Friday Fiction

As many of you know, I'm in a book club.  We've been reading together going on six years (I think) and we have read probably over a hundred books.  Though to accommodate one another's tastes, I have been forced to read books I would never have picked up of  my own accord:  Wuthering Heights (Emily Bronte), A Visit from the Goon Squad (Jennifer Egan), The Stories of John Cheever (by, remarkably, John Cheever), Catch-22 (Joseph Heller), Pilgrim at Tinker's Creek (Annie Dillard, and, by the way, one of the worst books EVER), One Hundred Years of Solitude (Gabriel Garcia Marquez), A Knight in Shining Armor (by Jude Deveraux of the "heaving bosoms" genre), Gone With the Wind (Margaret Mitchell) and American Psycho (by Bret Easton Ellis, though I will confess, I LOVED it.  It's sick and misogynistic but completely fascinating).  That's a terribly small and unjust sampling.

We met a couple of weeks ago over brunch on the Upper East Side at The Chat Noir to have some food and conversation.  At the end of our meandering discussion of the book and whatever side trails we find the conversation leads us, we pick a book.  All the Iphones/blackberries/androids come out of purses and pockets as we scroll through the best seller lists, look up author names, and think of subjects that we want to explore.  Then we reach a consensus and voila!  Another book or two is chosen and we wander into miasmic Manhattan.

They picked my book.  And while I feel safe saying that my book club compatriots consider me well-read, they're not necessarily thrilled about my ideas because they usually have to do with hiking, nature, or messed up people doing stupid things.  So I was very excited when they all agreed to read Crossing to Safety by Wallace Stegner.

I adore Wallace Stegner.  His fiction is certainly noteworthy but I am more a fan of his essays on conservation in the American West.  My favorite book of his is Marking the Sparrow's Fall.  Stegner grew up all over the west as part of a restless, homesteading family, but he found himself living his teen years in Salt Lake City and chose to call Salt Lake City his home, though he taught at Stanford (where he met Edward Abbey, one of my favorite authors) and in the east (though I can't remember where).  

His love of Salt Lake City is not the reason I adore Stegner, though it may factor unconsciously into my adoration.  He sees people.  There is an excitement that rises in me when I read a poignant passage and my heart starts to swell because I know the truth of it.  And that's how Stegner makes me feel.

This is the passage that brought me to tears the other night (just read the book to get the context):

"The vision of her floundering in the wake of the concentrated helpers and their feeble charge turned my distress into outrage.  Not at any of the helpers, not at Charity's willfulness, not at the solidarity of women collaborating in what only they could do as well, while excluding male intrusions.  No, at it, at fate, at the miserable failure of the law of nature to conform to the dream of man:  at what living had done to the woman my life was fused with, what her life had been and was.  What she had missed, how much been kept from her, how little her potential had been realized, how hampered were her affection and willingness and warmth.  The sight of her burned my eyes."

It doesn't matter if this doesn't touch your soul, there are many other passages in many other books that may do just that.