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Recapitulation
One of our greatest contemporary novelists: Washington Post. Bruce Mason returns to Salt Lake City not for his aunt's funeral, but to encounter the place he fled in bitterness forty-five years ago. A successful statesman and diplomat, Mason had buried his awkward childhood to become a figure who commanded international respect. But the realities of the present recede in the face of ghosts of his past. As he makes the perfunctory arrangements for the funeral, his inner pilgrimage leads him to the father who darkened his childhood, the mother whose support was both redeeming and embarrassing, the friend who drew him into the respectable world of which he so craved to be a part, and the woman he nearly married. In this profoundly moving book, Stegner has drawn an intimate portrait of a man understanding how his life has been shaped by experiences seemingly remote and inconsequential.
288 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1979
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1,109 people want to read
About the author
Wallace Stegner
176books1,998followersWallace Earle Stegner was an American historian, novelist, short story writer, and environmentalist. Some call him "The Dean of Western Writers." He won the Pulitzer Prize in 1972 and the U.S. National Book Award in 1977.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 188 reviews
November 26, 2020
Recapitulation was the sequel to Big Rocky Candy Mountain by Wallace Stegner with both books purported to be autobiographical in nature although fictional accounts. We had last seen Bruce Mason over forty-five years ago when he had returned to Salt Lake City as a young man for the funeral of his father, Harry Mason. This time Mason has returned for the last time to finalize the funeral arrangements for his aunt. As he walks around the city, he is confronted with many memories and a lot of unfinished business. It was a powerful and moving book as we relive the memories of his past and finally, as Bruce Mason comes to terms with his ghosts from the past that forced him to flee in bitterness all those years ago. There is a reason why Wallace Stegner has become one of my favorite authors as I continue to make my way through his beautiful books.
"The canyon breeze had died, the trees were still, the street lay out before him, not simply empty, but blurred and ambiguous, a double exposure, and he felt bewildered, in the strict sense, half lost in a half-remembered wilderness, beguiled by familiar-seeming landmarks as he had been a boy prowling the willow bottoms of Whitemud, following the destinationless and overgrown paths that cattle had pushed through the brush. He clenched his eyes shut and opened them again to clear his vision, and the street came single again. But it was the street of the past, not that of the present."
"Some of us didn't know enough to be discontented and ambitious. Some of us had limited experience and limited aspirations that only accident, or the actions of others, or perhaps some inescapable psychosocial fate, could explode us out of our ruts. In a way, I suppose I had to hitchhike out of my childhood; but if I did, I did it without raising my thumb."
"The canyon breeze had died, the trees were still, the street lay out before him, not simply empty, but blurred and ambiguous, a double exposure, and he felt bewildered, in the strict sense, half lost in a half-remembered wilderness, beguiled by familiar-seeming landmarks as he had been a boy prowling the willow bottoms of Whitemud, following the destinationless and overgrown paths that cattle had pushed through the brush. He clenched his eyes shut and opened them again to clear his vision, and the street came single again. But it was the street of the past, not that of the present."
"Some of us didn't know enough to be discontented and ambitious. Some of us had limited experience and limited aspirations that only accident, or the actions of others, or perhaps some inescapable psychosocial fate, could explode us out of our ruts. In a way, I suppose I had to hitchhike out of my childhood; but if I did, I did it without raising my thumb."
August 28, 2022
3.5 Stars, rounded up because it's Wallace Stegner
A follow on story to Stegner's 1943 novel The Big Rock Candy Mountain, Recapitulation is a story of memory. Set in the 1970s, after 45 years away, Bruce Mason returns to Salt Lake City. His memories center on significant events in his past--the late 1920s/early 1930s. I enjoy learning more of Bruce's story--how as a teen he is befriended by a schoolmate and how this friendship changes the direction of his life. I see him flourish at university, fall in love, and move on to law school.
Recapitulation is an interior novel; this character-driven story occurs in Mason's head. Stegner's prose, as always, is rich and wonderful.
