Showing posts with label American Dream. Show all posts
Showing posts with label American Dream. Show all posts

Tuesday, September 1, 2015

When She Was Good – and Roth is Great



The time had come to leave our boat and return to Florida.  We wanted to beat the weather for a safe drive.  Ann needed to see her surgeon because of an arthritic flare up in her knee and as much as we love being in Connecticut, seeing friends and family, living on our boat at our Club, there comes a time when the confines of the boat simply get to you and we long for the spaciousness of our home.  It’s the earliest that we’ve ever returned from our 15 years of bifurcated home/boat living, just in time for what we thought might become a Category 1 Hurricane, Erika, which thankfully disintegrated into remnants with only brief heavy rain and an eerie sunrise the day after.

Right before leaving the boat I picked up a novel I had brought (again, avoiding short stories for the time being), this time Philip Roth’s When She Was Good.  I’ve read a lot of Roth, and think his American Pastoral is one of the more important novels of my time.  I wasn’t expecting much from this novel, one often not discussed, but I was curious about it as to my knowledge Roth’s only novel with a woman (Lucy Nelson / Bassart) as the protagonist, particularly given the accusations over the years of Roth being a misogynist.  Furthermore, as Stanley Elkin’s brief blurb on the cover states, When She Was Good could be compared to Theodore Dreiser’s work ( I've read practically all his work in college and can count him among my favorite American writers), particularly in my mind his American Tragedy.

What mesmerized me is Roth’s lapidary characterization of Lucy.  This is a character, like the one in Dreiser’s other great novel, Sister Carrie, who you are unlikely to forget and it is Roth’s characterizations and dialogue which sets this novel apart. .  It reminded me of my own mother’s struggles in a man’s world.  There are two edges to this sword, though, Lucy as standing for and rationalizing what she considers “the truth” and then where her expectations stemming from” the truth” almost borders on mental illness.  Although she is described as a “ball buster” at one point, I think Roth is clearly rooting for Lucy in a world that does not reward her stalwart individualism.  Like Anita Shreve’s Olympia in Fortune’s Rocks, Lucy is a woman before her time. And like Anne Tyler’s A Spool of Blue Thread, this is a multigenerational novel, but with a darker view. 

Willard Carroll is from a dysfunctional family but as a young man he finds the American Dream waiting for him in “Liberty Center:”

     So at the sight of Liberty Center, its quiet beauty, its serene order, its gentle summery calm, all that had been held in check in him, all that tenderness of heart that had been for eighteen years his secret burden, even at times his shame, came streaming forth. If ever there was a place where life could be less bleak and harsh and cruel than the life he had known as a boy, if ever there was a place where a man did not have to live like a brute, where he did not have to be reminded at every turn that something in the world either did not like mankind, or did not even know of its existence, it was here. Liberty Center! Oh, sweet name! At least for him, for he was indeed free at last of that terrible tyranny of cruel men and cruel nature.

     He found a room; then he found a job-he took an examination and scored high enough to become postal clerk; then he found a wife, a strong-minded and respectable girl from a proper family; and then he had a child; and then one day-the fulfillment, he discovered, of a very deep desire-he bought a house of his own, with a front porch and a backyard: downstairs a parlor, a dining room, a kitchen and a bedroom; upstairs two bedrooms more and the bath. A back bathroom was built downstairs in 1915, six years after the birth of his daughter, and following his promotion to assistant postmaster of the town.

That daughter, Myra, becomes the mother to Lucy, Willard’s grandchild.  But Myra married a man with a drinking problem and as a young girl Lucy calls the police as her mother was hit by her drunken husband, Whitey, blackening her eye.  The shame of having the police involved, and their name the subject of gossip, seems worse to Lucy’s grandparents, and even her mother, than the act itself.  It is from this action that the novel finds its themes and its energy, Lucy condemning her father, totally ostracizing him, and men in general, unless they tell the “truth” and abide by her expectations of how a man should behave, taking responsibility, doing the right thing.

