The Spectator Bird (Contemporary American Fiction) - Softcover

Stegner, Wallace Earle

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0140139400 ISBN 13: 9780140139402

Publisher: Penguin, 1990

Synopsis

Joe Allston is a retired literary agent who is, in his own words, "just killing time until time gets around to killing me." His parents and his only son are long dead, leaving him with neither ancestors nor descendants, tradition nor ties. His job, trafficking the talent of others, had not been his choice. He passes through life as a spectator.

A postcard from a friend causes Allston to return to the journals of a trip he had taken years before, a journey to his mother's birthplace, where he'd sought a link with the past. The memories of that trip, both grotesque and poignant, move through layers of time and meaning, and reveal that Joe Allston isn't quite spectator enough.

"Elegant and entertaining . . . Every scene [is] adroitly staged and each effect precisely acomplished." ?The Atlantic

About this title

Review:

"It is the autobiographical nature of Stegner''s work . . . that makes it so compelling. In every novel, the narrator has all the gifts of language, empathy, and philosophy, but he nonetheless can never free himself from the torments of the past."
-Jane Smiley, from the Introduction

"Elegant and entertaining . . . every scene [is] adroitly staged and each effect precisely accomplished."
-"The Atlantic"
"It is the autobiographical nature of Stegner's work . . . that makes it so compelling. In every novel, the narrator has all the gifts of language, empathy, and philosophy, but he nonetheless can never free himself from the torments of the past." Jane Smiley, from the Introduction
"Elegant and entertaining . . . every scene [is] adroitly staged and each effect precisely accomplished." The Atlantic"

About the Author:

Wallace Stegner (1909 1993) published more than two dozen books throughout his life, including the novels Angle of Repose, which won the Pulitzer Prize; Crossing to Safety; and The Big Rock Candy Mountain. An early environmentalist, Stegner was instrumental with his now famous Wilderness Letter in the passage of the 1964 Wilderness Act.
Jane Smiley is the Pulitzer Prize winning author of more than ten novels and four works of nonfiction. She lives in California.

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About this edition

• Publisher: Penguin
• Publication date: 1990
• ISBN 10: 0140139400
• ISBN 13: 9780140139402
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 224