Ricki]

Atonement - I've got my copy here - it just says that he is indebted to the staff of the Dept of Docs at the Imperial War Museum for letting him see unpublished letters, jounals and reminiscences of soldier and nurses who were serving in 1940 and he mentions some published authors and books. I'm off to see the film today.

[Robert]

Ricki,

Thanks for checking the acknowledgements in Atonement. I look forward to seeing the movie which doesn't seem to be anywhere in the US yet.

Jim,

I’m having the same experience of divided perspectives regarding the narrator, Lyman Ward. I also experienced this with Stegner’s All The Live Little Things narrated by Joe Alliston. I, too, was a youth in the 1960s, so the narrator’s distaste for the youth culture of which I was a part brings back dreary memories of ladies in church who criticized the length of my hair and other intolerant attitudes about “that’s not music,” “are you a girl or a boy?” or “in my day we had respect for…” Ugh. However, I really like Lyman’s perspective on his grandparents, and, consequently, I like him. I excuse his crankiness as being a reaction to constant pain. I also liked Joe Alliston in ATLLT, even though “longhairs” left him nearly apoplectic.

Robt

[Catherine]

As it happens, I had come across the original of Lymanś grandmother in some of the feminist literature I had read, and I was greatly irritated by his obvious dislike of her - so greatly I didn´t even finish the book.
The real interaction between ¨Susan¨ and ¨Augusta¨ was almost sapphic and would be seen as such now, though that wasn´t the case in the 19th century. The worlds of men and women were so separated that many looked for understanding and affection among people of their own sex. I remember ¨Augusta" was somewhat jealous of ¨Susan´s¨ husband.
I kept feeling Stegner was obscuring the real quality and personality of the artist with the crabbed nature of Lyman.

[Mary Ellen]

Catherine, I'm intrigued by your comment that you were irritated by Lyman's obvious dislike of Susan, to the extent that you couldn't finish "Angle of Repose." My reaction is the opposite -- I feel he has her on an undeserved pedastal!

I recall being enchanted by this book the first time around. I think I was so engaged by Stegner's creation of Susan & Oliver's world (rather, worlds), other aspects of the book didn't bother me. They did this time through!

My main problem with the book is the narrator. I really dislike this guy -- I am wholly intolerant of his intolerance! (I had the same reaction to Joe Allston -- the 2 books in which he appears are my least favorite of Stegner's works.) Although I suppose Stegner intended Lyman's wife Ellen to seem hateful to us for leaving him when he's down, I wonder if it were more his psychic rigidity than his physical limitations that drove her away. (I think it's telling, given the circumstances of their separation, that their son seems to side with his mother.)

As I read the book, Lyman managed the neat trick of idealizing BOTH his grandparents, though the cache of letters and other writings keeps the focus on Susan, not Oliver. What did all of you think of them?

Mary Ellen

[Jim]

One of the great things about this book is the attempt to imagine what someone of the pioneer generation must have felt. I find myself caught up in a maze trying to figure out is this something that Susan Ward would have truly felt, or is it the narrator reading his situation into hers, or is it Stegner's view of the situation. The fact that there are authentic letters mixed into the story in some way makes it all the more confusing.

I wonder, for example, what Susan could have seen in Frank. He was just another impecunious engineer like Oliver who would have kept her isolated in the wilderness. Could she really have just been caught up in the excitement of an illegitimate romance?

I wonder about the idea of her going West when she purportedly wanted to be part of the literary life of the East. She did actually paid her own way. Once she got there, she kept wanting to live in the most isolated places rather than living in town where there would have been at least some intellectual life and no dangerous canals or footbridges. Contrary to what the book would have you believe, Boise is really a nice place.

The whole question of her falling out of love with Oliver also puzzles me. It sounds somewhat like the breakup of a 20th century commercial enterprise and some 20th century marriages where one of the partners wasn't producing the expected income and was holding back the other partner's career. Forgetting my romantic notion that marriage is about more than that, would a woman in the late 19th century have thought that way? Would Susan? Could this be Lyman imposing his situation on hers?