Through revisiting these times, Bruce is able to come to terms with portions of the past and lay some of his ghosts to rest.
“He was not bound by verifiable facts. What he liked about the past he could coat with clear plastic, and preserve it from scratching, fading, and dust. What he did not like, he could either black out or revise. Memory, sometimes a preservative, sometimes a censor's stamp, could also be an art form."
I think a reader must have several years of life experience under his/her belt to fully appreciate this particular novel. Stegner's ability to understand human nature assures that most of us will be able to see at least a glimpse of ourselves in these pages.
A follow on story to Stegner's 1943 novel The Big Rock Candy Mountain, Recapitulation is a story of memory. Set in the 1970s, after 45 years away, Bruce Mason returns to Salt Lake City. His memories center on significant events in his past--the late 1920s/early 1930s. I enjoy learning more of Bruce's story--how as a teen he is befriended by a schoolmate and how this friendship changes the direction of his life. I see him flourish at university, fall in love, and move on to law school.
Recapitulation is an interior novel; this character-driven story occurs in Mason's head. Stegner's prose, as always, is rich and wonderful.
Through revisiting these times, Bruce is able to come to terms with portions of the past and lay some of his ghosts to rest.
“He was not bound by verifiable facts. What he liked about the past he could coat with clear plastic, and preserve it from scratching, fading, and dust. What he did not like, he could either black out or revise. Memory, sometimes a preservative, sometimes a censor's stamp, could also be an art form."
I think a reader must have several years of life experience under his/her belt to fully appreciate this particular novel. Stegner's ability to understand human nature assures that most of us will be able to see at least a glimpse of ourselves in these pages.
February 24, 2024
Stay away from this book if you are young. But if you are in your mid-forties or older, you might like it. Recapitulation will certainly make you uncomfortable to learn that there are universal truths about the way we remember and interpret our own pasts. Or maybe you will find that comforting in an uncomfortable way.
Recapitulation is a sequel—if a book written more than 35 years later can be considered a sequel—to Stegner’s The Big Rock Candy Mountain , which is the best work of fiction I’ve read this year. The surviving member of the Mason family, Bruce, returns to his Salt Lake City “home� to take care of affairs after his aunt died. It’s been 45 years since he’s set foot in town. We learn that he has become a well-respected American diplomat in the Middle East since we last saw him as a student at the University of Minnesota law school. This is not a trip he wants to take; his relationship with his aunt was mostly obligatory and his memories of this place are not fond. When he arrives, he wanders around the town to see some of places he lived and where his only real friend lived. Every place conjures up memories he has long repressed or forgotten.
Bruce resolves to visit with his one good friend, Jim Mulder, the only one besides his mother who treated him with unconditional respect, who genuinely cared about him. But he keeps putting it off. After all, while he was traveling the world, his friend never left Salt Lake City and they didn’t stay in touch. Would it be possible to have a reunion with Jim after all this time, after they had grown up in such different worlds, and was he even alive? Bruce remembers their times together. He even conjures up fictional conversations he thought they might have had.
He remembers his one close girlfriend, Nola, probably the only love of his life. When he opens an old box Nola left with that his aunt 45 years earlier, the mementos, photographs, letters and ribbons bring her back to life. She was a Mormon, albeit not very strong in her faith. He was not. Even though they broke up—he wanted to escape Utah, she was bound to it—Stegner conjures up thoughts of “What if?� although Bruce never directly asks the question.
But Bruce’s strongest memories are about his father, Harry “Bo� Mason, of whom Bruce has a hate that has haunted him throughout his life, whether he was aware of it or not. Although his father has been dead for 45 years, he still has a grip on Bruce’s psyche. As different and confrontational as he and his father were, Bruce can’t help but still be intimidated or angered every time his father’s memory surfaces. Their final reckoning is arguably the most lasting memory of the story.
