Angle of Repose by Wallace Stegner

It’s a series of great vignettes, written well, with wonderful and thorough research.  It documents some of the taming of the American West, which is a gaping hole in American literature.  All we have previously had is shoot-em-up Westerns.  Filling this gap is why it merited a Pulitzer Prize.

There are two thin plot-lines:

(1)  Two mismatched people, sacrificing their lives to the other’s desire for no good reason.  It reminds one of O’Henry’s, “The Gift of the Magi”, without the moral ending; a tragic ending in Stegner’s tale.

(2) The other tale, not nearly so interesting, is the ramblings of an old, lonely man.  He is trying to accommodate rationalizing his self-sorry state with family history, and the world that has passed him by.

It’s a good documentary, but no one has picked up the ideas for a dramatic movie, TV show, or documentary in over forty years now.  It’s a tragic family story, with no redemption.

 

Some of the best scene-scripting of any movie never made was captured in this book:

(a)  Susan’s descent into the New Almaden mine

(b) Susan’s ascent over Mosquito Pass getting to Leadville

(c)  The dreams of Lyman Ward

 

The early scenes of San Jose, Grass Valley and San Francisco are treasures for those of us who have grown up around the Bay Area.  Stegner’s descriptions of the sights, sounds, smells and people in those days 60-70 years before I came to California are inspirational to me.  I am also reminded that 60-70 years ago was when I did come to California.