All The Little Live Things (1991) - Plot & Excerpts
Some stories are pure entertainment. Some are built for other purposes, as with Wallace Stegnar’s, All The Live Little Things. There was not much that I found entertaining, but if I measure the story by it’s impact on me, by it’s provocative nature and wide open doorway to self-reflection, then it was a fabulous piece of writing.My feelings about the book were hard won. I found the beginning slow going, the writing a bit dated and the whole experience laborious. I had trouble relating to the characters initially, but as the story began to take shape and the right nerves endings plucked, I found myself becoming increasingly drawn into the drama unfolding in this little pocket of semi-suburbia California circa the nineteen-sixties.And why not? I lived through this tumultuous time and found it easy to enter into the mindset of the principal antagonist, twenty-three year old Jim Peck, whose running conflict with Joe Allston forms much of the heart of the story. At the same time, I am now the age of Joe Allston, the principal character and narrator. Not only did many of the outer details of Joe’s life resemble my own, I found his inner process compelling, perceptive and amazingly similar to mine.Written almost journalistically, I found myself not only fascinated, but inescapably drawn into Joe’s experiences with both Peck and Marian, a young mother who has recently entered Joe’s life. Two sides of same coin, Peck and Marian were representative of the challenges to the norms and mores of society that created so much upheaval and unrest for over a decade. Peck’s view, based on hostility, dismissal and rejection of the status quo in contrast to Marian who saw love and acceptance as the cornerstones upon which happiness is achieved.Most people who lived through that period in our history will have a reaction to Stegnar’s writing. It was as dramatic as it was traumatic, and like knowing exactly what you were doing at the moment President Kennedy was assassinated in nineteen sixty-three, most will know exactly where they were intellectually and emotionally as change forced its way into the conscience of America.On a deeper and more personal level, this is a book written for men my age, written with an unflinching honesty and a willingness to own the darker side of our natures. Through Joe Allston, Stegnar exposes the mind play, the endless rationalizations, the needing to believe we are right when so many others are wrong. He exposes our prejudices so easily accepted as knowledge earned in the school of life. At the same time he leaves the reader with the understanding, that in spite of everything, the mental restraints we place upon ourselves while seeking order out of chaos, we are still human. We feel and understand feelings. We are rational beings, but we are also wired to emotion. We can not stop ourselves from feeling. We can mask it, hide from it and try to deny it. We can spout the meaningless banalities, “It’s all good,” or “Everything’s perfect,” but feel we will; feel we must.With Peck, Joe wrestles with feeling taken advantage of, disrespected, marginalized as a representative of a newly evolving social order. When Joe reacts with anger to how he is being treated it is suggested that he is overreacting, that his uncompromising and contracted emotional state is the problem and not the fact that he is being taken advantage of or that his having earned the right to respect, let alone the common courtesy we all deserve, is conspicuously absent. It is Joe who is forced into submission, forced to adopt a generosity he does not feel, forced to ignore the warning signs coming from his hard won knowledge of self, forced to quell the disquiet, the unease born out of the moral turpitude that his invaded his carefully cultivated serenity.Where Joe reacts to Peck with immediate suspicion, dislike and hostility, his reactions to Marian, although born out of the same emotional and intellectual system, are softened by his overwhelming affection for her. In both relationships Joe is forced to examine his convictions, his morals, his feelings and the most human desire to have control of our lives. In one instance Joe reacts as a man wronged, a man relentlessly taken advantage of, a man unjustifiably mistreated. In the other newly acquired relationship, Joe is challenged, yet allowed to react, and as a result finds himself opening his mind and expanding his views to accommodate another perspective. As the story unfolded Wallace Stegnar’s writing was impossible not to admire. I wasn’t sure about this book when I first started reading, yet urged on by a lifetime of self-reflection as well as journaling, I was determined to make it to the end. Bottom line: Not only did it become easier to continue, I found myself rewarded many times over.
The title implies that the book will be happy and light and maybe give the peace and joy that Joe and his wife, Ruth are seeking when they move to California. They are dealing with the death (and apparent suicide) of their son and hope to find peace in the countryside. Instead, they- or at least he- finds aggravation and more sorrow, but they also get the chance to love someone truly special in the character of Marian. As I read, I was so frustrated that only Joe and me seemed to think it was NOT okay for a hippie commune be set up on his property- stealing land, power, and water and making a mess of his property and of innocent lives. Everyone else in the story seemed to think it was just youth, and let’s just live and let live, and “you’re just mad because he reminds you of your son.” At one point, I was so frustrated, I considered emailing Mr. Alston and telling him he was in the right, and that I supported him, and then I remembered he wasn’t real and that the book was set in the ‘60s, long before email was invented. But that’s how real Stegner’s books are. You can’t observe on the sidelines- the reader, in spite of himself, becomes deeply emotionally involved. The book also deals with death and preparing for death and with the sacrifice of a mother, which Joe simply can’t understand. So the book is full of conflict and pain and frustration. But, as in Stegner’s other books, he gets inside the human soul and heart in a way few others are able to do. At times in the book, I was literally sobbing in grief. But as Joe says, “I shall be richer all my life for this sorrow.” I truly believe that each of Stegner’s books make me richer.
What do You think about All The Little Live Things (1991)?
Again, Wallace Stegner has done it for me, in this intimate novel of life, death, nature, accepting and learning. There is always so much of the author in his books, which I enjoy. Revolving around an elderly couple's relationship and deep abiding friendship with a younger couple who have moved to nearby land, as neighbors. Cranky Joe and his kind wife, Ruth, befriend the young couple and become almost the parents they didn't have. Each teaching the other what goes around and around in this big old world. The young woman, Marian, has a love for all things living; even those things others might consider a nuisance or evil. Then there is the young bearded guru, who has asked permission to erect a tent on Joe's propety which was given reluctantly, and becomes another catalyst of sorts. And here, we have the age old establishment versus the "free" lifestyle, the do what you want and how you want to do it, without hurting anyone. Joe is reminded of the death of his son Curtis and the similarities between his son and the bearded, free love guru, Peck. A superb story teller and a superb story arises and is told here.
—Zoe Jussel
I have decided that many of Stegner's books have seemingly sweet, light titles, but when you open the book, there is so much complexity and heaviness that the titles seem unmatched with the story, not exactly, but kind of. I think I would actually give this book 3 1/2 stars, and if he had left out the crazy hippie side characters, I might even give it five because it was so beautiful and endearing on other levels. I am still impressed with his ability to write about and understand people and how they are connected to each other.
—Jill
I just finished the book 30 minutes ago and it ends up as quite a beating. I would call it overwrought and too sentimental in tone, and unconvincing in the pace of the development of Marian and Joe’s relationship. The underlying philosophies at work I won't attempt to unpack at the moment but I don’t see much hope in any of it. Probably not by coincidence, the author somewhat successfully creates in the reader what Allston experienced himself – the anticipation of pain and the experience of it as even more horrible than what could have been expected. The reader knows the book is going to end tragically, and it does, in fact more tragically I think than expected. The final sentence reads “I shall be richer all my life for this sorrow.” The thing is, I don’t as the reader, share his opinion. I don’t feel much richer having read the book – just slightly weary in the resistance of dewy-eyed pathos. On the bright side I did enjoy a good deal of the comic middle portion of the book, particularly in describing the bacchanalian Peck and his apostles. Stegner is a brilliant descriptive writer. I found his dry irony far more compelling than his maudlin seriousness.
—Daniel Kerr