I didn’t know about this book until I finished reading The Big Rock Candy Mountain but instinctively knew I had to read it before the memories of the Mason family began to fade. It can be read as a stand-alone novel, but I think many of the nuances of Bruce’s thoughts and decisions would be lost, or more appropriately, never understood by the reader. (As an unbefitting aside, it’s kind of like jumping into the epic television series Breaking Bad; you have to commit to watch it from the beginning, in sequence, to really appreciate how good it is.) The sequel is not as gripping or dramatic, but it is very satisfying nonetheless. If you are starting to gray or forgot what you looked like before it set in, I think you will relate to Bruce’s regrets, fears and experiences. As with all great literature, the time and place of the plot are less important than the eternal truths Stegner's writing exposes.
Recapitulation is a sequel—if a book written more than 35 years later can be considered a sequel—to Stegner’s The Big Rock Candy Mountain , which is the best work of fiction I’ve read this year. The surviving member of the Mason family, Bruce, returns to his Salt Lake City “home� to take care of affairs after his aunt died. It’s been 45 years since he’s set foot in town. We learn that he has become a well-respected American diplomat in the Middle East since we last saw him as a student at the University of Minnesota law school. This is not a trip he wants to take; his relationship with his aunt was mostly obligatory and his memories of this place are not fond. When he arrives, he wanders around the town to see some of places he lived and where his only real friend lived. Every place conjures up memories he has long repressed or forgotten.
Bruce resolves to visit with his one good friend, Jim Mulder, the only one besides his mother who treated him with unconditional respect, who genuinely cared about him. But he keeps putting it off. After all, while he was traveling the world, his friend never left Salt Lake City and they didn’t stay in touch. Would it be possible to have a reunion with Jim after all this time, after they had grown up in such different worlds, and was he even alive? Bruce remembers their times together. He even conjures up fictional conversations he thought they might have had.
He remembers his one close girlfriend, Nola, probably the only love of his life. When he opens an old box Nola left with that his aunt 45 years earlier, the mementos, photographs, letters and ribbons bring her back to life. She was a Mormon, albeit not very strong in her faith. He was not. Even though they broke up—he wanted to escape Utah, she was bound to it—Stegner conjures up thoughts of “What if?� although Bruce never directly asks the question.
But Bruce’s strongest memories are about his father, Harry “Bo� Mason, of whom Bruce has a hate that has haunted him throughout his life, whether he was aware of it or not. Although his father has been dead for 45 years, he still has a grip on Bruce’s psyche. As different and confrontational as he and his father were, Bruce can’t help but still be intimidated or angered every time his father’s memory surfaces. Their final reckoning is arguably the most lasting memory of the story.
I didn’t know about this book until I finished reading The Big Rock Candy Mountain but instinctively knew I had to read it before the memories of the Mason family began to fade. It can be read as a stand-alone novel, but I think many of the nuances of Bruce’s thoughts and decisions would be lost, or more appropriately, never understood by the reader. (As an unbefitting aside, it’s kind of like jumping into the epic television series Breaking Bad; you have to commit to watch it from the beginning, in sequence, to really appreciate how good it is.) The sequel is not as gripping or dramatic, but it is very satisfying nonetheless. If you are starting to gray or forgot what you looked like before it set in, I think you will relate to Bruce’s regrets, fears and experiences. As with all great literature, the time and place of the plot are less important than the eternal truths Stegner's writing exposes.
April 4, 2021
Wallace Stegner is one of my favorite authors, and I thoroughly enjoyed his novel The Big Rock Candy Mountain (TBRCM). For a number of years I did not realize that Recapitulation existed as a sequel to TBRCM, and when I did learn this, I was quite excited about the reading opportunity ahead of me. Prior to reading Recapitulation, however, I browsed some of the reviews and saw their description of the novel as very introspective, so I began reading Recapitulation with some trepidation as to whether I would enjoy it.
