[PDF] The Spectator Bird eBook

Author : Wallace Stegner
Publisher : Penguin UK
Page : 221 pages
File Size : 48,43 MB
Release : 2013-04-04
Category : Fiction
ISBN : 0141392339

GET BOOK

Literary agent Joe Allston, the central character of Stegner's novel All the Little Live Things, is now retired and, 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 an old friend causes Allston to return to the journals of a trip he and his wife 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. Wallace Stegner was the author of, among other works of fiction, Remembering Laughter (1973); The Big Rock Candy Mountain (1943); Joe Hill (1950); All the Little Live Things (1967, Commonwealth Club Gold Medal); A Shooting Star (1961); Angle of Repose (1971, Pulitzer Prize); Recapitulation (1979); Crossing to Safety (1987); and Collected Stories (1990). His nonfiction includes Beyond the Hundredth Meridian (1954); Wolf Willow (1963); The Sound of Mountain Water (essays, 1969); The Uneasy Chair: A Biography of Bernard deVoto (1964); American Places (with Page Stegner, 1981); and Where the Bluebird Sings to the Lemonade Springs: Living and Writing in the West (1992). Three short stories have won O.Henry prizes, and in 1980 he received the Robert Kirsch Award from the Los Angeles Times for his lifetime literary achievements.

Author : Wallace Stegner
Publisher : Vintage
Page : 226 pages
File Size : 42,5 MB
Release : 2017-03-21
Category : Fiction
ISBN : 052543187X

GET BOOK

This tour-de-force of American literature and a winner of the National Book Award is a profound, intimate, affecting novel from one of the most esteemed literary minds of the last century and a beloved chronicler of the West. Joe Allston is a cantankerous, 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, has not been his choice. He has passed through life as a spectator, before retreating to the woods of California in the 1970s with only his wife, Ruth, by his side. When an unexpected postcard from a long-lost friend arrives, Allston returns to the journals of a trip he has taken years before, a journey to his mother's birth­place where he once sought a link with his past. Uncovering this history floods Allston with memories, both grotesque and poignant, and finally vindicates him of his past and lays bare that Joe Allston has never been quite spectator enough.

Author : Wallace Stegner
Publisher : Penguin
Page : 353 pages
File Size : 18,96 MB
Release : 1991-12-01
Category : Fiction
ISBN : 1101075791

GET BOOK

Joe Allston, the retired literary agent of Stegner's National Book Award-winning novel, The Spectator Bird, returns in this disquieting and keenly observed novel. Scarred by the senseless death of their son and baffled by the engulfing chaos of the 1960s, Allston and his wife, Ruth, have left the coast for a California retreat. And although their new home looks like Eden, it also has serpents: Jim Peck, a messianic exponent of drugs, yoga, and sex; and Marian Catlin, an attractive young woman whose otherworldly innocence is far more appealing—and far more dangerous.

Author : Wallace Stegner
Publisher : Modern Library
Page : 370 pages
File Size : 20,38 MB
Release : 2007-12-18
Category : Fiction
ISBN : 0307430863

GET BOOK

Introduction by Terry Tempest Williams Afterword by T. H. Watkins Called a “magnificently crafted story . . . brimming with wisdom” by Howard Frank Mosher in The Washington Post Book World, Crossing to Safety has, since its publication in 1987, established itself as one of the greatest and most cherished American novels of the twentieth century. Tracing the lives, loves, and aspirations of two couples who move between Vermont and Wisconsin, it is a work of quiet majesty, deep compassion, and powerful insight into the alchemy of friendship and marriage.

Author : Wallace Stegner
Publisher : Penguin
Page : 482 pages
File Size : 26,97 MB
Release : 2000-12-01
Category : Fiction
ISBN : 1101075821

GET BOOK

Stegner’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel of personal, historical, and geographic discovery Confined to a wheelchair, retired historian Lyman Ward sets out to write his grandparents' remarkable story, chronicling their days spent carving civilization into the surface of America's western frontier. But his research reveals even more about his own life than he's willing to admit. What emerges is an enthralling portrait of four generations in the life of an American family. "Cause for celebration . . . A superb novel with an amplitude of scale and richness of detail altogether uncommon in contemporary fiction." —The Atlantic Monthly "Brilliant . . . Two stories, past and present, merge to produce what important fiction must: a sense of the enchantment of life." —Los Angeles Times This Penguin Classics edition features an introduction by Jackson J. Benson. For more than sixty-five years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,500 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

Author : John O'Hara
Publisher : Penguin
Page : 464 pages
File Size : 27,13 MB
Release : 2014-06-24
Category : Fiction
ISBN : 0143107100

