I had wanted to read another novel by Wallace Stegner since “Crossing to Safety”. “The Spectator Bird” lived up to expectations and not because it won the US National Book Award for Fiction in 1977. Even though it was written almost forty years ago, the relevance of the issues it dealt with shone through the pages with contemplative resonance.Set mostly in Denmark, “The Spectator Bird” centered on Joe Allston, a 69-year-old retired literary agent, his wife (Ruth), and their summer friendship with a Danish countess who had fallen from grace. The arrival of a postcard from Astrid Wredel-Krarup stirred up memories of a “therapy” trip the Allstons had undertaken twenty years ago, and evoked feelings that mattered to Joe because the interlude was "that irruption of the irrational, that reversion into adolescence". The narration was interspersed with journal entries Joe had made from that trip as he read it aloud to his wife (at her insistence).Perhaps, this novel would seem drearily depressing to individuals in the prime of their lives. It speaks candidly about the dignity (or indignity) of growing old and the realities of a long marriage. People who have been blessed with an enduring marriage may be able to identify with this observation, “After forty-five years we can still, if we let ourselves, bristle and bump one another around like a pair of stiff-legged dogs.” Additionally, there is sobering reflection on aging: “It is not arthritis and the other ailments...It is just the general comprehension that nothing is building, everything is running down, there are no more chances for improvement." Brutal realization for disgruntled individuals such as Joe for whom it seemed life happened. During the Great Depression, the toss was between becoming a "broke talent" or a "talent broker". A significant personal loss deepened his sense of helplessness and found him having to “scratch dead leaves” over what he did not wish to see. What I found most touching was the way the Allstons negotiated the revelations that emerged from reading the journal entries. Half the time I read with trepidation the thoughts and feelings that Joe had no way of censoring while reading without escaping the intuitive appraisal of his wife. A quiet grimace communicated unacknowledged needs and fears. “The Spectator Bird” is about honesty in intimacy. It is about choices. Joe said it well, “It has seemed to me that my commitments are often more important than my impulses or my pleasures, and that even when my pleasures or desires are the principal issue, there are choices to be made between better and worse, bad and better, good and good.” Each choice is made with "a big component of pain".tSteger has such an impeccable way with words that are at times delighfully laced with self-deprecating humor. His language has a penetrating quality that can unnerve the reader and yet one has to keep on reading. The Allstons aside, the novel has an intriguing story to tell about the Countess and the incredulous circumstances leading to her ostracism from Danish society. Great book!
A dark and surprising book. For one thing, I wasn't aware that the indignities of old age were a theme in the fiction of the 1970s. The novel alternates between the present, when literary agent Joe and his wife Ruth have retired to California, and the past, when they traveled to Denmark in the aftermath of their only son's death. Twenty years ago, after Curtis died, possibly a suicide, Joe and Ruth decided to spend a few months in Denmark, wherefrom Joe's mother had emigrated as a teenager. By a rather facile coincidence, they found themselves renting rooms from an impoverished countess who turned out to be somehow connected with Joe's mother. It is a postcard by the countess that sends Joe looking for the diary he kept in Denmark, and his wife, who felt she never quite knew all that went on back there, forces him to read it out loud to her. The unfolding of the Danish plot is quite suspenseful, and a cameo appearance by Karen Blixen adds an interesting twist to it, as the old writer cannot help trying to fashion what little Joe knows about his mother into a story, which is also what the reader tries to do as she arranges and rearranges the clues to try and anticipate on what Stegner will finally reveal "the truth" to be. The parts in the present are a bit less satisfying. Joe is terrified by the portents of his declining health and miserable to be mostly surrounded by dying friends. There is a bit too much about him being an old curmudgeon, who takes everything anyone does or says as a comment on his own behaviour. But the final confrontation between Ruth and Joe about their brief involvement with the countess brilliantly ties together both strands of the book and is terribly poignant.
What do You think about The Spectator Bird (1990)?
I am almost certain I will read this again in 20 years time and give it 5 stars. It is full of the poignant, often sad, old age musings of a retired New York literary agent as he battles with ageing, perceived irrelevance and questions of identity and legacy. With both his parents and his only child dead, what will be the evidence he even existed? Has he only been a spectator in life? Is he just killing time until time kills him? His humour is sarcastic and deliciously dry (while travelling he notes "as a form of suicide Denmark isn't unpleasant, as a health resort it leaves room for improvement"). For me, this didn't have the charm of Crossing to Safety, but it does have the same brilliant writing.
—Carolyn Francis
What can I say. I just got spoiled by Angle of Repose and keep waiting to vomit up an unexpected hairball when I read his books.Similar themes, similar central sweetheart, weird almost mystery-storyish reveal and I think a bunch of things I didn't totally understand, or just now at this very second am like "oh wait, genetics and fate. Right. Genetics and fate and the hollowness of the idea of one single answer that fixes everything. Oh right."So I think I read it kind of distractedly which is great because it cuts down on the 3 a.m. emotional tsunami heart-rip-out(tm) and follow up paradigm shift that comes from Wallace. Also I relate to the idea of a marriage and parenting intellectually as opposed to emotionally, so there's that. This is the third book where he's thrilled his wife stayed hot. I get it, etc, etc etc and kind of want to get mad at feminism for ruining my life and making me notice that kind of crap, which feels like a thing giving a man status. I guess is better than "she became a pig." Oh, wait. I just realized that she stayed hot for thematic reasons--it might be part of his genetics point heh. The dad is dealing with the death of his son which is maybe a suicide maybe an accident. What is nature, what is nurture, what is class, what is birth etc etc etc. parenting. Well. Also this book hovers around the teenager inside all of us and the complexity of the human heart. Grief, loss, all of that good stuff. Lots of the silent generation relating to the baby boomer hippies, which is sort of the idea of middle age and youth. I am reminded of a Joseph Campbell quote. (please re say that very loud and in public where people can be impressed): we are all born, we age, we grow old and die. Now, I actually am not sure if that is a quote from him and I can't find it anywhere via my tool "google." But I saw it on some youtube video, okay? It was good. Maybe if my mom was different, I'd remember, right Wallace?
—Megankellie
Joe Allston & his wife are getting old, and Joe feels like his life has been pointless. After receiving a postcard from an old "friend," Joe agrees to read his wife his journals of a trip they took to Scandinavia after their son's death/suicide decades earlier. The book is painful, because you suspect the whole time that Joe has had an affair with this "friend," but the actual truth is not something you see coming.I loved the book because it was Stegner, and he's such a fabulous writer. But this book was extremely unsettling to me. It wasn't the controversy surrounding the countess's family, but the relationship between Allston & his wife. How do you suspect that your spouse had an affair for 30 years, and never talk about it? But how does Stegner pull it off, making a book about nothing be so...true?I would have given it 4 stars in the week after I read it, but it doesn't seem as powerful a month later. If you looking for a Stegner book, read Angle of Repose or Crossing to Safety first.
—Teresa
