The Spectator Bird

I absolutely adored this book from the very first page right through to the end.

Joe Alston, who is nearly seventy years old, is one of those miserable and depressing individuals, yet he manages to bring joy to others. He is an astute man, fully aware of his own mortality. Additionally, he is one of those honorable men that I always find extremely endearing. His wife, Ruth, who has been with him for about forty years, truly understands him very well.

However, it was the journals that truly captivated me about this book. The fact that he read them to Ruth added an extra layer of charm. Traveling back in time to when these journals were written, which were about Denmark and the countess Astrid, was simply amazing.

In conclusion, this is an excellent book that I would highly recommend to anyone looking for an engaging and thought-provoking read.

Simply put, I loved it. It was a truly remarkable piece of work that captured my attention from the very beginning.

Two, from the book: “You’ve got a bad case of the 60’s. The 60’s are the age of anxiety. You feel yourself on the brink of old age and you fret. Once you pass your 70th birthday all that clears away.” This passage really made me think about the different stages of life and how our perspectives can change as we age.

“Take gratefully any pleasure the world provides, but don’t curse God when they fail. Nobody in the universe ever promised you anything. Most things break, including hearts. The lessons of a life amount not to wisdom but to scar tissue and callus.” These words are so profound and offer a realistic view of life. We should appreciate the good times but also be prepared for the bad.

Joe has reached his 70th birthday and he’s not at all happy. He’s going over his past, including the strained relationship and death of his only son and his “spectator” life in general. He’s kept a journal, and his wife, Ruth, tries hard to comfort him and asks him to read from it the time they spent in Denmark. And that’s where it begins. The story unfolds, and we get to see how Joe copes with his past and tries to find meaning in his life.

Thanks Wallace Stegner for writing such an awesome story! His words have the power to touch our hearts and make us think about our own lives. I would highly recommend this book to anyone who is looking for a thought-provoking and engaging read.

I truly adored The Spectator Bird. It is an exquisitely written narrative that delves deep into the themes of aging and reflecting on past regrets. Stegner, having himself experienced a happy marriage that endured for decades, had a profound understanding of what a long and successful marital relationship entails. In this novel, he masterfully portrays such a relationship.

The plot is not simply about a cantankerous old man wallowing in gloom. Rather, the memories that the protagonist revisits with his wife are filled with drama and even a touch of the strange. I had the pleasure of listening to the audiobook version of this novel, which was flawlessly read by Edward Herrmann. This novel really spoke to me on a deep level. It is without a doubt the best book I have read (or listened to) this year. I'm not sure if you will have the same affinity for it, but for me, it was precisely the right book at the perfect moment.

It has left a lasting impression on me and I will surely recommend it to others.

Original Article: The importance of recycling cannot be overemphasized. It helps reduce waste, conserve natural resources, and protect the environment.

Expanded Article:

The importance of recycling cannot be overemphasized. Recycling plays a crucial role in our modern society. It is not just a simple act but a significant step towards a sustainable future.

One of the main benefits of recycling is that it helps reduce waste. By recycling materials such as paper, plastic, and metal, we can prevent them from ending up in landfills. This not only saves space but also reduces the environmental impact of waste disposal.

Another important aspect of recycling is the conservation of natural resources. Many of the materials we recycle can be reused to make new products, reducing the need to extract and process virgin materials. This helps to preserve our natural resources and protect the environment.

In conclusion, recycling is essential for a sustainable future. We should all do our part to recycle as much as possible and encourage others to do the same. By working together, we can make a significant difference and protect our planet for future generations.

Stegner's writing is truly stellar. His works have a certain charm and allure that draw readers in and keep them engaged from start to finish. Crossing to Safety remains my absolute favorite among his books. However, the one I am currently referring to is also incredibly poignant and compelling. It has a depth and complexity that is difficult to put into words. In fact, I'm afraid that if I were to attempt to summarize it in just a sentence or two, it would sound rather unappealing. But that's the beauty of Stegner's writing - it defies simple summaries.