GET BOOK

The National Book Award–winning novel by the writer whom Fran Lebowitz called “the real F. Scott Fitzgerald” Joe Chapin led a storybook life. A successful small-town lawyer with a beautiful wife, two over-achieving children, and aspirations to be president, he seemed to have it all. But as his daughter looks back on his life, a different man emerges: one in conflict with his ambitious and shrewish wife, terrified that the misdeeds of his children will dash his political dreams, and in love with a model half his age. With black wit and penetrating insight, Ten North Frederick stands with Richard Yates’ Revolutionary Road, Evan S. Connell’s Mr. Bridge and Mrs. Bridge, the stories of John Cheever, and Mad Men as a brilliant portrait of the personal and political hypocrisy of mid-century America. For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

Author : Wallace Stegner
Publisher : Vintage
Page : 290 pages
File Size : 37,13 MB
Release : 2017-08-08
Category : Nature
ISBN : 0525435433

GET BOOK

A book of timeless importance about the American West and a modern classic by National Book Award- and Pulitzer Prize-winning Wallace Stegner. The essays, memoirs, letters, and speeches collected in The Sound of Mountain Water encompass memoir, nature conservation, history, geography, and literature. Compositions delve into the post-World War II boom that brought the Rocky Mountain West--from Montana and Idaho to Utah and Nevada--into the modern age. Other works feature eloquent sketches of the West's history and environment, directing our imagination to the sublime beauty of such places as Robbers Roost and Glen Canyon. A final section examines the state of Western literature, of the mythical past and the diminished present, and analyzesd the difficulties facing any contemporary Western writer. Written over a period of twenty-five years, a time in which the West witnessed rapid changes to its cultural and natural heritage, and by a writer and thinker who will always hold a unique position in modern American letters, The Sound of Mountain Water is a hymn to the Western landscape, an affirmation of the hope emobided therein, and a careful and rich investigation of the West's complex legacy.

Author : Wallace Stegner
Publisher : Penguin
Page : 145 pages
File Size : 35,59 MB
Release : 2002-12-03
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN : 1440621276

GET BOOK

Wallace Stegner founded the acclaimed Stanford Writing Program-a program whose alumni include such literary luminaries as Larry McMurtry, Robert Stone, and Raymond Carver. Here Lynn Stegner brings together eight of Stegner's previously uncollected essays-including four never-before-published pieces -on writing fiction and teaching creative writing. In this unique collection he addresses every aspect of fiction writing-from the writer's vision to his or her audience, from the use of symbolism to swear words, from the mystery of the creative process to the recognizable truth it seeks finally to reveal. His insights will benefit anyone interested in writing fiction or exploring ideas about fiction's role in the broader culture.

Author : Wallace Stegner
Publisher : Penguin UK
Page : 726 pages
File Size : 11,34 MB
Release : 2013-04-04
Category : Fiction
ISBN : 0718197453

GET BOOK

Bo Mason, his wife, Elsa, and their two boys live a transient life of poverty and despair. Drifting from town to town and from state to state, the violent, ruthless Bo seeks out his fortune - in the hotel business, in new farmland and eventually, in illegal rum-running through the treacherous back roads of the American Northwest. In this affecting narrative, Wallace Stegner portrays more than thirty years in the life of the Mason family as they struggle to survive during the lean years of the early twentieth century. Wallace Stegner was the author of, among other works of fiction, Remembering Laughter (1973); Joe Hill (1950); All the Little Live Things (1967, Commonwealth Club Gold Medal); A Shooting Star (1961); Angle of Repose (1971, Pulitzer Prize); The Spectator Bird (1976, National Book Award); Recapitulation (1979); Crossing to Safety (1987); and Collected Stories (1990). His nonfiction includes Beyond the Hundredth Meridian (1954); Wolf Willow (1963); The Sound of Mountain Water (essays, 1969); The Uneasy Chair: A Biography of Bernard deVoto (1964); American Places (with Page Stegner, 1981); and Where the Bluebird Sings to the Lemonade Springs: Living and Writing in the West (1992). Three short stories have won O.Henry prizes, and in 1980 he received the Robert Kirsch Award from the Los Angeles Times for his lifetime literary achievements.

Author : Wallace Stegner
Publisher : Macmillan
Page : 386 pages
File Size : 31,63 MB
Release : 1998
Category : Fiction
ISBN : 9780805062960

GET BOOK

Winner of three O. Henry Awards, the Commonwealth Gold Medal, the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award, and the Kirsch Award for Lifetime Literary Achievement, Wallace Stegner was a literary giant. In Marking the Sparrow's Fall, the first collection of Stegner's work published since his death, Stegner's son Page has collected, annotated, and edited fifteen essays that have never before been published in any edition, as well as a little-known novella and several of Stegner's best-known essays on the American West. Seventy-five percent of the contents of this body of work is published here for the first time.