In Recapitulation we find ourselves shifted forward 45 years from the end of TBRCM. Bruce Mason, the son of Elsa and Bo (or Harry) Mason, has returned to Salt Lake City, ostensibly to bury an aunt but really to revisit and reconcile with his past, his memories, his mistakes and his demons. Through Bruce’s revisiting of his memories we experience him as a teenager and young adult. Much detail about Bruce’s friendships and relationships, both romantic and mentoring, are provided that we did not get from TBRCM. I found myself thinking of Marilynn Robinson’s Gilead series where with each subsequent novel you experience many of the same events but each novel builds a richer perspective of the story. In the case of Recapitulation it is less about experiencing many of the same events and more about revisiting Bruce’s foundational relationships, primarily with his mother and father, but then learning of some other relationships that were impactful as well. This is all seen from the perspective of Bruce’s successful career and through memories, which introduce their own variables and distortions. In fact, this novel is about the juxtaposition of what we knew about Bruce Mason from TBRCM and what we learn of his early life in Recapitulation as compared to the life he has subsequently lived. The novel leaves you with many questions, both about Bruce’s past but also about his present. Questions you want to chew on but there is no data with which to explore the questions. While the readers might not find all their answers, the real issue is whether Bruce finds his answers.
The writing in this novel was pure Stegner. I struggled with how Stegner chose to handle the time transitions. It felt like I was watching a movie from the 50’s where weird music or visuals are used to signal the transition into a memory or dream. There was also a lot of descriptions of the changes to the landscape of Salt Lake City and its environs, between the latter 1920s/early 1930s and 1977, the timeframe for the novel. These descriptions might be very interesting to someone who knows the city and surrounding area well, but for me it was a bit much, despite being well written. Ignoring these challenges and the lack of any real action in the novel, I found myself entranced by many of the scenes from Bruce’s past.
While I can’t rank this among Stegner’s bests, I enjoyed much of it and enjoyed it more than I thought I might. I would certainly recommend it to Stegner and TBRCM fans.
In Recapitulation we find ourselves shifted forward 45 years from the end of TBRCM. Bruce Mason, the son of Elsa and Bo (or Harry) Mason, has returned to Salt Lake City, ostensibly to bury an aunt but really to revisit and reconcile with his past, his memories, his mistakes and his demons. Through Bruce’s revisiting of his memories we experience him as a teenager and young adult. Much detail about Bruce’s friendships and relationships, both romantic and mentoring, are provided that we did not get from TBRCM. I found myself thinking of Marilynn Robinson’s Gilead series where with each subsequent novel you experience many of the same events but each novel builds a richer perspective of the story. In the case of Recapitulation it is less about experiencing many of the same events and more about revisiting Bruce’s foundational relationships, primarily with his mother and father, but then learning of some other relationships that were impactful as well. This is all seen from the perspective of Bruce’s successful career and through memories, which introduce their own variables and distortions. In fact, this novel is about the juxtaposition of what we knew about Bruce Mason from TBRCM and what we learn of his early life in Recapitulation as compared to the life he has subsequently lived. The novel leaves you with many questions, both about Bruce’s past but also about his present. Questions you want to chew on but there is no data with which to explore the questions. While the readers might not find all their answers, the real issue is whether Bruce finds his answers.
The writing in this novel was pure Stegner. I struggled with how Stegner chose to handle the time transitions. It felt like I was watching a movie from the 50’s where weird music or visuals are used to signal the transition into a memory or dream. There was also a lot of descriptions of the changes to the landscape of Salt Lake City and its environs, between the latter 1920s/early 1930s and 1977, the timeframe for the novel. These descriptions might be very interesting to someone who knows the city and surrounding area well, but for me it was a bit much, despite being well written. Ignoring these challenges and the lack of any real action in the novel, I found myself entranced by many of the scenes from Bruce’s past.
While I can’t rank this among Stegner’s bests, I enjoyed much of it and enjoyed it more than I thought I might. I would certainly recommend it to Stegner and TBRCM fans.