I started the book thinking that there wasn't much to it. The descriptions were evocative, but after a while I got tired of getting the weather report before every major scene. The characters seemed to be a little one dimensional -- Oliver as Gary Cooper and Susan as Oliva DeHaviland (Melanie in Gone with the Wind ). By the end everything has changed and I had complex people seemingly locked in a nightmare of guilt and resentment, at least in Lyman's mind.

It is an interesting book in any case.

-- Jim in Oregon

[Mary Ellen]

A 19th Century woman would have been quite likely to have seen marriage in economic terms (see Jane Austen!). And I thought that Susan agreed to marry Oliver, at least in part, as a reaction to Thomas and Augusta's marriage. Her place in the threesome was changed -- diminished -- and, IIRC, their engagement took her by surprise, so she got some satisfaction out of showing Augusta (who comes across as the real Love of Her Life, IMO) that she, too, had her secrets.

But I don't think Oliver's limited success was the only cause of the disintegration of their marriage. Oliver's drinking shocked Susan to the core and added to her dismay, yes, at their economic position but also over his lack of polish. Throughout the book she compares him unfavorably to other men -- Thomas, to Mr. King, to Frank -- who are better at conversation, who share her love of the arts, etc. Frank may have been a struggling engineer just like Oliver, but he liked to talk about literature while Oliver kept silent.

Susan is admirable in many ways, but she was a thorough snob, and she preferred isolation in Oliver's camps to having to socialize with people she considered her inferiors. (Not sure whom she saw as her equals, other than Augusta and Thomas, and, I guess, Frank, whom she describes several times as "fine." Oh, and that Mr. King who turned out to be a shady character.)

Mary Ellen

[Mary Ellen]

Sara - keep going! I had the same reaction as I was reading the book -- preferring the Susan/Oliver sections to those in the "present" with Lyman, and I look forward to hear whether you change your assessment, and why.

Mary Ellen

[Jim]

To me the point of the Lyman sections is to remind you that he is projecting feelings on Susan and Oliver that may or may not be accurate. It is interesting to think of an alternate book in which Susan is a stoic pioneer who welcomes hardship and has only a passing interest in what goes on in the literary world.

The letters might suggest something different, but they could be written off as comforting things to say to an old friend in the east rather than as deeply held convictions.

A famous movie director (Truffaut? Godard?) once said that the best way to criticize a movie is to make a movie. This book begs to have an alternate version written.

-- Jim

[Rob]

my copy finally came in, so I hope to be able to get in here and talk about it soon!

-Rob

[Anne]

I'm still working on this one. It drages at times for me, which I don't recall from my first read many ears ago. Could just be me and my lack of focus these days. But I'm determined to finish it!

Anne

[Robert]

Isn’t life a disappointment, but how picturesque. That seemed to be the operative theme for a long, long while during Angle of Repose. I’m being half facetious, but only half. I got really antsy with so much disappointment and consequently it took me forever to read this book. However, the novel has cumulative power and since I finished it yesterday I’ve been pondering Oliver and Susan’s angle of repose, or where their runoff detritus eventually settled.

So, what did I like? Many wonderful turns of phrase and descriptions of landscapes; a lot of solid writing; a sense of 19th century pioneer life without gun slinging clichés; Oliver and Susan were noble characters with an understandable conflict; an effective contrast of 19th and 20th century sensibilities (Susan vs Shelly!); the personal approach to history.

Some limitations? Too long (my 21st century attention span is showing); an extended unrelieved dreariness of disappointment sometimes gave me an experience of trudging through a heap of travel postcards.

Yet, overall a worthwhile read. I think Lyman and Ellen will reunite, don’t you?

Robt

[Robert]

Please forgive my flippant comment above about trudging through travel postcards since the locations were vividly rendered and I carry mental images of places like New Almaden, Leadville and the canyon in Idaho. I was less impressed with the Mexico section probably because Susan waxed so eloquently about the local color that I fully anticipated she would not be able to stay there. Nonetheless, Stegner’s descriptive skills are evident throughout.

