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Angle of Repose

By Wallace Stegner
Angle of Repose Wallace Stegner s Pultizer Prize winning novel is a story of discovery personal historical and geographical Confined to a wheelchair retired historian Lyman Ward sets out to write his grandparents

  • Title: Angle of Repose
  • Author: Wallace Stegner
  • ISBN: 9780140169300
  • Page: 351
  • Format: Paperback

    • Wallace Stegner s Pultizer Prize winning novel is a story of discovery personal, historical, and geographical Confined to a wheelchair, retired historian Lyman Ward sets out to write his grandparents remarkable story, chronicling their days spent carving civilization into the surface of America s western frontier But his research reveals even about his own life thaWallace Stegner s Pultizer Prize winning novel is a story of discovery personal, historical, and geographical Confined to a wheelchair, retired historian Lyman Ward sets out to write his grandparents remarkable story, chronicling their days spent carving civilization into the surface of America s western frontier But his research reveals even about his own life than he s willing to admit What emerges is an enthralling portrait of four generations in the life of an American family.

    • ✓ Angle of Repose ☆ Wallace Stegner
      351 Wallace Stegner
    Angle of Repose

    About Author

    1. Wallace Stegner says:
      Wallace Earle Stegner was an American historian, novelist, short story writer, and environmentalist Some call him The Dean of Western Writers He won the Pulitzer Prize in 1972 and the U.S National Book Award in 1977.

    Comment 109 on “Angle of Repose”

