Angle of Repose (3 page)

He did not want to write a historical novel (as he commented on several occasions, western literature was too often “mired in the past”), but a contemporary one, and as he thought about the story in the Foote letters, it occurred to him that perhaps he could somehow link the two together so that the past was made part of the present. That, in turn, led him to look for the sort of narrator that had “tunnel vision,” frequently focused on the past and thinking about the present in terms of the past.

The perfect model for what became his narrator, Lyman Ward, presented itself to him in the person of Norman Foerster, Stegner’s dissertation adviser at the University of Iowa, who had come to the Stanford campus to retire. Foerster, unfortunately, had been struck by a disease that had paralyzed his legs. With some sorrow about what had happened to his old friend, Stegner nevertheless put himself into Foerster’s place—how would he, a largely immobile literary historian, view the world? As the novelist has said, “We all have to have in some degree what Keats called negative capability, the capacity to make ourselves at home in other skins.” Here was the tunnel vision that Stegner was looking for.

Foerster did not provide a character—Stegner invented him, descended from Joe Allston—but a point of view, literally a position from which to view the world. In comparing Allston with Lyman Ward, Stegner notes that Allston and Ward are very different types. Allston is

Observer and commentator, Lyman Ward, immobile, travels through time and space via his mind’s eye, which of course is precisely what a novelist does. He is not immobilized by just his disease, which does allow him to move about in his wheelchair, but also by his attachment to place, his ancestral home, and by his obsession with his family’s history. Both literally and figuratively, he lives in the past. While one cannot agree with Lyman’s son, Rodman, that his father’s investigation of the past is a waste of time, his devotion does seem extreme—except when one realizes that his devotion is not just to the past for its own sake, but that he is also looking for guidance in his present situation. The subject of
Angle of Repose
is the life of Susan Burling Ward, but the essence of the novel is the evolving consciousness of Lyman Ward, her grandson.

The novel can be roughly divided into two parts. The first third of the novel deals largely with Lyman Ward and his experiences and thoughts about his life. Lyman’s story and his character (a contemporary man who can understand and sympathize with a Victorian lady) frame the remaining two-thirds, which deals with his grandmother and whose state of mind is often conveyed to us by her letters to her eastern friend, Augusta. This Susan Burling Ward material, based on Mary Hallock Foote’s papers, would bring accusations of plagiarism, charges of misuse of source materials, and even angry denunciation by feminists who claimed that a male writer had deliberately set out to destroy the reputation of an accomplished female artist. Some of the charges grew out of misunderstanding and miscommunication; some, out of spite and, no doubt, jealousy.

Stegner had gotten to know Janet Micoleau, one of Mary Hallock Foote’s three granddaughters, in Grass Valley through the husband of his secretary, Alf Heller. He visited the Micoleaus on several occasions while he was thinking about using the papers, and Janet encouraged him to do something with them, since her grandmother had been largely forgotten. She hoped that through Stegner’s work, interest in her grandmother’s life and work would be revived. When Stegner decided to go ahead with a novel based in part on the papers, Janet told him to use the papers in whatever way he wished. Stegner assumed that she, who had had custody of the papers, spoke for the family.

There probably would not have been any trouble if the whole Foote family had been willing to become involved in dealing with the novelist and if Stegner and the Foote family had agreed on what they meant by “novel.” What the Footes meant was explained by Janet’s sister, Evelyn Foote Gardiner, when she stated in an interview: “I thought he would write something like Irving Stone’s biographical novels. That he would invent conversations and all of that, but that he would pretty much stick to the facts of their lives.” Although he changed and added in order to create a plot which gave the novel its central drama and which would bring together the past with the present, he did stick to the broad outline of their lives. However, Mrs. Gardiner and those who have taken up her cause have complained that he used too much of Mary’s life and too many of her letters, accusing him of “stealing” Mary’s material in order to write a prizewinning book.

The Foote family, understandably perhaps but inaccurately, has expressed the view that Mary’s letters constitute a major portion of the novel. Stegner does quote (with some changes) from many of the letters (roughly thirty-five letters out of a total of five hundred). There are thirty-eight instances of letter quotation, of various lengths, for a total of approximately 61 pages in a book with 555 pages of text—that is, slightly more than 10 percent of the whole. As small as the percentage may be, however, there is no doubt that the letters are an invaluable part of the novel, borrowing the actual words of a real correspondence to give, as they do, a feeling of depth and authenticity to Susan Burling Ward’s character. It was a brilliant tactic, but one that had ramifications that Stegner did not foresee.

When Janet asked him not to use real names, since he was writing a novel, Stegner used fictitious ones, and went further in protecting the identity of his sources in his acknowledgments: “My thanks to J.M. and her sister for the loan of their ancestors.” In addition, in his acknowledgments he included the disclaimer “This is a novel which utilizes selected facts from their real lives. It is in no sense a family history.” But Mrs. Gardiner has insisted that since he did not give specific credit to Mary Hallock Foote, as she felt he should have, what he had taken from her was an unethical act, close to plagiarism. Since he was following the family’s instructions in keeping the source of his material secret, this is a very harsh and, it would seem, unfair judgment.

