From the “dean of Western writers” (The New York Times) and the Pulitzer Prize winning–author of Angle of Repose and Crossing to Safety, his National Book Award–winning novel A Penguin Classic Joe Allston is a retired literary agent who is, in his own words, “just killing time until time gets around to killing me.” His parents and his only son are long dead, leaving him with neither ancestors … son are long dead, leaving him with neither ancestors nor descendants, tradition nor ties. His job, trafficking the talent of others, had not been his choice. He passes through life as a spectator.
A postcard from a friend causes Allston to return to the journals of a trip he had taken years before, a journey to his mother’s birthplace where he’d sought a link with the past. The memories of that trip, both grotesque and poignant, move through layers of time and meaning, and reveal that Joe Allston isn’t quite spectator enough.
more
The Spectator Bird, 1976, explores themes of love and aging. It falls between Angle of Repose 1971 and Crossing to Safety 1987.
Stegner is a master of reflection. Thinking about what life is all about, and one’s reason for being. I’m drawn to novels with these themes. In The Spectator Bird, Stegner uses the device of reading a journal as a way to flip from past to present. This the same device he used in the earlier novel The Angle of Repose in which the wheelchair bound writer is uncovering the history of his parents in diaries and memorabilia
In Spectator Bird we are also presented with feelings of remorse and guilt, given the narrator is reflecting on his own past experiences of love and loss. Stegner brilliantly weaves into this novel time spent with Karen Blixen, the author of Out of Africa. Stegner also paraphrases Willa Cather’s beautiful and poignant essay Light on Adobe Walls. Stegner writes: “you can’t paint sunlight, you can only paint what it does with shadows on a wall.” Concluding the passage with, “What if you never cast a shadow or rainbow of your own, but have only caught those cast by others?” In this same passage, Stegner alludes to Socrates, whose maxim, “Know Thyself” is a central theme in many of the male centered novels that focus a search self-actualization. The novel becomes a rumination on Joe’s feeling of whether his life was worth living. His interior dialog, and journal entries, is a search for meaning, a study in elusive identity, and on a lost sense of the past.
But at the end of the novel (minor spoiler) Joe concludes he has not been a spectator bird. He draws another literary allusion from The Venerable Bede
We are presented with another literary illusion paraphrasing the Venerable St. Bede. Stegner writes: The truest vision of life I know is that bird in the Venerable Bede that flutter from the dark into a lighted hall, and after a while flutters out again into the dark. It is something—it can be everything—to have found a fellow bird with whom you can sit among the rafter… a fellow bird whom you can look after and find bugs and seeds for; one who will patch your bruises and straighten your ruffled feathers and mourn over your hurts when you accidentally fly into something you can’t handle.”
As a reader, there are some books (and authors) you have been meaning to read. But other books (and authors) would come before it. Unfortunately, Wallace Stegner fell into this category for me. I’ve been meaning to read his work for at least 20 years, and The Spectator Bird has been on my shelf for the past five years. I would get ready to read it, and then I would put it down for something else. Finally, I have read this well-received Stegner novel.
The Spectator Bird is the story of retired literary agent, Joe Allison and his wife, Ruth. They have settled in Northern California after a long career in the New York City publishing world. Joe discovers a postcard from a friend in Denmark. He reads the postcard, and it brings back the memories of a European trip that the couple took years ago.
Ruth finds out that Joe kept a journal about the Denmark trip and asks him to read the journal entries. Joe reluctantly agrees and those journal entries make up the bulk of the novel. Stegner examines the marriage dynamic as Joe reveals more details than he wanted to share. Also, it brings into account that things in the past should stay in the past.
The Spectator Bird is very much a novel about character and how the past brought to life can upset a comfortable lifestyle. The strength of the book is Stegner’s clear and straight-forward prose and as a reader I felt like I was attending a masterclass on how to read a novel that doesn’t need a plot or action to drive the narrative.
I feel bad for this taking long to read Wallace Stegner. The Spectator Bird is not the first novel mentioned with Stegner’s work. Literary critics and longtime Stegner readers consider Angle of Repose and Crossing to Safety as his best novels. However, I believe that The Spectator Bird does not have to take a backseat to either of those aforementioned works and is a great place for readers new to Stegner.
The Spectator Bird will be one of my favorite reads of 2020. This quiet novel about human connection and love is a short-term escape worth taking in lieu of what the world is dealing in the COVID19 pandemic.
One of the best I have ever read. A wonderfully beautiful writer. I am grateful to have finally found him.
Wallace Stegner was a writer who always made me think as well as entertained me. I just finally got around to reading this one. The characters & the story are fascinating, & surprising.
Funny yet serious take on Danes, Swedes, and old folks.
Stegner again, with wonderfully descriptive phraseology, exposes the difficulties of aging in ways both brutally honest and humbly inspirational. Failure and regret are laid bare but never allowed to conquer. You can see how another of his works warranted a Pulitzer.
A wonderful book, richly imagined, and beautifully written. His descriptions a series of statements that weave together to draw the reader into his imagined world, to see the colors, smell the wonderful scents wafting from the kitchen through the house, and to notice individual items that complete the make-up of the individual characters. “There was water running in the kitchen, her hands were wet” and we know more than the words that tell it. Filled with complex, real people and sophisticated situations, the reading is over too soon.
A very self-aware and insightful look back at life choices made.
not one of his best, I loved The angle of repose
I have read a few of this authors books and enjoyed them all. This one was not my favorite but it was good. Good for older readers
This author was an excellent writer, but I always left his books feeling depressed, the same when I heard him lecture in Seattle. I later learned he did struggle with depression, and I felt it. I’ve read several of his books, but finally had to stop, due to the over whelming depressing nature. It’s a pity, he was a gifted writer, but not a happy person.
Excellent writing. A pleasure to read.