    1. Steve says:
      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, 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 StoryLyman Ward is a former professor of history with a bone disease that put him in a wheelchair He moved into [...]
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    2. BT says:
      I read this book based largely on the reviews Maybe I m not as smart as other reviewers, or maybe other reviewers give it high praise because it was a Pulitzer Prize winner and they didn t want to look dumb something to which I have no aversion , or maybe this was just a fluke, but I didn t think this book was worth reading I wouldn t recommend it to anyone I started the book about 4 or 5 times, and when I finally did slog through it, it was in 5 and 10 page increments I just couldn t get rollin [...]
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    3. Michael Finocchiaro says:
      This book started out great, but quickly got repetitive for me Learning on that Stegner derived with permission large parts of it from real letters published the next year certainly took winds out of my sails Several critics have mentioned that Stegner s version of Mary Hallock Foote diverges considerably from the original a necessity for the author trying to fit his story to her narrative That being said, it is impossible not to recognize the talent behind the writing and the clever weaving of [...]
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    4. Dolors says:
      Little did I expect that the taming of the Wild West could be so intricately reflected in the ongoing evolution of a marriage, with all its tensions, compromises and sporadic moments of exultation a marriage that seemed doomed to failure from the start.Lyman Ward, retired historian and scholar, now prostrated in a wheelchair, sets his mind to write the story of his grandparents and their generation, of the many young adventurers who embarked on a non return trip to the inhospitable Western lands [...]
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    5. Beth says:
      I have read this book twice so far The first time, I was a single college student The second time, I had been married about five years I m sure I will read it again a few times And I m sure that the years of marriage I ve logged, the I will get out of this book Marriage, and what it takes and takes out of you to make it work is the main theme of this book Stegner has some profound things to say about it But even before I could personally relate to the story s main theme, I found the book beau [...]
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    6. Cheri says:
      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 I can look in any direction by turning my wheelchair, and I choose to look back that is the only direction we can learn from While confined to a wheelchair, Lyman Ward begins to read through his grandmother s papers, her stories, old letters, and their s [...]
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    7. StevenGodin says:
      Wallace Stegner was once quoted as saying It s perfectly clear that if every writer is born to write one story, that s my story , this was referring to the tour de force novel that is Angle of Repose which just about ticks all the boxes in terms of literary perfection, containing masterful writing of great prose and vision, an epic, engrossing and mature story charting four generations of an american family trying to carve a piece of history into the western frontier, and richly detailed charact [...]
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    8. Carol says:
      For me, it took a while for this novel to reach a certain momentum as the author introduces the reader to the narrator, Lyman Ward He is a wheelchair bound historian in the process of writing a biography of the life of his grandparents, Oliver and Susan Ward He recreates their lives, mostly from his grandmother s letters written in the 1870 s I m a great fan of American Western fiction but I lean towards a pared down, spare writing style so this woman s florid prose and descriptions her very for [...]
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    9. Jonathan says:
      Stegner is almost unheard of outside the U.S, and even in his home country he seems to remain at the periphery of the collective literary consciousness For the life of me I cannot work out why Apparently, even after winning the Pulitzer, the New York Times refused to review this novel The first point to note about Stegner is that he is a master of prose, a craftsman of great skill and control Reading his work is a pleasure, pure and simple There is perhaps something of the lyrical, or the Romant [...]
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    10. Sara says:
      Staggering Riveting Perceptive Penetrating Wallace Stegner knows how to get inside a marriage and pull at it and prod at it, until it settles down into what it cannot help becoming and finds its angle of repose This story is the saddest kind of story possible, because it is about the loss of opportunity, the loss of happiness, and the loss of what might have been It wrenches and tears and tatters the reader I was gasping from the injustice, the cross purposes, the lack of communication and the s [...]
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    11. Scott Axsom says:
      Fiction moves me most when it s most piercingly honest when it reveals to me places in my heart that I ve been afraid to recognize Wallace Stegner s Angle of Repose examines the part of us that s reluctant to forgive and that cannot seem to learn how to forget The book is hauntingly true and ruthlessly introspective and it left me, at times, gasping for breath at the beauty of its lyricism it could serve well as a master class in honest writing Stegner writes from the perspective of a not so old [...]
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    12. Ted says:
      It s perfectly clear to me that if a writer is born to write one story, this is my story.Wallace StegnerWallace Stegner 1909 1993 , born in Lake Mills Iowa, died in Santa Fe Historian, novelist, short story writer, environmentalist Jackson Benson, in his Introduction to this edition, identifies the major strands of his career as his love of the land, his concern for history, his advocacy of cooperation and antagonism toward rugged individualism, and his dedication to writing Some of his best kno [...]
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    13. Lyn says:
      Wallace Stegner s 1971 novel Angle of Repose was a beautifully written, masterfully crafted, touchingly and ponderously enjoyable to read.The dictionary tells us that an angle of repose means the steepest angle at which a sloping surface formed of a particular loose material is stable A fitting enough title for a story that had a lot to do with mining and engineering, but in Stegner s capable hands it comes to mean much .Telling the story of his Victorian grandparents as they helped to settle an [...]
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    14. ☮Karen says:
      Stegner makes the job of writing seem effortless His brilliance shines through as he uses wheelchair bound Lyman, a writer writing the history of his grandmother Susan Ward going back to circa 1870 1895 Susan s published writings and illustrations and her personal letters of her married life in the American West provide him and we readers wonderful insight into the human experience interpersonal relationships, a marriage between social opposites seamlessly juxtaposed with Lyman s estranged famil [...]
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    15. Perry says:
      On the Wings of Love He who binds to himself a joyDoes the winged life destroy,But he who kisses the joy as it fliesLives in eternity s sun rise William BlakeThis novel is structured with a fictional novelist writing a novel meta fiction based on the life of his grandmother which character is partly based the life of a real woman The story travels between 1 the 1st person account of the novelist, a retired lit prof who recently had a leg amputated, after which his wife left him for his surgeon a [...]