This particular book has left such an impression on me that it makes me eager to start The Big Rock Candy Mountain soon. I can't wait to explore another one of Stegner's literary worlds and see what new adventures and insights await me. I have a feeling that it will be just as captivating and thought-provoking as the others.

Sometime in the mid-80’s, I had the opportunity to read Wallace Stegner’s All the Little Live Things, which was published in 1967 and set in that very decade.

Although I was an admirer of his work, this particular book didn't quite impress me.

The main character, Joe Allston, a retired literary agent pushing sixty and living with his wife in the hills near Palo Alto, California, struck me as rather tiresome.

How could I describe Joe? Crabby, curmudgeonly, crotchety, bitter, brooding, acerbic, opinionated, argumentative – any of these words would do, as they all seemed to capture his essence.

But then, I just finished reading The Spectator Bird, published in 1976, which brings back the story of Joe and his wife Ruth.

Ten years have passed, and Joe is now knocking on the door of seventy.

Surprisingly, he is still the same old Joe (as described above).

He hasn't changed, but I have.

While Joe is ten years older, I am now thirty years older than when I first met him in All the Little Live Things.

As the great philosopher Muhammad Ali once said, “The man who views the world at fifty the same as he did at twenty has wasted thirty years of his life.”

I was older than twenty when I met Joe, and I am older than fifty now, but the principle still holds true for me.

Furthermore, I have gained twenty years on him, and though we couldn't be described as soul mates, I do have a better understanding and greater tolerance of him.

Some – not all – but some of what he says and believes now makes sense to me.

One of the things that makes me more tolerant is that Joe had a rough childhood (much like Stegner himself), and I don't think I originally made enough allowance for that fact.

He is also unable to come to terms with the death of his only child twenty years earlier, who was described as an overage beach bum who died either due to an accident or suicide.

Part of Joe’s grief can be traced to the fact that he and his son were in constant conflict, and he feels that he was not a good father and thus was partly responsible for his rebellious son’s death.

Furthermore, Joe is not aging gracefully.

He thinks to himself at one point that “I am just killing time till time gets around to killing me.”

His dark outlook on life is partly due to a heart problem and the pain he experiences from the onset of rheumatoid arthritis, but it is also because he feels that he has lived an empty life.

He is both retrospective and introspective; he broods about the past, the present, and the future.

Joe feels that he has been more of a spectator (as the title suggests) than an actor in his life.

In one of his introspective moods, he muses to himself: “As for Joe Allston, he has been a wisecracking fellow traveler in the lives of other people, and a tourist in his own.

There has not been one significant event in his life that he planned.

He has gone downstream like a stick, getting hung up in eddies and getting flushed out again, only half understanding what he floated past, and understanding less with every year.

He knows nothing that posterity needs to be told about.”

This last sentence is a reference to his wife's desire for him to write his memoirs.

After all, he was an agent for some of the most notable writers of the day.

And most importantly, she thinks that it will keep his mind active and alert and will help cure him of his depression.

Joe is intelligent, of course, and he isn't always a gloomy Gus.

When he is in the mood, he can be charming and witty.

Here is what Joe thinks about the idea of writing his memoir: “… it is one thing to examine your life and quite another to write it.

Writing your life implies that you think it worth writing.

It implies an arrogance, or confidence, or compulsion to justify oneself, that I can’t claim.

Did Washington write his memoirs? Did Lincoln, Jefferson, Shakespeare, Socrates?

No, but Nixon will, and Agnew is undoubtedly hunched over his right now.”

All I have done so far is to set the stage.

Much of the story is told in flashback to 1954 when Joe and Ruth took a trip to Denmark.

They went there for an extended stay in an attempt to escape the heartbreak of the recent death of their son and to give Joe a chance to rest and recuperate from an illness.

Why Denmark? Well, that is because his mother emigrated to America from there when she was only sixteen.

Joe never knew his father.

And because his only child and his mother have both died, he says that he has neither descendant nor ancestor.

He and his wife went to Denmark with the idea that they might locate the house in which his mother had lived.

They did, and the plot thickens.