These “blue threads” of shame and anger and expectations culminate in her savage condemnation of her malleable husband, Roy, with whom they now have a child, the fourth generation in the novel.  These very words could have been spoken by my own mother during the height of her own unhappy marriage to my father:

     "You worm! Don't you have any guts at all? Can't you stand on your own two feet, ever? You sponge! You leech! You weak, hopeless, spineless, coward! You'll never change- you don't even want to change! You don't even know what I mean by change! You stand there with your dumb mouth open! Because you have no backbone! None!" She grabbed the other cushion from behind her and heaved it toward his head. "Since the day we met!" ….
     She charged off the sofa. "And no courage!" she cried. "And no determination! And no will of your own! If I didn't tell you what to do, if I were to turn my back-if I didn't every single rotten day of this rotten life ... Oh, you're not a man, and you never will be, and you don't even care!" She was trying to hammer at his chest; first he pushed her hands down, then he protected himself with his forearms and elbows; then he just moved back, a step at a time.

This tirade is in front of family and in front of their child.  It is a novel that resonates with me for personal reasons.   I’ll leave it to the reader as to whether Lucy is a “ball buster” or just a person living in a world that has turned on her because “of that terrible tyranny of cruel men and cruel nature” -- as experienced by her own grandfather before he fled to “Liberty Center.”

I’ll miss Roth (who has vowed to write no more) as I’ve missed Updike.  To hear from them no longer is like losing close friends.




Thursday, October 10, 2013

Of Mice and Men -- Dramaworks' Bold Production



Robert Burns: The best laid schemes of mice and men / Go often awry

I say "bold" in the subject heading but I could have easily said "daring."  It's not the type of drama which some people seek out.  It is delivered with such intensity that some moments land on the audience like a sledgehammer.  But if any play suits Dramaworks to a tee, it's Of Mice and Men, a play about simple dreams dashed by chance and circumstances, the inherent vulnerability of characters who are striving for the basic things in life, a place to live and some security. Dramaworks knows how to pick great dramas of this nature and breathe life into them.

Of Mice and Men is among one of Steinbeck's greatest works, not as famous as Grapes and Wrath or East of Eden of course, but it's a novella consisting almost entirely of dialogue.  It reads like a play and it sweeps the reader along into its inevitable, tragic conclusions.  Steinbeck designed it as such --- to convert it to a play. Reading stories such as Of Mice and Men, where the characters are "acting out" the themes of the work through dialog and their actions, gives it that unique momentum, unlike more descriptive literary works.  Seeing it live on stage pushes you to deeply empathize with real people, as if you are transported to their time, place, and circumstance.

There are not many plays more painful to watch in my opinion, because nearly every character is so seriously flawed, and so on his / her road to ruin.  Alas, "the best laid schemes....often go awry."  On a macro level, the setting of the dust bowl migration leaves them even more at risk.  These are migratory workers in the field, set in a ranch in California not far from Steinbeck's home town.  Here is society's most vulnerable stratum, and it is their inherent loneliness as migrant workers and their unreachable dreams that are laid threadbare in this production

It takes a certain ear to capture real dialogue, and as Steinbeck himself grew up in Salinas, California during those times, and spent some time on ranches with migrant workers, he is a master, and if you see this play and/or read the novella, this is something to be appreciated, savored, as it is a language that almost manifests the hardship, the loneliness, and the ill-fated destiny of the characters. Ironically, the language itself catapulted the book onto censorship lists, especially when first published, but probably in some sections of the country, it is still not taught.

It is also a work about friendship and trust, a unique, almost symbiotic relationship between two men.  They rely on one another, George the orchestrator of their lives (or whatever modicum of control he has) and Lennie, a quiet innocent giant of limited mental capacity dependent on what George says and the dreams that George spins to keep them both going.

George: Guys like us, that work on ranches, are the loneliest guys in the world. They got no fambly. They don’t belong no place. They come to a ranch an’ work up a stake and then they go into town and blow their stake, and the first thing you know they’re poundin’ their tail on some other ranch. They ain’t got nothing to look ahead to.

Lennie:. That’s it—that’s it. Now tell how it is with us.

George: With us it ain’t like that. We got a future. We got somebody to talk to that gives a damn about us. We don’t have to sit-in no bar room blowin’ in our jack jus’ because we got no place else to go. If them other guys gets in jail they can rot for all anybody gives a damn. But not us.

Lennie: But not us! An’ why? Because . . . . because I got you to look after me, and you got me to look after you, and that’s why.

In trying to explain their relationship to Slim, the mule driver, perhaps the most "normal" person on the ranch, George says the following, indicating to Lennie with this thumb: He ain’t bright. Hell of a good worker, though. Hell of a nice fella, but he ain’t bright. I’ve knew him for a long time.