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    16. Elizabeth (Alaska) says:
      As I read this, I thought, this is about a 4 star read So why did I give it 5 stars It is such a beautiful book, that s why There were many parts that didn t seem to move along, which is why I thought I would be stingy, but I m so very glad the author took his time And I felt myself talking to the characters, mostly Susan Don t be so removed from your life how many do you get Could I be so involved with a story and not give it 5 stars
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    17. Algernon says:
      I finished the book almost three weeks ago, but then I got caught in the day job with overtimes and in the year end parties, I hope I will get back here and give it the consideration and attention it deserves.For now, let me just say that it is worthy of using caps, as in Great American Novel update Lyman Ward is a retired professor of history, immobilized in a wheelchair by a bone disease that has left his body twisted, his vertebrae fused so that his neck is unable to turn, so he can only look [...]
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    18. Elyse says:
      OH MY GOSH.Here is another book I never wrote a review Its sooooooooooooooooooooooooooo good One of my all favorite books
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    19. Linda Orvis says:
      Stegner won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 1972 for this book Goes to show you that you should disregard my reviews Absolutely no taste, whatsoever This book took me over two months to read because I kept putting it down Down being the operative word here It was not only a downer , but lacked the skill of a good editor In today s publishing world, Stegner wouldn t have gotten away with such a ponderous, heavy book This was written in the old way, with the author making it apparent that he had [...]
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    20. Deyanne says:
      I am conflicted Having just finished this book, I find my thoughts engaged in a heated debate How I can capture my response to this book Why did I score it a four instead of a five like all of my close friends and associates Was the writing not brilliant in parts Indeed Were the characterizations not complex and layered Most assuredly What is at the root of my angst The book was painful Several times I nearly quit reading I didn t really care for most of the people I didn t want to keep them in [...]
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    21. Debbie Zapata says:
      Here is the definition of angle of repose the maximum slope, measured in degrees from the horizontal, at which loose solid material will remain in place without sliding It is an engineering term and determines all sorts of things in construction, from how deep to dig a ditch to how high your slag pile can grow and still maintain its shape.But in this novel, Stegner applies the term to people as well How much stress can the people of this novel endure before they pass their angle of repose and fa [...]
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    22. Jim says:
      Have you ever had your hands on a book that you just couldn t leave alone A book that you had to have with you at all times, reading it at the dinner table, sneaking peeks at it during work hours Well, this isn t that book It took me weeks to read this sucker It really slowed down my reading pace least at first.Stegner can definitely write a good story, and it did not escape my notice that this tale is richly detailed Stegner knows the West, the stock, the people, the history, and all the associ [...]
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    23. Maureen says:
      it doesn t surprise that this book won the pulitzer prize it s an ambitious novel, cleverly constructed, effectively blending life and fiction, containing some beautiful sentences this is the story of lyman ward, a historian who has gone into retirement, afflicted by a bone disease that has resulted in the amputation of his right leg, living alone in the house that was his grandparents, and it is also about his grandmother, susan burling ward, an artist and writer, who moved from the east with h [...]
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    24. Joy says:
      This is easily one of my favorite novels of the books I ve read in the past 5 years It s lauded as Stegner s masterpiece and I completely agree Stegner tells the story of a man who has a disease that is crippling him He s living in his ancestral home, being taken care of by an old, old, family friend He s a historian and feels compelled to research his paternal grandmother using the journals and keepsakes that are at the house Stegner weaves the life story of the grandmother and grandfather and [...]
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    25. Josh says:
      A writer is an organism that will go on writing even after its heart has been cut out How can someone fall in love with a man s words as they flow effortlessly on paper, creating an atmosphere of dust, angst and raw emotion, yet feel like there s a superfluity of thoughts, making you want to throw a fit and toss the book on the ground Stegner did this to me with the lack of editing in Angle of Repose it made me want to throw the book from utter boredom at times, but also engage myself solely wit [...]
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    26. Jennifer says:
      I really enjoyed this book This is a book of fiction, but it s like a biography, history, and psychology all rolled into one eloquently written book Lyman Ward looses himself in writing about his Grandmother, not only to forget about his troubles, but also to understand himself better To find strength, or answers, in how to deal with what life has thrown his way.
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    27. Gloria says:
      4.5 stars.I was trying to think of a quote from this book which might sum it up best I think I ve narrowed it down to this I suppose in a way we deserve the people we marry p 204 Now, I m just trying to figure if I agree with that statement and to what extent.There were so many beautiful achingly so sections in this book, I lamented the fact that it wasn t mine to highlight and mark up yes, library, I was good to your book.To spare you, I will limit myself to three Touch It is touch that is the [...]
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    28. Julie says:
      Wow, I really enjoyed reading this book It was such a sad, sad story and just when you think it couldn t get worse, it did maybe I enjoy unhappy endings Nevertheless, Stegner is so deliciously descriptive and Lyman s narration was sometimes amusing and very frank In some ways I sympathized with Susan and understood how she may have felt leaving a life she loved behind and braving the unknown I think that s what marriage is in general It also helped that she mentioned places like Pougkeepsie and [...]
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    29. Pamela says:
      Reading a Wallace Stegner novel is akin to a twenty course feast consumed purposely and leisurely, nibbled and savored with periods of digestive repose between courses.Angle of Reposeis no exception Stegner is certainly not stingy with his words He isn t known for starkness And he isn t miserly when it comes to descriptive elements or literary nuances Yes, it was a two week literary feast, and well worth the invested extravagance Both the title and the story are multidimensional Stegner explores [...]
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    30. Joachim Stoop says:
      4,5 stars I was already crazy about Stegner after my all time favourite Crossing to safety and was confirmed by Angle of repose which is even epic and contains the same magnificent language, metaphores, characters, story development and wisdom Oh, how wise is Stegner It loses 0,5 star because it could have used some editing Some storylines and episodes are just too long and detailed Part of it is functional and needed for the build up of the general story, some of it I find unnecessary Still, [...]
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