Angle of repose Book

Fellow Goodreaders know that feeling of exhilaration when a new entrant pushes its way onto a top-ten-of-all-time list. Wallace Stegner's Pulitzer Prize winner from 1972 is my most recent example. Of course, Goodreads reviewers also know the pressure involved in justifying the choice. So what makes this one so good? As befits a top ten inclusion, here are ten factors that come to mind.

1. A Damn Good Story

Lyman Ward is a former professor of history with a bone disease that put him in a wheelchair. He moved into his grandparents' house in California where he'd spent much of his boyhood. With a strong personal interest and a research historian's skills, he studied the lives of his grandmother, Susan, and his grandfather, Oliver. She was an artist and later a writer transplanted from her genteel life in New York to be with her husband, the earnest engineer, out West. He specialized in big projects: mines, irrigation canals, etc. His integrity prevented the material success he would have liked as a source of comfort for Susan. She created what culture she could in mining towns, and had become known for her illustrations and magazine articles about life in the West. Stegner had permission to use real letters of a writer and painter from that era, lending the narrative an authentic voice. As their family dramas unfolded, Lyman had a few related episodes of self-discovery, all very cleverly done.

2. Complex Characters

What book could ever be considered great without an interesting cast? These players were decidedly not stick figures - more like Rubenesque (actually, that's not the exact opposite I was going for, but you know what I mean). Starting out, Lyman seemed like a stock character - the crusty recluse - but he becomes more central and more nuanced as the book goes on. The way we see his grandparents through his eyes tells us a lot about him. To be honest, early in his narration I was put off by his invented dialog and false omniscience, but later, after he copped to this as a way to make them more real, I actually liked the device. All the characters, the ones on the periphery included, seemed very credible, with emotions that rang true and unexpected depths that only a first-rate writer could have imagined.

3. Interesting History

It's an impressive laundry list of things the curious reader can learn more about: technology of the time (from Oliver's various engineering projects), culture (the arts community in NY, pioneer life in the West, the opulent part of Mexico where Susan and Oliver almost stayed for a job), and manners (subtle social conventions, shady business dealings, dirty politics). Lyman, with his background in history, was a very knowledgeable narrator. He had remarkable tunnel vision (literally, since his disease prevented him from turning his head) trained on his subjects.

4. Conflict

Clashes were easy to come by when the refined East (civilized society) met the rough-and-tumble West (opportunity). Tightrope walks were performed between desire and moral responsibility, the practical and the romantic, and in the case of Lyman and a curvy young assistant, the stodgy academic and the free-spirited hippie. There was conflict in Lyman's concept of himself, too. Was he more like his grandmother or grandfather? It turned out to be a key question.

5. Blissful(?) Institutions

The give-and-take of a marriage was a central theme. Susan was described as "more lady than woman" and Oliver was "more man than gentleman." This made for some tension. As Stegner himself said in a Paris Review interview:
Susan is more talented in many ways than Oliver. She shows off better. But while I wrote that book, thinking that I was writing about her as a heroine, I came to the end of it thinking maybe he is the hero because there is a flaw in her, a flaw of snobbery. She doesn't adequately appreciate the kind of person he is, or the kind of work he does. That's a story not about either men or women, but about a relationship, a novel about a marriage.
On top of this, Lyman reflected on his own former marriage. Would he forgive his ex-wife for what she did to him? Should he have done more to prevent it from happening in the first place? More good questions both for him and for us.

6. Metaphorical Resonance

"Angle of repose" is an engineering term referring to the angle at which rocks and soil settle when tumbling down off a slope before coming to a stop. Lyman's goal was to see "how two such unlike particles clung together, and under what strains, rolling downhill into their future until they reached the angle of repose where I knew them." Another way to think of it may be as the point at which the slights that we suffer lose their animating force and finally give way to acceptance.

Stegner spells out a second metaphor so well that I'm willing to risk further attention-squelching length to include it.
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 somber sound of expectations reduced, desires blunted, hopes deferred or abandoned, chances lost, defeats accepted, griefs borne.

7. Powerful Descriptions

What was clever here was how natural it was for Susan, the artist, to describe and even embellish the new sights she would see out West. Her eye for detail never got tedious. Of course, we know to credit Stegner for excluding any word that didn't pull its weight. There were countless little analogies, too, that made for a pleasant experience. For example: "Bunion footed, wearing her look of a supposedly house-broken dog which is called upon to explain a puddle on the floor, Mrs. Briscoe labored toward them."

8. Organic Philosophy

I like reading bigger thoughts, but less so when they're without context. If they appear as natural outgrowths of a story or a character profile, I'm all in. With A of R I'm spoiled for choice looking for examples. Here are a few, ranging from aphorism and homily:
It is an easy mistake to think that non-talkers are non-feelers.
You'll do what you think you want to do, or what you think you ought to do. If you're very lucky, luckier than anybody I know, the two will coincide.
Home is a notion that only the nations of the homeless fully appreciate and only the uprooted comprehend.
Civilizations grow by agreements and accommodations and accretions, not by repudiations. The rebels and the revolutionaries are only eddies, they keep the stream from getting stagnant but they get swept down and absorbed, they're a side issue. Quiet desperation is another name for the human condition. If revolutionaries would learn that they can't remodel society by day after tomorrow -- haven't the wisdom to and shouldn't be permitted to -- I'd have more respect for them ... Civilizations grow and change and decline -- they aren't remade.

9. Awfully Good Writing

I may have made my case already with the examples I've included, but let me add that this is more than just pretty language we're talking about here. There's plenty of substance to it, too. To my mind, Stegner is a true master of the craft. Every sentence has heft, yet never at the expense of flow. Early on I thought Stegner is like a grown-up when so many others are mere children in comparison. His candle-power shines brightly on every page.

10. Opportunities for Growth

Hokeyness aside, how many books do you read and wonder, "Gee willikers, am I possibly becoming a better person?" If you're drawn to intelligence, please give Lyman, his grandparents, and most of all Stegner a try. If cumulative insight into human experience floats your boat, ships ahoy.