To which Slim replies, Ain’t many guys travel around together.  I don’t know why. Maybe ever’body in the whole damn world is scared of each other.

George and Lennie's dreams are just that simple:  "Jus livin offa the fatta the lan" with Lennie tending to the rabbits. It is the American Dream at its most basic.  A place to live, a little happiness? This a leitmotif in the play.

Crooks, the black stable hand, knows a thing or two about being lonely and ostracized, and recognizes in Lennie a somewhat kindred spirit.  More foreshadowing as he says to Lennie: I seen hunderds of men come by on the road an’ on the ranches, with their bindles on their back an’ that same damn thing in their heads. Hunderds of them. They come, an’ they quit an’ go on; an’ every damn one of ‘em’s got a little piece of land in his head. An’ never a God damn one of ‘em ever gets it. Just like heaven. Ever’body wants a little piece of lan’. I read plenty of books out here. Nobody never gets to heaven, and nobody gets no land. It’s just in their head. They’re all the time talkin’ about it, but it’s jus’ in their head.

One of the catalysts in bringing the play towards its dark conclusion is the one truly unlikeable character, Curley, the "The Bossman's" son, constantly needing to prove himself, incredibly possessive of but inattentive to his new wife (unnamed in the play, an interesting subliminal message about Steinbeck's attitude towards women - or at least their place in the play).  Candy, the aging worker who is now confined to the most menial tasks around the ranch warns George and Lennie: Curley’s like alot of little guys. He hates big guys. He’s alla time picking scraps with big guys. Kind of like he’s mad at ‘em because he ain’t a big guy. You seen little guys like that, ain’t you? Always scrappy?

George: I seen plenty tough little guys. But this Curley better not make no mistakes about Lennie. Lennie ain’t handy, but this Curley punk is gonna get hurt if he messes around with Lennie.

Candy: Well, Curley’s pretty handy. “Never did seem right to me. S’pose Curley jumps a big guy an’ licks him. Ever’body says what a game guy Curley is. And s’pose he does the same thing and gets licked. Then ever’body says the big guy oughtta pick somebody his own size, and maybe they gang up on the big guy. Never did seem right to me. Seems like Curley ain’t givin’ nobody a chance.”

There are no chances for Lennie and George's simple dream to become a reality (and for Candy as well, who wants to be included).  The final catalyst is Curley's wife, who is generally regarded as a slut by the ranch hands, but nevertheless dreams of becoming a movie star, and is the ideal magnet to draw Lennie (and herself) into the play's inevitable conclusion.  I'll not quote it here but in the second act, Curly's wife and Lennie "talk" to each other, expressing their hopeless dreams, but neither are capable of listening to the other.  It is a conversation entirely in counterpoint.

This was an absolutely perfect script for J. Barry Lewis, the veteran, knowledgeable, Resident Director of Dramaworks, to bring out the themes of this play by maximizing the superb talents of his actors and utilizing the 'state of the art' stage now available in their new space.  It is truly the ideal designed theatre for both sides of the fourth wall, bringing the audience into the performance.

Here is the information from the Dramaworks' web site, just so I get all the names right:
Palm Beach Dramaworks’ production is directed by J. Barry Lewis and features John Leonard Thompson (George), Brendan Titley (Lennie), Paul Bodie, Cliff Burgess, Frank Converse, Dennis Creaghan, Betsy Graver, Christopher Halladay, Wayne Steadman, and Ricky Waugh. Scenic design is by Michael Amico, costume design by Leslye Menshouse, lighting design by John Hall, and sound design by Matt Corey.

Many of these artists are veteran Dramaworks' actors or technical people.  All are at the top of their game in this production so it is hard to single out comments on one each, but I'll make a few points.

First and foremost John Leonard Thompson carries a heavy load in the play, being on stage most of the time, playing George with a focused intensity, trying to manage Lennie and keep him out of trouble, keep the dream intact and attempt to fit into the ranch and keep their jobs and at the same time keep their plans secret (unsuccessfully as Candy becomes part of the hopeless scheme and even Crooks tries to join in).  And of course trying to avoid the inevitable conclusion of the play, so shocking, even though most in the audience (I hope at least) knew how it would end.  It is a part demanding such energy (and ability to memorize massive regional dialogue) so hats off to him.

