Crossing to Safety: Wallace Stegner (Penguin Modern Classics)

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The book never dragged for me, even though Charity’s bullying got on my nerves. Larry told his story well, even if he seemed much too self-contained. But, even if I am, there is no question, it seems to me, that Stegner is using Larry’s difficulties with the idea of writing a book about Charity and Sid to get the reader of Crossing to Safety thinking. This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. Fiction Book Review: Crossing to Safety by Wallace Earle Stegner". PublishersWeekly.com. 1987-08-04. Indeed, the scene with Hallie takes place in 1972 at the Vermont compound that Charity and Sid have maintained as a summer gathering place for their large extended family, including Larry and Sally as honorary members.

It’s subtle and I could be wrong here, but it seems to me that Stegner is clearly saying, halfway through the book, that it is being written by Morgan: The American West is ``less a place than a process,'' asserts Stegner. In these 17 graceful essays, most previously published in magazines or books, the novelist explores the dynamic tension between Continue reading » It is at first disconcerting that the narrator sounds half the age of the author's narrator: Lyman Ward is an elderly, severely crippled historian at odds with his wife and children over his Continue reading » Where are the things that novelists seize upon and readers expect? Where is the high life, the conspicuous waste, the violence, the kinky sex, the death wish? Where are the suburban infidelities, the promiscuities, the convulsive divorces, the alcohol, the drugs, the lost weekends? What Stegner is saying, essentially, is that such a book can’t be written, but — look! — I’ve written it.

Overall Summary

Well, maybe not Sally. She is strong and long-suffering, first as a pregnant faculty wife and later as the victim of polio, and seemingly without personality flaws. The novel is dedicated to Stegner’s own wife, and maybe that’s why Sally isn’t given any rough edges. I’m ashamed. For years now we haven’t been as close as we used to be. I let myself get irritated at her way of taking charge of everything. I thought she was a tyrant to all of you in the family. I still do. But I shouldn’t have ever let myself forget what a wonderfully unselfish friend she has been. I should have had the grace to forgive what I knew she couldn’t help. We parted almost as if we weren’t friends, and it’s been eight years.” Reading the novel this time around, I found that I really didn’t like Charity, and I wasn’t too thrilled with Larry. And Sid, well, he was pretty wispy. These 31 classic stories record much of the cultural climate of 20th-century America, its West in particular, constituting, as the NBA and Pulitzer Prize-winning author affectionately notes, not an Continue reading »

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Stegner's powerful but unassuming narrative traces the bond that develops between the Langs and the Morgans from their first meeting in 1937 through their eventual separation on the occasion of Charity's death from cancer. He is saying to the reader that it is nearly impossible to write an interesting book about friendship, especially the friendship of two couples, from the point of view of one member of one of the couples. He is saying that quiet, private lives, such as those lived by Charity, Sid, Sally and Larry, have none of the pizzazz that popular novels seem to need. That a book of this sort would be read by no one. There are rough edges galore among the other four. Charity is one of those highly competent people who likes to organize herself and everyone around her, particularly, in her case, her husband Sid, an English professor. She has great ambitions for him, but, although he looks like a Greek god, he’s a dreamy kind of a fellow, rich enough not to have to work hard. I am their friend. I respect and love them both. What is more, our lives have been so twisted together that I couldn’t write them without writing Sally and me as well. I wonder if I could recreate any of us without my portraits being tainted by pity or self-pity. “I tell them now” Stegner's love of unspoilt nature and of the American West shines forth in these 17 graceful essays. This book by the Pulitzer Prize and NBA winner is a National Book Critics Circle Award nominee for Continue reading »

The premise of Crossing to Safety seems simple: Two young couples meet in 1937 as lowest-rung members of the University of Wisconsin faculty at Madison. They fall into friendship and, for the rest of their lives, through ups and downs, remain deeply bonded. They’ve been distant, in part, because of geography. They live in New Mexico where the weather is better for Sally’s polio, the malady she first suffered in one of the early summers at the Lang compound — and survived, in part, because of Charity’s support and encouragement. But there’s more, as Sally tells Hallie: Crossing to Safety is a 1987 semi-autobiographical novel by "The Dean of Western Writers", [1] Wallace Stegner. It gained broad literary acclaim and commercial popularity. An undistinguished writing professor at Stanford when he was commissioned by the Arabian American Oil Company (Aramco) in 1955 to write ""an approved history of the oil venture's early days,"" future Continue reading » Charity and Sid are rich and, at every turn, are offering money, influence or help of some other sort to Larry and Sally who are hungry for their help. I didn’t like the power dynamic that they seemed to have. It would have been suffocating for me.Want to learn the ideas in Crossing To Safety better than ever? Read the world’s #1 book summary of Crossing To Safety by Wallace Stegner here. Boswell, Evelyn (2006-10-05). "New Stegner professor to hit the ground running". Montana State University. Retirees Joseph and Ruth Allston find their placid, rural California life disrupted by a hippie who builds a treehouse on their property and by a young married couple tragically affected by pregnancy Continue reading »