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A review by jjupille
Angle of Repose by Wallace Stegner
4.0
Maybe I am a slow starter, but it took me a while to warm up to this. By the end, though, I was pretty into it. I end up having liked it.
A few quick thoughts.
Having not too long ago read Burke's Reflections on the Revolution in France, the concept of tradition has come a little more forward in my mind. I mention this because Stegner strikes me as a rather traditional fellow, in the end. Writing from the perspective of 1970, he's aware enough to see what's happening at places like Berkeley, but just a little too much of an old dog to really dig it, as they might have said.
Since I am probably less of a traditionalist, I found this a little bit of a speed bump.
I liked the temporal mix here, of the narrator doing the family history. Of course, this also becomes a real biographic mix, and that's fine. That all worked pretty well for me.
The only other Stegner I have read is [b:The Big Rock Candy Mountain|8467013|The Big Rock Candy Mountain|Wallace Stegner|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1348403829s/8467013.jpg|1105171]. I don't remember the names of the father and the mother, but I was thinking about the contrasts. The BRCM father is much more violent, crazy, on the edge. Oliver Ward is a sweety-pie, if a little dense. The BRCM mother is a real sweety, while Susan Ward is a snob - one of the worst insults I can levy. Not sure how they fit together, but just mulling ...
A bit more on Susan. I don't like her very much. As I have noted re other books such as Great Gatsby, I am at best indifferent to the East. So the opportunity cost of what she gave up, while catastrophic on her terms, strikes me as pretty low. And she got to live in some prime fly-fishing country, country I know a little and understand a little more, country which I love, and she despised it. So she and I aren't on the same wavelength there.
I don't much like her Victorianism, either, but for whatever reason I am more willing to argue taste than structural constraint, which would have been very significant, indeed. This is the core tension of the character, of course: her individual talents, desires, dreams, possibilities rubbing uncomfortably, chafing against the corset. I bet if East and West had been reversed - she loved the latter but had to be in the former -- I might have a very different perspective on her. As it stands, because she wants things I don't and rejects things I love, I am probably not quite sympathetic enough about her suffering.
I don't know the extent to which gender stands the center of people's engagements with the book, but at the very least it strikes me as an interesting treatment for the time.
I have told some people Stegner is not quite dark enough for me. That's what happens when [b:Blood Meridian: Or the Evening Redness in the West|10876214|Blood Meridian Or the Evening Redness in the West|Cormac McCarthy|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1304561211s/10876214.jpg|1065465] takes hold too early in reading the West, perhaps. I think things darkened up a little better toward the end, but maybe that's just me liking it more after my own or Stegner's slow start.
The "angle of repose" is a beautiful concept and a great title. It helps me forgive Stegner for what I think can be a bad (and, again, overly traditionalist) message about the forces --plural-- that must generate/sustain it.
A few quick thoughts.
Having not too long ago read Burke's Reflections on the Revolution in France, the concept of tradition has come a little more forward in my mind. I mention this because Stegner strikes me as a rather traditional fellow, in the end. Writing from the perspective of 1970, he's aware enough to see what's happening at places like Berkeley, but just a little too much of an old dog to really dig it, as they might have said.
Since I am probably less of a traditionalist, I found this a little bit of a speed bump.
I liked the temporal mix here, of the narrator doing the family history. Of course, this also becomes a real biographic mix, and that's fine. That all worked pretty well for me.
The only other Stegner I have read is [b:The Big Rock Candy Mountain|8467013|The Big Rock Candy Mountain|Wallace Stegner|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1348403829s/8467013.jpg|1105171]. I don't remember the names of the father and the mother, but I was thinking about the contrasts. The BRCM father is much more violent, crazy, on the edge. Oliver Ward is a sweety-pie, if a little dense. The BRCM mother is a real sweety, while Susan Ward is a snob - one of the worst insults I can levy. Not sure how they fit together, but just mulling ...
A bit more on Susan. I don't like her very much. As I have noted re other books such as Great Gatsby, I am at best indifferent to the East. So the opportunity cost of what she gave up, while catastrophic on her terms, strikes me as pretty low. And she got to live in some prime fly-fishing country, country I know a little and understand a little more, country which I love, and she despised it. So she and I aren't on the same wavelength there.
I don't much like her Victorianism, either, but for whatever reason I am more willing to argue taste than structural constraint, which would have been very significant, indeed. This is the core tension of the character, of course: her individual talents, desires, dreams, possibilities rubbing uncomfortably, chafing against the corset. I bet if East and West had been reversed - she loved the latter but had to be in the former -- I might have a very different perspective on her. As it stands, because she wants things I don't and rejects things I love, I am probably not quite sympathetic enough about her suffering.
I don't know the extent to which gender stands the center of people's engagements with the book, but at the very least it strikes me as an interesting treatment for the time.
I have told some people Stegner is not quite dark enough for me. That's what happens when [b:Blood Meridian: Or the Evening Redness in the West|10876214|Blood Meridian Or the Evening Redness in the West|Cormac McCarthy|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1304561211s/10876214.jpg|1065465] takes hold too early in reading the West, perhaps. I think things darkened up a little better toward the end, but maybe that's just me liking it more after my own or Stegner's slow start.
The "angle of repose" is a beautiful concept and a great title. It helps me forgive Stegner for what I think can be a bad (and, again, overly traditionalist) message about the forces --plural-- that must generate/sustain it.