Bridgman reviewed The spectator bird by Wallace Stegner (Contemporary American fiction)
Review of 'The spectator bird' on 'Goodreads'
5 stars
Sometimes books catch my eye because of when they were published and that's the case with The Spectator Bird. It came out in 1976, when I was a senior in high school, and it won the 1977 National Book Award for fiction.
I loved it. It has the kind of dense writing you expect in something by Saul Bellow, but is much more accessible, though [a:Wallace Stegner|157779|Wallace Stegner|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1252177524p2/157779.jpg] uses more Danish than I liked, not being a reader of that or any other non-English language. Do e-books have features where passages are translated when the author doesn't provide one? What does this mean: "Jeg er en hekse. Jeg har mistet min vej. Kan De siger mig vejen til Harz?" Beats me! I get it; I'm uneducated and so bad at languages that I can't figure it out from the other ones I know. Why rub it in, Wallace? Do you …
Sometimes books catch my eye because of when they were published and that's the case with The Spectator Bird. It came out in 1976, when I was a senior in high school, and it won the 1977 National Book Award for fiction.
I loved it. It has the kind of dense writing you expect in something by Saul Bellow, but is much more accessible, though [a:Wallace Stegner|157779|Wallace Stegner|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1252177524p2/157779.jpg] uses more Danish than I liked, not being a reader of that or any other non-English language. Do e-books have features where passages are translated when the author doesn't provide one? What does this mean: "Jeg er en hekse. Jeg har mistet min vej. Kan De siger mig vejen til Harz?" Beats me! I get it; I'm uneducated and so bad at languages that I can't figure it out from the other ones I know. Why rub it in, Wallace? Do you expect me to get up from where I'm reading to go to Google and translate it ("I'm a witch. I've lost my way. Can you tell me the way to Harz?")? And if so, being able to do that was about twenty-five years or more in the future from the time you published this book.
I'm just venting about other books that do that. Don't let my gripe keep you from reading this. It's very good.
There is a feeling part of us that does not grow old at all. If we could peel off the callus, and wanted to, there would be, untouched by time, unwithered, vulnerable, afflicted and volatile and blind to consequence, a set of twitches as beyond control as an adolescent's erections. It is this feeling creature that Ruth (the narrator's wife) keeps wistfully trying to expose in me. To have me admit to yearnings and anguishes, even if they threatened her, would allow her to forgive and pity me, and since she has trouble getting me to hold still for outward affection, forgiveness and pity are not unimportant.
