Remembering Laughter

Wallace Stegner's first novel, short, direct, and powerfully written. Set on a midwestern farm around the turn of the twentieth century, fun-loving Alec is married to prim and proper Margaret. After Margaret's younger sister Elspeth comes to live with them, she and Alec have an affair, with devastating consequences for the three. A son, Malcolm, is born out of the affair, who is raised thinking Alec is his uncle and Margaret his aunt. He finally learns the truth at novel's end, which is the weakest section of the book: it all transpires too quickly which diminishes the force of the revelation. But Stegner's writing is strong and vigorous; he is especially good at portraying Alec's wit and playfulness through his use of exaggerations and folkloric "whoppers." The icy cold relationship between Margaret and Elspeth (reminiscent to me of that between the characters in Edith Wharton's ETHAN FROME), is truly destructive and tragic. A fine debut achievement.

About five years ago I stumbled onto Wallace Stegner, and I haven't been able to leave him behind. I just got around to reading _Remembering Laughter_ this past winter, mainly because it was usually not even listed among his better books; that is too bad.Stegner is one of the best American writers that hardly anybody knows, and this is probably one of his most underrated works. "Haunting" and "poignant" are two words that I almost always find myself using when describing Stegner's novels, and this novella is clearly in that category. This book is a great intro to Stegner. _Crossing to Safety_ and _The Spectator Bird_ are better, but in economy of words, this one holds its own.For those of you who have never read Stegner, this is a great place to start. For those of you who have read Stegner, this is a delight to read. It's possible to see in this book the genesis of all of the stylistic techniques that Stegner would later employ to such great effect.I regularly give this book to friends as a gift, usually in the hopes that they will also discover the joy of reading Wallace Stegner.

Illustrating Tolstoy's observation that "all happy families are alike, each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way," Wallace Stegner's first novel, REMEMBERING LAUGHTER (1936), travels from the heighths of laughter (p. 13) to the depths of family grief in just 150 pages. Along the way, Stegner introduces us to Margaret Stuart and her younger sister, Elspeth, and then reveals the dark secret of infidelity binding them together in a constantly eroding relationship. While only in their forties, Stegner observes the twin-like sisters "were two old women sentenced to the prison they had made for themselves, doomed to wear away slowly, toughly; to fade and wither and dry up inch by inch in the silence of their house" (p. 150). Although it lacks much of the depth of Stegner's BIG ROCK CANDY MOUNTAIN (1943), ALL THE LITTLE LIVE THINGS (1967), and his Pulitzer-Prize-winning ANGLE OF REPOSE (1971), three novels which reveal a writer at the heighths of his talent, REMEMBERING LAUGHTER nevertheless offers a compelling tale you won't soon forget.G. Merritt

On the front porch of their Iowa farm house, Margaret Stuart and her sister Elspeth watch the arrival of the funeral guests of Margaret's husband Alec. Having aged rapidly and before their time, they seem to be twins; although in fact there is a seven year age difference between them. Living with them, grieving alone in his room is Malcolm, their son. This is the introduction to Wallace Stegner's first short novella, written in 1936 as his submission to a prize contest held by Little, Brown & Co. (Not surprisingly, Stegner won.) We next see the sisters 18 years earlier, at Elspeth's arrival in Iowa. Margaret and Alec are a handsome and, it seems, happy couple; although there are early warning signs - Margaret complains about her husband's taste for alcohol, he about her moralizing. Soon after the arrival of Margaret's younger sister, pretty and ostensibly much more naïve and innocent than Margaret, the relationship between the three begins to change; subtly but inevitably, until Margaret eventually stumbles into the discovery of her husband's affair with Elspeth. That discovery, almost more than the affair itself it appears, destroys the bonds between the sisters, between husband and wife, and between Elspeth and Alec. Yet, they go on living together, and together they raise Malcolm, the child born out of Elspeth's and Alec's relationship; held out as their nephew to minimize public shame. And while they keep themselves occupied with the farm business and with entertaining their neighbors, and even garner considerable outward success, inside they slowly dry up: Unlike in our end-of-the-20th/beginning of the 21st century culture, where "talk it over" and "bring it out" are the buzzwords of a society believing (perhaps rightly so) that for better or worse, problems not openly addressed will forever remain unsolved, an all-out display of the emotional turmoil besetting Stegner's heroes simply is not an option - in "Remembering Laughter" as little as in his later, Pulitzer prize winning "Angle of Repose." Stegner's wife Mary revealed in a short afterword to Penguin's 1996 republication of "Remembering Laughter" that the story was based on two old aunts of hers, one a widow and one a spinster, who together had raised a son who could have been the child of either of them; Mrs. Stegner wasn't sure whose. Only 150 pages long, this first novella already has all the hallmarks of Stegner's later works - compelling characters and a keenly accurate portrayal of their social context, set in the vast, magnificent and often merciless environment of the Western prairies which Stegner loved so much. This novella is an excellent introduction to Wallace Stegner's work (Stegner also has to be credited with contributing to the redefinition of this particular art form in 20th century American literature) and a great morality tale condensed to its essentials; not easy to swallow but highly recommended. Also recommended: Angle of Repose (Penguin Twentiet

Stegner's brief, taut novel tells a haunting story of infidelity and the destruction of life that happens in the midst of shameless behavior. Set in the rural Iowa around the turn of 20th C., Alec and Margaret meet her sister Elspeth, arriving from Scotland, at the train station. Before long, Alec and Elspeth are romantic and the child from their liaison becomes the source of constant pain and love between the embattled, embittered three.Stegner writes a straight-forward tale, giving personality to Iowa landscape and seasons much like Willa Cather did in her novels and stories. For this, he is clearly one of the West's better writers.What stays with you after reading this tale is the horror of shame and then the loneliness of shamelessness. Each character lives in his or her shadows until the spell is broken by the son: Malcolm.This story is the iceberg's tip in morality and the shame that lost decisions bring with them. Just because this novel is brief does not mean that it is light. Read it for a quick study in morality, grief, shame, and love.