Brendan Titley is one of the newcomers to Dramaworks, a young but experienced Shakespearean actor who does a heartfelt job portraying Lennie -- a difficult part to play but he always manages to secure the empathy of the audience

An award-winning supporting performance is given by Dennis Creaghan, an absolutely perfect depiction of the old rancher, Candy, whose beloved old dog has just been shot to put him out of his misery.  He fears that he too has become too old and useless and knows that his time at the ranch will be at an end sooner than later.  He is irresistibly drawn to the scheme of sharing in George and Lennie's dream of owning a small ranch which he can help them realize (he was given a small amount of money as compensation from an accident that severed his hand). 

I loved Cliff Burgess's characterization of Slim, the one person who seems to have reconciled himself to his job on the ranch, goes about his business in an upbeat way -- a fair-minded person.  His presence on the stage and the way Burgess comports himself in the part was always a relief, lessening the heavy tension on stage for a moment or two.

W. Paul Bodie is ideal as Crooks, the stable hand, who actually has his own room -- he's not allowed to play cards with the other boys or even enter the bunk house because he is black.  He's resentful about that, but ironically, he has something none of the other workers have, his own place.  Crooks accepts his lot in life on the one hand and is angry on the other, Bodie expressing that contradiction perfectly.

Curley's wife is admirably played by Betsy Graver and while she is not on stage that often, she creates a contrast to the bland monolithic "colors" of the workers.  Simply, she lights up the stage with her seductive looks and dress, a femme fatale in every sense of the term.

The remaining cast members give professional performances in every way, but one last comment on the acting, and that is the brief, but powerful role of "The Boss" by one of the stage's (and movie and TV) most experienced actors, Frank Converse.  He is larger than life while on stage.  Coincidentally we have a geographic connection as he lives in Weston, CT (where we lived for some 25 years) and were fortunate to see him in some productions at the Westport Country Playhouse over the years. 

Michael Amico uses representative design, with one major set -- sort of a Tabula rasa with added extras to effectively portray a sandy bank on the Salinas River, the ranch bunkhouse, the barn, and the stable hand's room.  There is actually a hatch that opens on the stage floor filled with water to represent a river and along with the sound effects and lighting, the audience is drawn into the image and supplies the "rest" allowing the characters to do the storytelling.  His designs always seem to be exactly the right one for the play, difficult to construct after being properly imagined.

Leslye Menshouse's costumes were designed right out of the Sears, Roebuck catalogues for the times -- probably where the characters would have bought their clothing, and then underwent serious "distressing" to reflect the years of hard labor and the few clothing changes men of the fields wore.  They had the look of the WPA photographs from the dust bowl migration.

Lighting shifts are numerous and dramatically effective, using the stage design to its greatest advantage and well coordinated with myriad sound effects, of wildlife, dogs howling in the distance, of men outside the barn, horseshoes thudding and making ringers.

This is a major production, and in the intimate Dramaworks' surroundings, the audience becomes part of the tragic events that unfold, but also -- hopefully -- with the sense that we all share, as human beings -- the same feelings, wanting to be connected (and I don't mean Facebook) with others.  Nonetheless, some will see this production as dark, very dark, and in many ways it is that too, but Steinbeck (and Dramaworks) are striving for a more empathetic appreciation of universal human needs.  A play not to be missed.  



Monday, July 15, 2013

We Live Too Shallowly in Too Many Places



That is an indirect quote from Wallace Stegner’s masterpiece, Angle of Repose, but more on that later.

I thought of those few words as we headed north on I95 last week, fortified by yet another “book” – actually the 13 hour audio book version of Jess Walter’s Beautiful Ruins, a novel that has some things in common with Stegner’s.  I had read Walter’s Financial Lives of the Poets on the maiden voyage of the cruise ship Marina, finding a copy in the ship’s pristine library.  It is a very funny but tragic story, reminding me a little of the writing of Joseph Heller and I made a note to read his next work.  Perhaps it was providential that Amazon had a sale on the audio book edition of his most recent novel, Beautiful Ruins, right before we departed Florida for Connecticut.  While it is very professionally narrated, somehow I think the book might be better read than listened to.  I can’t really explain why that might be; perhaps having it read to you makes you focus on plot rather than character, or the interruptions while being on the road forces one to stop listening when rest stops dictate.