To comment on Mary Ellen’s question about the effectiveness of the interplay of the Lyman Ward story and the Oliver/Susan Ward story: yes, I think it works and adds greatly to the novel. I am not bothered by being made aware of Lyman extrapolating or speculating about Susan and Oliver. A biography cannot help being shaped by the biographer’s perspective and there really is no such thing as an objective rendering of a life story, is there? It can be insightful, fair, multi-perspectived, well researched, but always subjective, I think. And since this is fiction anyway, I enjoy the further fictionalizing of the biographical and historical process that Lyman Ward goes through, especially since he gains insight into his own dilemma through theirs. Oliver may not be able to forgive Susan for half a century, but Lyman realizes (or at least I do) that Oliver’s lack of forgiveness is as much a tragedy as anything else that happened. One is left with a feeling of: that’s surely a damn shame. Sure Ellen seriously wronged Lyman, but doesn’t reconciliation offer them both a better future? I like how one story fits into the other. And with the added bonus of a comical disparity between the eras.

Robt

[Mary Ellen]

Robt, what did you think of the ending, or, rather of the "almost-ending," that bizarre sequence of a visit from Ellen in which Lyman is about to be, I don't know, ravished by Shelly, before he wakes up and tells us it was all a dream. I thought it was totally bizarre and am not sure why Stegner used this technique as a lead-in to Lyman's thoughts on hoping to be a more forgiving person than his grandfather was.

I agree that reconciliation with Ellen is possible. It seems to me that Lyman wishes to be able to forgive her -- and also, he suspects that his current caregivers may not be able to continue helping him!

Mary Ellen

[Ruth]

One of the things that held me at a distance in this book, is that I just didn't like Lyman very much. Nor did I care very much what he thought, which is probably worse.

R

[Robert]

Mary Ellen,

That ending dream portion was like dropping a tab of acid: like a plane taking off, reality suddenly got smaller and smaller out the window. It disoriented me, and I thought I had missed my exit or something, to use another travel metaphor, but when I was informed it was all a dream, I was amused. Why not, only a few more pages to go and that certainly felt good. It seemed an exaggerated 1970, the absurdity of freedom, Lyman’s body becoming infested with cynicism, or some such thing. On a number of levels Lyman was revolted by Shelly and the bewildering era they both found themselves in, but he was aroused by it, too, not immune to its potential. And as ardently as he defended the reserve and commitment of Victorian virtue, he was also glorying in the freedom of Leadville life and 19th century American pioneer open-endedness that had their counterpart in the counterculture of his present day. I thought the love/hate push/pull of the eras was rendered well. As someone who was a youth in 1970, I like to think we were exploring something new, or at least in a new way, that had merit and practical applicability within a quest that had plenty of foolhardy deadends, too. Many within my generation eventually discover historical precedents, but as we age, and that’s not so unusual.

Robt

[Jim]

Good points, Robert.

It's interesting that some of us like the Susan and Oliver sections and not the Lyman sections. After all, the Susan and Oliver sections are almost entirely what Lyman imagined.

Then again, maybe you become someone else when you write. Lots of writers whom everyone loves (Robert Frost for example), are supposed to have been impossible as people.

-- Jim

[Mary Ellen]

Robt-- An interesting take on that section! I had a less historical read of what was going on within Lyman regarding Shelly. (I was surprised to learn she was only 20! Was it just 35 yrs ago that 20-year-olds were supposed to be finished products, not still adolescents?). Lyman made frequent references to Shelly's braless-ness, in the guise of his critique of the loose (pun definitely intended) manners and morals of her generation. But to me, the remarks came off as both erotically charged & misogynistic.

Jim, I think what happened when Lyman wrote, was that the Lyman persona dropped off and it was Stegner writing and Stegner imagining! For me, the book would have worked beautifully with no Lyman sections at all.

Mary Ellen

[Ruth]

I agree Mary Ellen. Lyman was cuch a cranky, misogynistic old sob that I took everything he said with a half a cup of salt. It's been several years since I read this, but I remember wondering then what exactly it was that Lyman was contributing to the story. Unless it was contrast. But then why?

R

[Mary Ellen]

Sara,
Thanks for hanging in there! I look forward to reading your thoughts.

Mary Ellen