Wallace Stegner

 

Please excuse my silence on the blog. I've been knee deep in Wallace Stegner's Angle of Repose. A reminder: this is six-hundred page novel! But I've now emerged. And with some thoughts to share: 

• This is a strangely constructed book: you have the novelist -- Stegner -- who imagines that he's inherited a cache of letters from his grandmother; he -- the novelist -- quotes directly from those letters in order to provide the basic scaffolding for his book. The rest of the novel is narrated in a traditional fashion; these sections include dialogue, description, and the like, and attempt to bridge the gap between letters. And then on top of all this, you have the life and times of the novelist, whose own story becomes part of the larger book, which includes sections focused on his own evolution and relationships. 

• All of which is to say: parts of this work, but parts do not; and to the extent that Angle functions as an epistolary novel, it does so with only partial success. The reason for this, I think, is strange: at times, Stegner seems to invalidate his own narrative, calling into question the dialogue he's created, wondering whether what he's presented is realistic or reasonable. For me, this became a distraction -- as I soon wondered whether any of the dialogue I was reading could be considered "believable." 

• And more: this is a long novel, but strangely, it was not long enough. Stegner seems to finish, in my reading, about half way through: his characters are still very much in a state of development when the novel ends, and the result a rushed effect: Stegner concludes that his own life -- his own decisions and mysteries -- resemble those of his grandparents. But this can only be so true, as we are forced to imagine what shape the final fifty years of their lives took. 

• I don't want to be too critical of Stegner: there were parts of Angle, certainly, which I enjoyed and which I found to be quite emotional: this is the 1880s and 1890s in Idaho and Colorado. Life is brutal: even the wealthy had few comforts (or comforts as we would know them). When Stegner's characters feel disappointment, it's real: that emotion is raw and believable. 

• And the title itself was evocative and emotive: this is the angle at which we suspend action; at which we no longer roll; at which, I suppose, we die. But I did not take it that way: not with such emphasis on death. For me, the title was about the great push -- the emphasis in our lives on action and accomplishment; and then, the moment when we decide that enough is enough, or that we have accomplished enough, and that we are willing to let things lay. 
  

There's a healthy reminder in Stegner's title for all of us. And while I don't think that this is the perfect novel in terms of its construction and arc, it is one which encourages thought and reflection. And that's worth the price of admission.