The story begins with Pasquale Tursi, who, after his father dies in 1962, returns from his partially completed college education to run the family’s small hotel in the out of the way Italian coastal town of Porto Vergogna There he has a chance meeting with a minor American actress, Dee Moray (she is in Italy to film Cleopatra with Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor). The story is a CD page turner (making the drive that much easier), moving back and forth from 1962 to the near present, with the introduction of a number of characters (including Richard Burton).  It is like so many good novels the tale of choices and consequences. Walter’s characters interact with one another over time, changing the outcome of each others’ lives, “beautiful ruins” as some of the Italian landscape.  Their stories devolve into their own “angles of repose.” Jess Walter continues his journey as a young ascending American novelist.

As the novel moved around, so did we, first visiting friends Suzanne and George in Savannah, sharing a July 4 dinner with them and then the following night we made a long overdue visit to the relatively new home of our friends Barbara and Ron (and their particularly smart Border Collie, Coco) in Apex, NC.  Ron was a colleague in my publishing days (and Barbara as well, but Ron and I worked at the same firm) and over the years we’ve become close friends in spite of our geographic estrangement.  It was wonderful seeing them after all these years.  Then, back on the road.
 
The drive up I95 is emblematic of living too shallowly in too many places.  As a nation we’ve become anchorless, a nomadic nation addicted to the so called “pleasures” of travel.  Even with gas at $4 plus a gallon the roads were packed, the “rest stops” jammed with those seeking burgers, fries, ice cream, pizza, and sodas. We’ve learned over the years to pack our own food, and to confine our rest room visits to visitors’ centers, usually the first rest stop as you enter the next state.   

With the NJ Turnpike, though, one has to do battle with the Burger King crowd and the downtrodden, overused bathrooms.  I have no business wondering the where’s or why’s of this moving mass of humanity, as I am one of the rootless, but, in our case, trying to “go home” again, to where we spent most of our lives in Connecticut.  However, with each passing year, the ties to the past unravel more, and we are more strangers than natives, in spite of our love of the area.  One does not put down roots in Florida to offset this loss it seems, as one’s neighbors are from someplace else, and they are wanderers as are you.  Indeed, we live too shallowly in too many places, bringing me to this great American novel, certainly one of the best of the 20th century, Wallace Stegner’s Angle of Repose.

The novel was published in 1972.  It won the Pulitzer Prize for Literature that year.  That fact begs the question of where have I been during those many years since its publication, particularly as I consider myself fairly well read when it comes to contemporary American literature.  In my defense, and it’s a weak one, perhaps it was a form of cultural snobbism -- not unlike Susan Burling Ward’s, the main character in the novel -- that is more East coast focused. When Stegner was writing, I was reading Updike, Cheever, Yates and Roth.  Those who wrote about the West, the frontier, did not reach a deep chord in me.  But, now, my own sense of place has become diluted.  It took this blog to lead me to Stegner’s masterpiece.  A few months ago, via the email address listed in the profile, I received the following (this is the truncated version):

Something made me think of you today, so I Googled your name, and Google led me to your blog. I wonder if you'll even remember me. My memories of you are no doubt washed by the passage of time, but how nice that I get to share some of this with you.

In 1969, you hired me as your secretary at Johnson Reprint. I was 20 years old, my typing was pathetic, my shorthand practically non-existent, I had no real secretarial experience, and I had just moved to New York from Meadville, Pennsylvania. Yet for some reason I will never understand you saw potential and offered me the job. It wasn't long after that you left Johnson for greener pastures, and I cut my hair short in protest. Though of course, no one but me cared how long my hair was.

And now, 44 years later, I get to thank you. You were really my first mentor, and you encouraged me to think analytically and take my silly attempts at writing poems to a deeper level. You also taught me a great deal about being a professional--although there was certainly a lot more to learn, you got me over the threshold. And the position itself provided me with skills that served me well throughout my career. A position for which I was completely unqualified. I have always felt that you played a brief but seminal role in my life.

Have you read Wallace Stegner's Angle of Repose? He talks about a Doppler effect (nothing to do with weather) that I couldn't possibly do justice to, so in brief, it is a sort of predestination view but not really. If you are curious and haven't read it, you will just have to do so! Anyhow, I mention it because it has become more and more of an intriguing concept for me over time. When I think back on 1969 as a fragment of my life, I marvel at where my path was to take me. And that at the time, of course, it was unwritten. …. This probably makes no sense whatsoever to you! But it does to me, and it's beginning to feel like I'm writing this more for myself than you. My apologies if it feels that way to you too!