The situation became more complicated when Rodman Paul got in touch with Stegner, while he was working on the novel manuscript, to tell him that he had obtained backing by the Huntington Library to publish Mary Hallock Foote’s reminiscences. Wallace agreed to read Paul’s introduction and offered to show him the letters. But the whole idea of protecting the Foote name through anonymity was in trouble. He wrote to Janet repeating the warnings that he had given before:

He went on to offer to modify the language and change all the names, asked her to let him know what to do about changes if she thought it necessary, and, as he had before, offered to send the completed manuscript to her to read. Janet replied that she didn’t think changes necessary, nor did she feel it necessary for her to read the manuscript. Stegner asked if anyone else in the family would like to read the manuscript. The answer was no, the others were too busy with their own lives to take the time.

In his letters Stegner warned Janet several times that the book would not be true to all the details of the Footes’ lives. “For reasons of drama, if nothing else,” he wrote, “I’m having to foreshorten, and I’m having to throw in a domestic tragedy of an entirely fictional nature, but I think I am not too far from their real characters.” Despite his attempt to make sure that the Foote family had some idea of what a novel was and what he was writing, and despite his offer to make changes as dictated by Janet and to let her or other members of the family read the manuscript, part of the Foote family took great offense to the book when it was published. They blamed Janet, who suffered deeply from their upset and anger; but most of all they blamed Stegner, who they believed, despite all the evidence to the contrary, had tricked them. The irony is that the novel with its Pulitzer and its controversy has brought more attention to Mary Hallock Foote than she would ever have received otherwise.

Using the Foote letters may have been a brilliant touch, but it not only caused him difficulties after the novel was published; it made the composition of the novel difficult:

The novel is certainly a complex one, probably Stegner’s most complex, yet at the same time it remains a book that is not only readable, but a joy to read.

For one thing, it is a book of powerful, memorable characters. For another, it is a book with constantly building and engaging drama, dramatizing several important themes. It may seem odd on the surface that a novel that has a central character bound to his wheelchair and to his home should have such drama. That drama is built through not just one but a series of connected conflicts within Lyman Ward. While he is not a totally lovable character, he is a decent man who has had some bad breaks in life and whose thoughts engage us by both their wit and their occasional profundity. Because of his disease and because his wife has abandoned him, he has reached a major crisis point in his life. “It would be easy,” he thinks at one point in the novel, “to call it quits.” But he is a survivor, and as strange as it may seem, he is saved by his training as a research scholar, by his thirst for knowledge. His crisis leads him to the need to find a direction for his shattered life. That direction is provided by finding out about and trying to understand his grandparents, the events that shaped them and the conflict between them; and his curiosity as it pushes ever forward becomes ours. It becomes the medium of suspense, holding us throughout. “What really interests me,” Lyman tells us, “is how two such unlike particles clung together, and under what strains, rolling downhill into their future until they reach the angle of repose where I knew them. That is where the interest is. That’s where the meaning will be if I find any.”

Another aspect of Lyman that leads us to empathize with him and holds us to his track of discovery is his vivid imagination. He is not only a historian; he is, in effect, a novelist, bringing his characters and their interactions to life. Joseph Conrad was by Stegner’s testimony a favorite author, one that he learned much from, and it was Conrad who said,

Through the talent of Wallace Stegner, Lyman Ward has the power to make us see. And if there is any one secret to the success of this novel, this is it.

A major pattern of conflict within Lyman and hence the novel can be categorized under the past versus the present, more specifically at times, the old West versus the new. As Lyman thinks about his own situation, implicitly comparing it to that of his grandparents, we wonder how, facing so many obstacles to happiness, they are going to make it through life. As Stegner has put it, “Since [Lyman’s] own marriage has collapsed he’s interested in this one that didn’t, even though it had all the provocations that his had to fall apart.” But we also have a third pair, the contemporary marriage of the two flower children, Shelly and Larry Rasmussen. Altogether, three different kinds of marriage: each in a different time frame, running from the past to the present. “ ‘Progressive decline,’ I would call it,” the author has stated.

Certainly, as Lyman tells us in the novel, this is a book about marriage, and just as certainly it reflects Stegner’s own values in that regard. We might note that he was happily married to the same woman for nearly sixty years. But one might just as well say that this is a book about forgiveness, also reflecting the author’s values. While the marriage of Oliver and Susan remains intact, Oliver apparently never totally forgives his wife, doing so only insofar as he stays with her. Lyman wonders if he can even go that far in his own life and take back his wayward wife, Ellen.

One of the strengths of the novel is the complexity of its characters, the many-sidedness that convinces us of their reality. These characterizations, along with the quoted letters and Stegner’s vivid descriptions, provide a depth of realism seldom found in fiction. It is like turning from the flatness of regular TV to the multidimensional picture of HDTV. After reading and rereading this novel, it is hard not to lapse into the mistake of calling the central character Mary—which may be a point in favor of the Foote family’s objections. Despite the negatives attached to the two major characters, we learn to care about them and follow with concern their progress through the novel. Like our feelings about Lyman, our connection to Susan grows despite a number of flaws—her snobbery, in particular, and her treatment of her husband. But our connection grows as we come to understand her, and it is Stegner’s triumph that we do come to an understanding of this woman, this genteel Victorian lady, so aloof, who would seem on first glance to be so foreign to contemporary taste.