January 24, 2011
This is like a coda written forty years after the symphony. If you haven't read The Big Rock Candy Mountain, I suggest you do so. Then, while it is still fresh in your mind, read Recapitulation. It fills in details left out of the first book and lets you get to know "Brucie" a lot better as he struggles through puberty and beyond in Salt Lake City. If you've grown attached to the Mason family through The Big Rock Candy Mountain, you'll find yourself wanting even more, as I did.
Bruce Mason returns to Salt Lake City forty-five years after fleeing in anger and pain. As he passes by the old landmarks, the memories of his formative years begin to coil around him and eventually crowd his mind and haunt his dreams. The novel is floaty and dreamy and sepia-toned, taking Bruce back to events and feelings from the 1920s-30s in no particular order. Stegner's approach is very true to the nature of memory and nostalgia, including the need to whitewash experiences or downplay our culpability for things that went sour.
I thought this was going to be the one Stegner novel I'd get through without crying, but he got me on the next to last page. I'm not sorry about that. I probably would have been disappointed if I'd finished it dry-eyed.
Bruce Mason returns to Salt Lake City forty-five years after fleeing in anger and pain. As he passes by the old landmarks, the memories of his formative years begin to coil around him and eventually crowd his mind and haunt his dreams. The novel is floaty and dreamy and sepia-toned, taking Bruce back to events and feelings from the 1920s-30s in no particular order. Stegner's approach is very true to the nature of memory and nostalgia, including the need to whitewash experiences or downplay our culpability for things that went sour.
I thought this was going to be the one Stegner novel I'd get through without crying, but he got me on the next to last page. I'm not sorry about that. I probably would have been disappointed if I'd finished it dry-eyed.
June 24, 2016
As an ardent admirer of Wallace Stegner, I was thrilled to learn that he has written a sequel to "The Big Rock Candy Mountain". Whereas there is no candy in his earlier book, there is a surfeit of recall in "Recapitulation".
Bruce Mason returns to Salt Lake, the city of his youth, to bury his paternal aunt, a relative he barely knows and for whom he feels no affection. He is initially "flooded with delighted recollection" but soon finds himself mired in memories of the last 45 years. The young boy Bruce, determined to flee the tyranny of his father's irascible anger and break away from the shame of his family's illegal business, has since gained an enviable social standing. But the former ambassador remains bound to his past which has a stranglehold over him.
There is no action in this story. All the drama unfolds in Bruce's recollections over the course of about a day. The trip back to Salt Lake revives implacable memories not only of the trivial and sentimental (including adolescent humiliations) but also of deep-seated pain and shame. Bruce realizes he has unfinished business and old scores to settle with his father. In this sequel, one sees events in TBRCM from Bruce's perspective and gets acquainted with Nola Gordon, the love of his life, and Joe Mulder, his one true friend.
This novel is an insightful exploration of the workings of memory. Visiting parts of the city he frequented in his youth, Bruce is struck by the realization that he is no longer the same person even as he appraises a familiar past with the same eyes. "New shapes took over from old ones. Memory had to be - didn't it? - a series of overlays."
Thematically, it reminds me of Julian Barnes's "The Sense of An Ending". What one remembers is, perhaps of necessity and self-preservation, not always a faithful account of events that actually transpired. In Bruce's experience, recalling the most challenging years of his struggles compels him to rearrange or reshape memories to render them tolerable. With Barnes, one is left in suspense and the truth is elusive; with Stegner, the truth defies attempts at reconstruction.