Well, what I started out wanting to say is thank you. For being who you were at a juncture in my life and providing me with a chance, though you didn't know it any more than I did at the time, to build a springboard for myself to carry me into a fascinating and sweet journey. I am truly happy to know that your own life has been, and continues to be, so full of love and friends and success. You earned all that a long time ago just by being your intuitive and generous self.

Naturally, I was moved by this, responding, “As you didn't type well or take shorthand, I must have hired you for your intelligence which has obviously taken you to an education and a career of many accomplishments.”  I also said, “I haven't read Wallace Stegner's Angle of Repose, but have ordered it from Amazon on your recommendation.  I get to read a lot during the summers when we live on our boat in Norwalk; sounds like an ideal summer read.”  Since then Mary and I have struck up an email relationship, two small characters on the world stage whose lives once intersected and, now, thanks to technology, intersect virtually.

But, there you have it, a bend in time, perhaps the Doppler Effect, leading me to one of the more significant literary works of our time. 

Stegner’s story is multigenerational; a tale told by Lyman Ward, a 58 year-old former history professor who is now confined to a wheelchair, taken care of by friend and neighbor Ada Hawkes and her daughter Shelly in the home of Ward’s grandparents, Susan and Oliver Ward.  It was in this California home his grandparents finally settled after living in a number of frontier outposts during the formative years of their marriage.  Lyman Ward’s father, Ollie, was the oldest of their three children. 

Part of Stegner’s novel is devoted to present-day Lyman, who is trying to stay independent in spite of his being wheelchair bound, while his only son, Rodman, is trying to place him in an assisted living home.  But Lyman is fiercely opposed to the idea.  He is now also divorced from his wife, Ellen.

But the majority of the story is the one that Lyman Ward is trying to write about his grandmother, an extraordinary women of letters and an artist as well, who marries a young engineer, reluctantly leaving her best friend Augusta, and the Northeast, to join Oliver (she thinks for only a few years before a planned return to the East) in his quest to pursue a career as a mining engineer in the West.

Actually, the character of Susan Burling Ward is based on the real life of Mary Hallock Foote, and Stegner makes liberal use of Foote’s writings in the novel, which led to some controversy although Stegner acknowledges that use saying that he did not hesitate “to warp personalities and events to fictional needs.”  At times it almost feels like an epistolary novel, although all letters are one sided, from Susan to Augusta.  Augusta’s life is firmly within the gravitational pull of the eastern intelligentsia, a life that Susan pines for, for herself and for her children. 

So, it is Lyman’s objective to write this history, to remain independent while doing so, living in the home he used to visit as a child.  He thinks of “Angle of Repose” as being an appropriate title, and considers the Doppler Effect as an alternative, “saying” to his grandmother:

If Henry Adams, whom you knew slightly, could make a theory of history by applying the second law of thermodynamics to human affairs, I ought to be entitled to base one on the angle of repose, and may yet. There is another physical law that teases me, too: the Doppler Effect. The sound of anything coming at you - a train, say, or the future - has a higher pitch than the sound of the same thing going away. If you have perfect pitch and a head for mathematics you can compute the speed of the object by the interval between its arriving and departing sounds. I have neither perfect pitch nor a head for mathematics, and anyway who wants to compute the speed of history? Like all falling bodies, it constantly accelerates. But I would like to hear your life as you heard it, coming at you, instead of hearing it as I do, a sober sound of expectations reduced, desires blunted, hopes deferred or abandoned, chances lost, defeats accepted, griefs borne…. You yearned backward a good part of your life, and that produced another sort of Doppler Effect. Even while you paid attention to what you must do today and tomorrow, you heard the receding sound of what you had relinquished.

In recounting the life of his grandparents, Lyman hopes to find something about his own “angle of repose:”
 
Yet do you remember the letters you used to get from isolated miners and geologists and surveyors who had come across a copy of Century or Atlantic and seen their lives there, and wrote to ask how a lady of obvious refinement knew so much about drifts, stopes, tipples, pumps, ores, assays, mining law, claim jumpers, underground surveying, and other matters? Remember the one who wanted to know where you learned to handle so casually a technical term like "angle of repose"? I suppose you replied, "By living with an engineer." But you were too alert to the figurative possibilities of words not see the phrase as descriptive of human as well as detrital rest….As you said, it was too good for mere dirt; you tried to apply it to your own wandering and uneasy life. It is the angle I am aiming for myself, and I don't mean the rigid angle which I rest in this chair. I wonder if you ever reached it….

