The month of March came in like a LION, and it went out like a LION! Our lives have been changed and some people think that we all might be changed for the better. (That is if we don't have to battle the virus). That this time of solitude and reflection and desire for more simple things will be with us forever now.
I had fun studying the book and writing the following email to all. I am thinking that most had assumed that book group would not be held (true), and did not read the book. Some of the questions I put forth were universal, thinking that if anyone had read part of the book or none at all, they could answer the universal questions. I will be eternally grateful to the one person who did answer some of the questions even though she only read part of the book. Her answers to these questions made me think deeper and even ask some of my family the same questions.
On the question of "safe place", I was thinking that the character Joe had a safe place all along and did not realize it until the end, the long time love of Ruth, his wife. My children grew up in different countries and traveled all over Asia and Europe when they were very little though high school, and later we traveled together in South America and Africa. I asked them what their safe place had been throughout that time and now. They both said that their safe place was mommy and daddy no matter whether we were in a village on the Laotian border or camped high in the alps or driving through South Africa. As long as we were together and we were there with them, that was their safe place. (Even when an elephant charged the car!) Now of course it has shifted more to their spouses but they both still say that as long as we are alive, we two are a kind of safe place for them. And this safe place is of course love.
I thought more about the differences between men and women, and the fact that this book was written in the 70s. And I thought more about our choices in life and how much control we have over them. And I thought a lot about how we overlook what is right in front of our face and reach for something out there somewhere, like excitement, an affair, a voyage.
Reach out whole heartedly for what is right in front of you, enjoy your quarantine buddies, and savor being alive!
Take care be well!
Libby
If any of you have some comments or answers to any questions, please insert them at the bottom under "comments". Thank you for listening.
HERE IS THE ORIGINAL EMAIL:
At the end of the book Stegner says, (we are) "Two young people with quite a lot the matter with us, we stood for a moment breathing it in." Breathing in the beautiful night air and nature, the past and present, the long relationship, the life they are having moment to moment now as they age. And he praises both the long marriage and Ruth. And they breath in how lucky they are.
So for those of you who got so tired of Joe grumbling and complaining, this last chapter should have been a catharsis of sorts.
The book won the National Book award in 1977. I began to enjoy the fact that Stegner moved back and forth between the present day, as Joe struggles with aging, and Denmark, where Joe and Ruth get caught up in the strange almost Gothic world of Astrid and her shunned aristocratic family. This was a voyage for Joe especially to grapple with the death of their only child, with whom he never saw eye to eye, that could never be resolved, as if it was a struggle between the past and present, the old world (Europe) and the new world (America).
A post card comes by mail in the present day from the Danish countess Astrid, and that leads to Ruth wanting the journal she did not know existed from that era to be read out loud. This was after Joe tried to hide all from Ruth. This was such a great tool of Stegner to show and portray a whole lifetime.
And so over the time I spent reading this book, a little every day in my sunroom with my flowers and the outside in, I began to think of questions I could ask all of you. If any of them sound incoherent, please disregard, of course. Answer all or none, one or two, or whatever hits you. And I will post the responses I get. Also, send a summary of your thoughts on the book along with answers to none or more of the questions. These questions are all made up by me....it was a fun challenge.
Here goes:
1) On the very first page of the book, Joe muses about two types of birds, the wren and the bushtit. How does this musing about their different behaviors portend about his life and himself as the story progresses, about how the Denmark part ends and how the story of Joe and Ruth comes out? About what is truly important for him in life?
2) How would Joe's chosen profession of that of an agent of books rather than an author himself feed his discontentment?
3) Do women in general have less of a problem with a loss of identity in retirement? Why does Ruth, who speaks relatively little and is shown less than anyone else in the book, remain vividly in one's mind after the book is finished? Is her bravery the only way Joe could have come to terms with his life? How much is this a book really about Ruth? And about a long marriage?
4) Towards the end, after the scenes with Astrid in Denmark, Joe mentions Marcus Aurelius, which I had to research...STOIC philosophy, in other words, accepting what is happening, another expression of the spectator bird. How much is Joe seen as a spectator in his own life? He believed he was essentially drawn into the current of life, not participating in the twists and the turns of the flow of life, "gone down steam like a stick, getting hung up in eddies and getting flushed out again, only half understanding what he floated past, and understanding less with every year." How many of you have felt this same thing at times? And what's more Joe is now an isolated observer made worse by his angry, sardonic personality. What do you think is meant by "the spectator bird"?
5) Throughout the story there is a theme of "a safe place" and safety. What is your safe place? What do you think Stegner meant by "a safe place"? What does this mean in light of the events in the world today?
6) Joe goes to Europe half heartedly to search for his roots. How much is this the AMERICAN search for roots and identity? Compare what he finds to the freedom and nature of American and the stifling control of nature in Denmark, needing a heritage and creating an evil heritage, and Joe's mother fleeing to America.
7) Stegner puts in a curious tennis match between Joe and the count in Denmark. What does this say about Stegner's value of sports in getting people together, and as the great equalizer?
8) The time the book is set in is tumultuous but really not much different in reality than the issues of today. Comment on this. I found it fascinating that Stegner mentions us as friends of the Kurds against the Iraquis!!!
9) How comfortable are you in talking about your own aging, because we are all aging....? Would you approach it like Joe and grumble, like Ben Alexander who drives around in a convertible with a young woman and a positive attitude (and he is older than Joe), or like Ruth who makes herself useful every day? Ha ha or anything in between???
10) THE LAST QUESTION: in the introduction to my book, Jane Smiley says "Joe Allston's novel revealed itself as a rhetorical structure that articulates in both theme and form some of the defining concerns of Stegner's art - the wild versus the cultivated, the prospective versus the retrospective, youth versus age, anticipation versus nostalgia, the fringe versus the establishment, the romantic versus the practical, the experimental versus the traditional, the headlong versus the measured - and in doing so it puts up a barrier between some readers and complete suspension of disbelief. Please comment. Have these arguments been resolved today?
I do hope you enjoyed this book. A friend sent me a funny saying that said something like: "I always wanted for years to deep clean my house but lacking the time, these last weeks I discovered that wasn't the reason." I hope you found the desire to read this great book. Thanks for listening and enjoy your safe place.
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