Angle of repose
First edition cover
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| Author | Wallace Stegner |
|---|---|
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Publisher | Doubleday |
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Publication date
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1971 |
| Media type | Print (Hardback & Paperback) |
| ISBN | |
| OCLC | 24953754 |
| 813/.52 20 | |
| LC Class | PS3537.T316 A8 1992 |
Angle of Repose is a 1971 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 from Foote's actual letters as the correspondence of his fictional character Susan Burling Ward was and remains controversial among some scholars. The controversy is somewhat tempered since Stegner had received permission to use Foote's writings, implying as much in the book's acknowledgments page.
In 1998, the Modern Library ranked Angle of Repose #82 on its list of the 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century.
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.
Another view has to do with a typical construction of canals and the drowning of Ward's daughter in a canal. Canal banks are sometimes simply piled mounds of dirt. Slanted walls of dirt are left at the angle of repose after the canal is built. Small disturbances to the dirt can cause it to slide down. Ward's daughter fell into a canal and couldn't climb out because of this.
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—Grass Valley, 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.
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