Angle of Repose

One of Wallace Stegner's greatest peeves as a Western writer was the myth of the West that was promulgated in the bulk of the books about the region. The vast majority of Western novels and movies tended to perpetuate utter myths about the West, instead of grappling with the West itself. Perhaps no American writer knew the West as well as Stegner, not excepting his student Edward Abbey. An inveterate hiker and explorer, he camped or walked nearly every area in the West. He wrote innumerable books about the West and took time to visit every spot he wrote about. For instance, in writing of John Wesley Powell's trip down the Colorado, he retraced his route to gain the greatest possible grasp of what he saw. He traveled the trails that the Mormons and others took in relocating to the West. He was one of the few people to hike along Glen Canyon before Lake Powell consumed it. Moreover, he was raised in the West, spending his childhood on what remained on the frontier.Given all this, I find it utterly astonishing that a couple of reviewers should have the impression that he does not know whereof he wrote. For instance, one reviewer wrote, "Bottom line: the West has a geography, and its denizens a temperament, that demands that we write and read about it in a way that does justice to the hard realities of life in a barren place." Why he would imagine that Stegner, who was intimately familiar with the geography, was one of its denizens, and knew first hand the hard realities of the place by spending his childhood in a variety of barren places, utterly baffles me. I suspect that it is because the book writes about the REAL West and not the West of the Imagination.Lyman Ward, distinguished historian (Stegner himself, though primarily a writer of fiction, was the author of several works of history, though the character was based on former colleague of his who suffered from a physical condition precisely like Ward's) is studying family documents with an eye to writing a book detailing the story of his grandmother and grandfather. The novel is brilliant on multiple levels. It is a fascinating study of the travails of an invalid struggling with his own enormous physical sufferings. It is a vivid and accurate retelling of a story of what life war actually life in the frontier in the late nineteenth century. But primarily it is a powerful and overwhelming reflection on the nature of human frailty, love, and the healing power of forgiveness. Although Ward reflects on the marriage of his grandparents, this is actually a surrogate for confronting the tragedies in his own, and whether he will rigidly refuse to forgive his wife for her wrongs against him, or whether he will allow redemption and healing to take place. The novel has aroused considerable controversy among some feminist writers, for an interesting reason. Stegner himself was a very strong supporter of women's rights (indeed, although he was uncomfortable with the youth movements of the

Angle of Repose is a commentary on marriage, what makes it work and what makes it fail. A severely disabled (wheelchair bound) professor, whose marriage has failed, researches and writes the saga of his pioneer grandparents, a couple whose marriage lasted in spite of tremendous adversity and tragedy. The professor's attendant, the woman who bathes and dresses him, gets him up each morning and to bed each night, also has a failed marriage.Stegner won the Pulitzer for Angle of Repose; even a casual reading of the first half of the book tells you why. It's a big, long, lush, slowly progressing story that weaves the distant past with the near past with the present beautifully and seamlessly.Superb. Read this one and savor it. Don't rush yourself.

Wallace Stegner's Angle of Repose is simply a wonderful novel--a serious piece of fiction about a marriage and marriage itself. Lyman Ward, a fifty-something professor whose own marriage has disintegrated has returned to his childhood home to write of the marriage of his grandparents, perhaps to determine why their marriage lasted through tremendous adversity when his own could not. His grandparents, Susan and Oliver Ward met in New York the 1870s, where she was a promising illustrator and he an engineer. They marry and travel West, living in various places, California, Idaho. Susan feels that she never quite fits into this "uncivilized" place, expressing her unsettleness beautifully in her letters to her good friend Augusta, who lives the life in New York that perhaps Susan felt she was destined to live. Lyman is fascinated with his grandmother, telling her story as he discovers how it unfolds through reading these Augusta letters, adding what he remembers from his own childhood. Lyman suffers from a degenerative bone disease and must rely on young Shelly Rasmussen to help him construct this book on his grandmother. Shelly has just escaped a failed "marriage" of her own. Lyman tells the story of his grandmother while also telling us both his and Shelly's stories seamlessly. Stegner's writing is beautiful and evocative. Angle of Repose is a big, beautiful, unique novel. Stegner's method of weaving the stories together works marvelously and so many of his sentences are simply perfect. Susan Ward's life(and Lyman's and Shelly's) is the believable story of a flawed human being--it's not picture perfect--there are no rosy endings for us here. However, the novel is very satisfying. Highly recommended.

As our narrator Lyman Ward says, this is a book about a marriage. "A masculine and a feminine. A romantic and a realist. A woman who was more lady than woman, and a man who was more man than gentleman." And it's a story that will keep you turning pages well after you should have turned out the light. Susan Burling and Oliver Ward were probably ill-matched from the start, a genteel Eastern woman who goes west with her husband to the mining camps of the 1870s determined never to bring herself down to the level of mining camp society and a man who will do anything for his wife's comfort except change his own nature. The result is years of wrestling with themselves and their relationship through disappointment and tragedy. Their story is told by their grandson, Lyman, himself living with a crippling disease and a broken marriage. Stegner offers a wonderful contrast between Lyman's anything-goes world of the early 1970s and the strict moral code of Susan and Oliver's time. (Looking at if from the 21st century makes it ever more interesting). The jumps back and forth from Lyman's present to Susan's past are even, well-paced and welcome. Sadness if often dispelled with humor. The descriptions of the west and the camps are beautiful. If it is possible to "write" in technicolor, Stegner does it. Despite the harshness of the untamed frontier there is a movie-quality to the images, wide-angle shots of green and gold prairies and nights in which it is never really dark. Lyman's bone-hardening illness becomes a metaphor for his own inflexibility and that of his grandparent's and in the end we learn that finding a true resting spot - an Angle of Repose - requires forgiveness of oneself and others.