Monday, February 05, 2018

Angle of Repose

I'm staying busy and preparing to head to Guatemala late this week...  So for now, I just have another book review.  I've listened to this book while in the gym during January.  

Angle of Repose  (New York: Doubleday, 1971), 569 pages (Audible narrator Mark Bramhall, 22 hours and seven minutes). 

It’s the summer of 1970 in California. Lyman Ward is a divorced and retired professor. He has lost a leg to disease. He spends his days with the aid of a neighbor, going through is grandmother’s letters and using them to recreate his grandparent’s lives in the American West. Oliver, his grandfather, was a mining engineer. He married Susan, an artist and author from New York. After moving West, she continues her work while regularly writing letters to her friend in the East.  With her life tied to a mining engineer, she moves all over the West and even to Mexico. The two are always hopeful, but nothing ever works out.  Oliver creates a process for making cement, but doesn’t patent it and someone else develops it. He is honest about the mines he works which leads to problems in a society where many use fake reports to make a killing selling shares in worthless mines.  He has a vision for a massive water project in Idaho, but loses his backing before it pays off.  He trusts an attorney to file his papers for land and then learns the attorney has claimed the land for himself.  His honesty and the trust he places in others leads to disappointment and after disappointment.  While having a few good years, he never makes it big while Susan’s work (illustrations for books as well as articles on the West) keeps the family afloat.  In time, a gap begins to break between Susan and Oliver. She is lured away by Oliver’s loyal assistant, Frank.  Although she declines Frank’s offer, the rift between Susan and Oliver widens. After the accidental drowning of a child, Frank’s suicide, and more separation, the two live out their lives accepting their less than happy estate.

As Stegner bounces back and forth from the 19th Century to 1970, parallels between Lyman Ward and his Grandparents become apparent. While this is a novel about the West, it is also a novel about families and relationships. However, the West plays a role as the backdrop for the story. It’s a land of promise that often fails to live up to its hype. The Ward’s traveling from place to place in the hopes of hitting it big remind me of Bo and Elsa in Stegner’s first novel, TheBig Rock Candy Mountain which begins around the turn of the twentieth century, a few decades later than Angle of Repose (1870s-1890s). The families of both novels spend their lives jumping around over the West in an attempt to make it big.  But there is a difference in the two men.  Oliver is very honest, where Bo is often operating outside the law.  They both find more trouble than reward in the American West.
Stegner’s prose is masterful as he captures the landscape of the West.  As he did in Big Rock, he often uses the journey across country to describe the differences between the East and West.  There is something about the wide-open spaces that draws his characters back to their home.  Even though Susan resisted becoming a western woman, by the end of the book, she has been lured into the landscape. It may not always be a place where dreams are fulfilled, but it is a place of hope and promise.

The title has to do with an engineering concept about the angle material (such as tailings from a mine) will stabilize and not continue to roll down a slope.  Stegner is able to apply this term to human relationships and it comes up numerous times within the book.


Stegner won the Pulitzer Prize in Fiction for this novel, even though he did have its critics.  For a work of fiction, he does quote letters from a woman whom he modeled Susan Ward afterwards. These letters are extensively quoted throughout the book and provide opportunities for Lyman Ward (the narrator) to speculate about what was going on in the lives of his grandparents.  I enjoyed this book and do recommend it.  Of course, I have spent much time studying mining camps in the West and especially in Nevada, so this book was, as some say, “right up my alley.”  I listened to the book, but had a hard copy which I did some actual reading over interesting sections.  

22 comments:

  1. Yes, this will be a strange and off the wall perception but from your review, I like the way the author plays out how Oliver is the nice guy loser. He's got great ideas and in a perfect capitalist world his talent would win the day. Unfortunately, talent and intelligence does not assure a happy ending.

    All that aside, I'll have to read the book to learn the parallels between Oliver and Lyman.

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  2. Have tons of fun in Guatemala! I haven’t heard of this book, but I’m glad you liked it.

    Aj @ Read All The Things!

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  3. I've had this book on my shelf since long before I read The Big Rock Candy Mountain. I enjoyed the latter, but found it to be so depressing that I've not been inclined to move on to this one. It sounds hard, too, (in nothing working out for them)... but other things you've said inspire me to give it a go at some point.

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  4. This book sounds rather somber - not particularly uplifting.

    Have a good trip to Guatemala. That sounds like an adventure!

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  5. Stegner was a hell of a writer, and at Stanford was mentor to the likes of Ken Kesey, Thomas McGuane, Jim Harrison and the like. 'Angle of Repose' is one of the best books I've read.

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  6. Me is sooo jealous, friend Sage ... anyway ... Wishing you many guuud experiences in Guatemala ... Love, cat. PS: I'm reading Hesse's Glass Bead Game again.

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    1. I read almost all of Hesse's writings in my teens and 20s, including The Glass Bead Game (but it was so long ago that I don't remember much about it). I read Siddhartha more times than any other book I own

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    2. Meouw ... smiles ... Love, cat.

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  7. i read Crossing to Safety many years ago for book club. I see it's in your list of popular posts as well.

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  8. I was wondering if the book is non-fiction, and then you answered that (it's fiction with non-fictional elements). Interesting, and I'm feeling for Oliver. Such a nice man. There are too few Olivers in today's world.

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  9. I have this book - passed to me by my sister. I've meant to read it - thanks for the recommendation!

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  10. sounds like an interesting book

    Enjoy your trip to Guatamala

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  11. I'm not familiar with this book, but it sounds both interesting and sad. Good luck on your travels to Guatemala.

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  12. I've heard of it but not read it. will have to check it out

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  13. Have a nice and safe travel in Guatemala Sage!

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  14. Safe travels and enjoy your new adventures visiting Guatemala, I'm excited to hear all about it and see your photos once you return. Speaking of reviews while at the library I always check out new books always in a wide range of subjects, I have to share "Scribbled in the Dark, by Charles Simic" it's short you can read it in one standing (of course I checked it out to read again) it's seems I've been craving this sort of writing lately. Poems! Take good care of you.

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  15. Hi Sage - glad you were able to get out on and have a sail, while the birthday party sounds wonderful. I hope the Guatemala trip is successful ... while Stegner's book sounds really interesting ... I've noted it - cheers Hilary

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  16. Stegner was master storyteller and I believe he deserved the Pulitzer for this. I read it years ago, not long after I read Crossing to Safety, and loved both of them.

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  17. I've always planned to red this book. Maybe I actually will now. Thanks for review Jeff. Enjoy your trip!

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  18. I have never been south of the border but always wanted to. I hope you'll post pics from your trip; Guatemala sounds like an interesting place to visit. Hope it won't be all work!

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  19. I read Angle of Repose a hundred years ago (almost) and it still sticks to my heart. I'm looking for mine all the time. Maybe in the next hundred years I'll find it.

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