| Angle of Repose | |
|---|---|
First edition cover |
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| Author(s) | Wallace Stegner |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Genre(s) | Novel |
| Publisher | Doubleday |
| Publication date | 1971 |
| Media type | Print (Hardback & Paperback) |
| ISBN | ISBN 0-14-016930-X |
| OCLC Number | 24953754 |
| Dewey Decimal | 813/.52 20 |
| LC Classification | PS3537.T316 A8 1992 |
Angle of Repose is a 1972 Pulitzer Prize–winning novel by Wallace Stegner about a wheelchair-using historian, Lyman Ward, who has lost connection with his son and living family and decides to write about his frontier-era grandparents. It won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1972. The novel is directly based on the letters of Mary Hallock Foote, later published as A Victorian Gentlewoman in the Far West.
Stegner's use of substantial passages of Foote's actual letters as correspondence from his fictional character Susan Burling Ward caused a continuing controversy.[1][2]
In 1998, the Modern Library ranked Angle of Repose #82 on its list of the 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century.
Contents |
The title is an engineering term for the angle at which soil finally settles after, for example, being dumped from a mine as tailings. It seems to describe the loose wandering of the Ward family as they try to carve out a civilized existence in the West and, Susan hopes, to return to the East as successes. The story details Oliver's struggles on various mining, hydrology, and construction engineering jobs, and Susan's adaptation to a hard life.
Lyman Ward narrates a century after the fact. Lyman interprets the story at times and leaves gaps that he points out at other times. Some of the disappointments of his life, including his divorce, color his interpretation of his grandparents' story. Toward the end of the novel, he gives up on his original ambition of writing a complete biography of his grandmother.
Stegner's use of Mary Hallock Foote's historical letters gives the novel's locations—Leadville, New Almaden, Idaho, and Mexico—an authentic feel; the letters also add vividness to the Wards' struggles with the environment, shady businessmen, and politicians. Lyman's position in the contemporary culture of the late sixties provides another historical dimension to the story. Foils for this plot line include Lyman's adult son, a Berkeley-trained sociologist who sees little value in history, and a neighbor's daughter who helps transcribe Lyman's tape-recorded notes while she is home on summer break from UC Berkeley, where she has been active in the "hippie" counterculture movement.
Lyman Ward is the narrator of the book, a divorced amputee with a debilitating disease that is slowly "petrifying" him. A retired history professor, in the early 1970s he is dictating the book, the biography of his grandmother Susan Burling Ward, to tape. Fiercely independent, he lives alone in the house where Susan Ward died and in which he spent time as a child. As he dictates, he is fighting off intrusions into his life by his son and other well-meaning people who are concerned, due to his ability level, about his being alone.
In her youth, Susan Burling (the character based on Mary Hallock Foote) was a promising writer and artist connected with some of the leading lights in New York culture. When she and Oliver Ward met and fell in love, she left the promise of New York to follow him, expecting to return. The contrast between her life in the American west of the second half of the 19th century to that of her best friend in New York is a constant thread through the novel. Lyman depicts her as disappointed with her family's position in life, but a strong character able to adjust to the circumstances.
Based on Mary's husband Arthur De Wint Foote, Oliver is a bright, straightforward, honest man who has focused on supporting the family he loves. A mining engineer, he moves all over the West following jobs to Colorado, California, Mexico, and Idaho. Sometimes he is on his own, but when he feels he can, he has his family join him—often in the most primitive of homes in the wildest of places. His honesty limits his progress in the rough world they find themselves trying to succeed in. Lyman sees a struggle between this limitation and Susan's desire to recreate some of the "culture" of the East that she gave up upon her marriage, a desire that can only be fulfilled if her husband makes a great deal of money.
The novel is thickly populated with real, although minor, historical personages. A "Who's Who" of American geologists and other western individuals of the late 19th century make their appearance, including John Wesley Powell, Clarence King, Samuel Franklin Emmons, Henry Janin, and Rossiter W. Raymond.