Joe is a complicated character with a complex past, but in Denmark, he met his match, a countess whose character and past were even more complex.

With the publication of this book, Stegner was at the peak of his popularity.

The Spectator Bird won a National Book Award, and his previous novel, Angle of Repose, won a Pulitzer.

Finally, Joe was right about Nixon and Agnew.

Nixon did write his memoir, more than one, in fact, and so did Agnew.

Of course, their memoirs were written after both had to resign in disgrace from their respective offices.

Agnew even wrote a novel, The Canfield Affair.

I have never read it, but the blurb here on Goodreads says: “This book is about a Vice President who was destroyed by his own ambition.”

I know it isn't autobiographical because Agnew was destroyed by his greed.

Joe would have had something to say about that.

Another deeply satisfying book by Wallace Stegner awaits the readers. The themes explored within its pages are reminiscent of those in his other masterpieces like Crossing to Safety and Angle of Repose. It delves into profound aspects such as mortality, the complex labyrinth of marriage, the mind games associated with aging and physical disability, and the ever-elusive search for self.

I often wonder if truly knowing oneself, making transparent the amalgamation of good and bad that resides within each of us, is indeed the "safe place" that Stegner alludes to so frequently. Maybe this safe place isn't a physical pilgrimage after all. It's not about returning to our origins, not Bregninge, not the New World, nor is it "the little Kafka animal’s hole." Instead, perhaps it is an internal pilgrimage. It involves finding the means to be self-aware and then taking the inevitable next step towards honesty.

The narrator and protagonist, Joe Allston, is engaged in a fierce battle in his body, mind, and spirit. He is angry and anguished over an enormous loss that he shares with his wife Ruth. He feels hurt by a world that he imagines as hostile and uncharitable towards the elderly and infirm. Intimidated by youth, he is convinced of a feud between the generations. His wife calls him a curmudgeon, but he is worse than that. He is emotionally closed and locked in place, merely a spectator.

Joe is reminded of Willa Cather's words who pointed out that “you can’t paint sunlight, you can only paint what it does with shadows on a wall.” He extrapolates this to Socrates’ call to examine one’s life, asking the thought-provoking question: “do you really examine the life, or do you examine the shadows it casts on other lives…?”

Arm in arm with Stegner, Joe delves into the past, examines the shadows, and is ultimately rewarded with a transcendent return to sunlight.

Stegner bestows many gifts upon the readers in this novel. Here are two of them.

One, he shares a philosophy or approach to life that I have often attempted but failed to put into words. Clairvoyant Karen Blixen gleefully tells her guests, one of whom she has just affronted by deliberately alluding to painful memories, “…my dear, look on it as a story…it pains Astrid to hear these things spoken of, but they are part of a story and stories are part of the accumulation you think will tell you something.” When we position painful events within the larger perspective of our life story, we exchange subjectivity for objectivity. We prick the bubble of our self-importance and reduce the event to realistic, if not amusing, proportions. We should all strive to be storytellers!

Two, he addresses the suffering caused by secrets. Stegner describes Joe in the bath, ruminating on how the body carries its memories in his right shoulder and elbow (from competitive tennis) and right toe (from kicking a friend in his youth). But the mind does the same thing. Its secrets manifest in defensiveness, resistance, and mockery—what Joe calls his “japery.” Joe has a secret, and precious time passes as he keeps it suppressed.

But the best gift of all is Stegner’s sentences. He reserves his most beautiful, luminous sentences for scenes where the stakes are high, when emotion and truth, for this self-described “adolescent,” ride to the rim. This is a gorgeous book, full of truth and consequences, and I am thoroughly enjoying my Wallace Stegner journey.

Sniff, sniff, blubber, blubber... You did it to me again, Wally. I just don't understand why you always have to be so mean. It really hurts my feelings. Every time I think we're getting along well, you do something like this to disappoint me. I try so hard to be nice to you, but it seems like it's never enough. Maybe I should just give up on trying to be friends with you. But then again, I don't want to give up so easily. I'll give you one more chance, but please, stop being so cruel. I deserve better than this.