The Spectator Bird

I'm a senior, but I read this book decades ago. It touched me deeply then and still does. I recommended it to one of my book groups. Should have delayed these comments until after the discussion to hear what others thought. Stegner is among the best writers ever. The main character confronts regrets for his past and gains a deeper understanding of himself. His voice is as honest and authentic as you'll ever encounter.

Like most Stegner novels I’ve read this one had a dual storyline – one in the present and one in the past. In this case, the present is the story of Joe Allston and his wife Ruth are living the retired life in California after a career as a literary agent. The arrival in the mail of a postcard from an old Danish friend prompts him and Ruth to read journals he kept when they visited Denmark and met the countess Astrid. The reading of the journals sets the stage for the visit to the past.

The novel has themes of aging, love, and commitment. A preface by Jane Smiley, a northern Californian Pulitzer Prize winning author points out that Stegner’s later novels “…are about dreams that never worked out, the pleasures that failed to last, and the uncomfortable realization that life is not only short, but unsatisfying. Stegner is…the perfect writer for aging baby boomers to rediscover and take heart”. Perhaps, being an aging tail end boomer is the reason I have enjoyed his novels so much.

The title of the book comes from what Joe (as narrator) sees as “the truest vision of life” - that of a bird fluttering in from the dark into a lighted hall where it remains for a time and then returns into the night. In the end, Joe has found in Ruth a fellow spectator bird to care for and to be cared for back. Joe finds that despite his aches and pains and their manifestation as a constant level of crankiness and the common regrets of paths not taken, life IS satisfying.

This 1976 novel won the National Book Award in 1977. It is a sequel to All The Little Live Things in which tells the story of an earlier tragedy in Joe and Ruth’s life.

Like all Stegner fiction I’ve read in the last year…HIGHLY recommended.

A cranky old man lives with his doormat wife. Joe is bitter and disappointed it seems in everything and everyone. Receipt of a postcard lead him to a journal and review of a trip he took to Denmark after the death of their son. The book alternates between past and present. While some of the writing is lovely, the story is not and Joe's unrelenting negativity hangs over everything like a suffocating cloud of smog. Ruth, the long suffering wife has no depth. It did not hold my interest and I did not feel any sympathy, empathy or even pity for Joe. If this is old age, no one should live beyond forty.

FIRST LINE REVIEW: "On a February morning, when a weather front is moving in off the Pacific but has not quite arrived, and the winds are changeable and gusty and clouds drive over and an occasional flurry of fine rain darkens the terrace bricks, this place conforms to non of the cliches about California with which they advertise the Sunshine Cities for the Sunset Years." Well, I really tried and wanted to like this one by one of my favorite authors, but I could never quite get there. All the reasons for wanting to like it were there, but I just could "not quite arrive." Instead, I simply felt like the "spectator bird," watching it all from a great distance without being able to truly connect...and care (much).

In THE SPECTATOR BIRD, Wallace Stegner examines the marriage of Joe and Ruth Allston in 1974, when the curmudgeonly Joe is 69, and in 1954, when the bereaved Joe and Ruth take a trip to Denmark following the death of their son and only child, who was probably a suicide.

In 1974, the elderly Joe has many aches and pains, sees his friends declining or dying, and resents the hippy ethos at the nearby Stanford University campus, where Joe feels he is unwanted or invisible but, at all times, dated. In contrast, their trip to Denmark twenty years before led to a serendipitous event, with a stay at a bread-and-breakfast in Copenhagen connecting Joe to the house and untold history of his mother, who emigrated from Denmark fifty years before.

During this trip, the very private Joe, a literary agent, kept a diary, which Ruth has never read. In 1974, after they receive a friendly postcard from Astrid, who ran the B&B in Copenhagen, Ruth asks Joe to read this diary aloud to her at bedtime. Ostensibly, Ruth seems to think that this cozy revisit to the past will make Joe less grumpy. But she actually wants to know everything that happened in Denmark twenty years before. She believes in full candor within a marriage. The superannuated Joe does not.

In BIRD, Stegner goes back and forth between 1954 and 1974. In 1954, Joe is charmed by Astrid, who is a refined but impecunious aristocrat with a Quisling husband and a wealthy brother. Her family’s history, Joe and Ruth learn, is impressive but twisted by a bizarre and ongoing experiment with human genetics.

In 1954, Joe also tours the vast estate of Astrid’s brother, where everything is managed through a zealous commitment to science. To his own surprise, Joe finds himself uncomfortable with this estate’s disciplined husbandry. This abides even though it is the mirror opposite of the life lived by Curtis, the Allston’s deceased son. Indeed, Joe and Curtis argued often and bitterly, with Joe disappointed in his hang-loose proto-hippy son, whose values, annoying to Joe, predominate at Stanford in 1974.

In my edition of BIRD, Jane Smiley has written a wonderful introduction to the late novels of Stegner. Here, she says: “All of his late novels… are about not only the pain and disappointment of old age but also its aggravations and annoyances. They are about the dreams that did not work out, the pleasures that failed to last, and the uncomfortable realization that life is not only short, it is also unsatisfying. Stegner is, therefore, the perfect writer for aging baby boomers to rediscover and take to heart.”

Rounded up and not for everyone.

This classic Stegner novel is truly a joy now as it was in the '70's when I first read it. Now that I am "of an age" reflected in its pages, I find it a better read than it was before. Featuring the same characters as "All the Little Live Things", this sequel can certainly stand alone as the narrator struggles with aging and finding meaning in his life, his work, and all of the issues that people my age cope with daily. The thing that is most relevant though is the style of the writing. It is a little dense for many readers in the twenty-first century, but that density provides a rich depth that is so often missing in the books being written today. Reading this steadying book slowly during the busy holiday season has been a divine treat for me. If you have not known Wallace Stegner's amazing writing, please check into it and read his books slowly and savor the work of an expert novelist.

A book about the tribulations of aging: assorted ills, loss of friends to disabilities and death, dissapointment in children, lack of accomplishment, the indifference of the young. Joe finds his old friends from New York are disappointed in his complacency and lack of excitement in retirement. He is disgruntled himself and suffering arthritis. When a postcard arrives from an old friend, he digs out three journals from the month he spent in Denmark twenty years ago. When his wife suggests he read them to her, he is hesitant. She is insistent, and in the reading both discover much about themselves, each other, and their relationship. A must read for anyone over sixty.

The author is very verbose and self indulging.

A beautifully crafted philosophically lofty, down home comfy musing about the joys and regrets and uncertainties looking back at ones life during ones sunset years. A book for all time.

Wonderful book beautifully written.