Wheelchair bound, and distraught and cynical about the present (the 1970s), by exploring (and glorifying) her life, Lyman temporarily finds a way out of his: Fooling around in the papers my grandparents, especially my grandmother, left behind, I get glimpses of lives close to mine, related to mine in ways I recognize but don't completely comprehend. I'd like to live in their clothes a while, if only so I don't have to live in my own…. We have been cut off, the past has been ended and the family has broken up and the present is adrift in its wheelchair. I had a wife who after twenty-five years of marriage took on the coloration of the 1960s. I have a son who, though we are affectionate with each other, is no more my true son than if he breathed through gills. That is no 'gap between the generations, that is a gulf. The elements have changed, there are whole new orders of magnitude and kind. This present of 1970 is no more an extension of my grandparents' world, this West is no more a development of the West they helped build, than the sea over Santorin is an extension of that once-island of rock and olives. ….My grandparents had to live their way out of one world and into another, or into several others, making new out of old the way corals live their reef upward. I am on my grandparents' side. I believe in Time, as they did, and in the life chronological rather than in the life existential. We live in time and through it, we build our huts in its ruins, or used to, and we cannot afford all these abandonings.

While plot and character development are outstanding strengths of the novel, the sense of place (or displacement) permeates the entire work, the East vs. West, civilization vs. the frontier, and a miscarriage of the American Dream:

I wonder if ever again Americans can have that experience of returning to a home place so intimately known, profoundly felt, deeply loved, and absolutely submitted to? It is not quite true that you can't go home again. I have done it, coming back here. But it gets less likely. We have had too many divorces, we have consumed too much transportation, we have lived too shallowly in too many places. I doubt that anyone of Rodman's generation could comprehend the home feelings of someone like Susan Ward. Despite her unwillingness to live separately from her husband, she could probably have stayed on indefinitely in Milton, visited only occasionally by an asteroid husband. Or she could have picked up the old home and remade it in a new place. What she resisted was being the wife of a failure and a woman with no home.

When frontier historians theorize about the uprooted, the lawless, the purseless, and the socially cut-off who settled the West, they are not talking about people like my grandmother.  So much that was cherished and loved, women like her had to give up; and the more they gave it up, the more they carried it helplessly with them. It was a process like ionization what was subtracted from one pole was added to the other For that sort of pioneer, the West was not a new country being created, but an old one being reproduced; in that sense our pioneer women were always more realistic than our pioneer men. The moderns, carrying little baggage of the kind that Shelly called "merely cultural," not even living in traditional air, but breathing into their space helmets a scientific mixture of synthetic gases (and polluted at that) are the true pioneers.  Their circuitry seems to include no atavistic domestic sentiment, they have suffered empathectomy, their computers hum no ghostly feedback of Home, Sweet Home.  How marvelously free they are!  How unutterably deprived!

And, indeed, the “place” of frontier and its bearing on his Grandfather’s failings, hangs heavily in the novel.  Lyman feels empathy for this man who perhaps unwisely trusted others in his pursuit of colossal dreams:

As a practitioner of hindsight I know what Grandfather was trying to do, by personal initiative and with the financial resources of a small and struggling corporation, what only the immense power of the federal government ultimately proved able to do. That does not mean he was foolish or mistaken. He was premature. His clock was set on pioneer time. He met trains that had not yet arrived, he waited on platforms that hadn't yet been built, beside tracks that might never be laid. Like many another Western pioneer, he had heard the clock of history strike, and counted the strokes wrong. Hope was always out ahead of fact, possibility obscured the outlines of reality.

I’ve liberally quoted from Angle of Repose as the writing is extraordinary.  These passages are typical.  Susan’s letters to Augusta are equally remarkable.  There is not one page, not one word in this novel that is superfluous.  It’s 500 plus pages are filled with energy, beauty, and philosophical contemplation.  And I think it so ironic – or is it prophetic – that while this novel was in the process of being published I was hiring Mary who, 44 years later, finds me in the brave new virtual world, and asks me a simple question, “have you read Wallace Stegner's Angle of Repose?”