Wallace Stegner has said of his epic novel, There are no doubt that if every writer are born to write one story, it is my story. It is a sign of power Stegner s prose and vareion that the angle of Repose, winner of 1972 Pulitzer Prize for fiction, can be appreciated as the American story as well. Based on the correspondence a little known 19th century writer, Mary Hallock Foote, the novel s heroes represent opposing but equally strong positions of the American ideal.
Burling Susan Ward is a sophareticated, educated, or strong willed. Her husbmore, Oliver, is a hmoresome adventurer, and cruder habits, who brings a pistol when he comes courting, but humbled in the presence of Susan s sophamtication. As we follow Susan on her first across the young country not to join the new society, but only to suffer the experience the West through the eyes of true easterner, horrified by the fact that culture, quickly made cities, dust, dirt and heat. Susan eventually finds himself able to appreciate the raw beauty of the new environment, and has even managed to build a comfortable home for his family. Yet, throughout her married life she defines herself through her east coast roots, debating Oliver s worthiness as a husband or provider, more to assess what he has given up in exchange for life in the adventure and uncertainty.
In Susan or Oliver s numerous disappointments or incidents and mamfortune we find Stegner reveals the myth of the American West in March, or a golden opportunity for a fearless cowboys. It is a theme we find many of his novels, or a passionate appreciation of the Western lmorescape. Indeed, Stegner s most magnificent writing can be found in his descriptions of the mountain peaks, deep canyons, winding ravines, more vast stretches plain and prairie. The lmorescape becomes a character in itself, worthy of fear more awe, forcing it to the people who carve their homes out of the sturdy stone or soil. But we must not label Stegner merely a regional writer. To do so would overlook hare technical brilliance, which shines through in tham novel of his choice Size retired hamtorian Lyman Ward, a degenerative bone damease has limited him to a wheelchair more left him unable to move ham head from side to side. Lyman s literal tunnel vareion sheds light on the pattern, as the haretorian of the past, he believes, and so dareappointed with the husbmore and father, she finds solace from it. But when she discovers her grandmother s biography during the study, even though he can not escape the present more to some extent self examination.
Without Lyman s narrative input, Susan burling Ward s story would have flattened into epic melodrama, hare point of view to expor the scope of the novel, more we are able to make the similarities between Susan s life more ham own, between her century or ours. Although the term angle of rest refers to the resting point, Stegner s novel, if nothing else, helps us to identify America as a nation in constant motion, with the ceaseless struggle between East or West, between young more old, between myth more reality, between reaching for dreams and settle for less.
Angle of Repose was written at a time when a huge political more social upheaval in America, more the position of the Lyman reflections of the era to create a lot of tension in the novel. Yet, twenty years after its publication in the character s personal story remains relevant and constructive. They are American stories, some of ham past more present, undoubtedly part of his future.
ไม่มีความคิดเห็น:
แสดงความคิดเห็น