There are, in typical Stegner fashion, memorable lines. Of his childhood, Bruce has this to say: His childhood had been a disease that had produced no antibodies. Forget for a minute to be humorous or ironic about it, and it could flare up like a chronic sinus." Of his destiny and ours, Bruce observes rightly: "...that it is easy enough to recover from a girl, who represents to some extent a choice. It is not so easy to recover from parents, who are fate." Of lost friendship and love, he reflects: “What they had once shared was indelible as if carved on a headstone, and was not, after so long a gap, to be changed or renewed.�
Stegner is true to form in the strength of his prose style. It is always a treat to read his superb way with words. As a story this is less compelling than TBRCM largely because it is all introspective. Stegner says this of Bruce, "The feelings of that miserable time came out of the gray past and overwhelmed him." It overwhelmed me too.
A Stegner fan can read “Recapitulation� with a renewed appreciation of how much he understands human nature and holds up bits of life that we cannot fail to recognize as reflections of ourselves.
Bruce Mason returns to Salt Lake, the city of his youth, to bury his paternal aunt, a relative he barely knows and for whom he feels no affection. He is initially "flooded with delighted recollection" but soon finds himself mired in memories of the last 45 years. The young boy Bruce, determined to flee the tyranny of his father's irascible anger and break away from the shame of his family's illegal business, has since gained an enviable social standing. But the former ambassador remains bound to his past which has a stranglehold over him.
There is no action in this story. All the drama unfolds in Bruce's recollections over the course of about a day. The trip back to Salt Lake revives implacable memories not only of the trivial and sentimental (including adolescent humiliations) but also of deep-seated pain and shame. Bruce realizes he has unfinished business and old scores to settle with his father. In this sequel, one sees events in TBRCM from Bruce's perspective and gets acquainted with Nola Gordon, the love of his life, and Joe Mulder, his one true friend.
This novel is an insightful exploration of the workings of memory. Visiting parts of the city he frequented in his youth, Bruce is struck by the realization that he is no longer the same person even as he appraises a familiar past with the same eyes. "New shapes took over from old ones. Memory had to be - didn't it? - a series of overlays."
Thematically, it reminds me of Julian Barnes's "The Sense of An Ending". What one remembers is, perhaps of necessity and self-preservation, not always a faithful account of events that actually transpired. In Bruce's experience, recalling the most challenging years of his struggles compels him to rearrange or reshape memories to render them tolerable. With Barnes, one is left in suspense and the truth is elusive; with Stegner, the truth defies attempts at reconstruction.
There are, in typical Stegner fashion, memorable lines. Of his childhood, Bruce has this to say: His childhood had been a disease that had produced no antibodies. Forget for a minute to be humorous or ironic about it, and it could flare up like a chronic sinus." Of his destiny and ours, Bruce observes rightly: "...that it is easy enough to recover from a girl, who represents to some extent a choice. It is not so easy to recover from parents, who are fate." Of lost friendship and love, he reflects: “What they had once shared was indelible as if carved on a headstone, and was not, after so long a gap, to be changed or renewed.�
Stegner is true to form in the strength of his prose style. It is always a treat to read his superb way with words. As a story this is less compelling than TBRCM largely because it is all introspective. Stegner says this of Bruce, "The feelings of that miserable time came out of the gray past and overwhelmed him." It overwhelmed me too.
A Stegner fan can read “Recapitulation� with a renewed appreciation of how much he understands human nature and holds up bits of life that we cannot fail to recognize as reflections of ourselves.
March 21, 2023
The narrator is an older gentleman nearing retirement who is looking back at his early life, details which we know of if we have read the author’s earlier book Big Rock Candy Mountain. But Recapitulation stands alone in a beautifully elegiac way. Mason excavates his memories of a pivotal time in his life and the arc of his family when he returns to town to bury an aunt, the last living member of all his family. Not a lot happens, he meets with with the funeral home clerk, has dinner, drives slowly down streets, doesn’t call on a friend (or possibly his spouse) who reached out. But the years and the memories, the growth, wonder, surprises and pain of long ago all surface to form a moving story beautifully related.
Stegner was truly a master.
Stegner was truly a master.
June 19, 2021
Another beautiful book by Stegner. I enjoyed spending time with Bo Mason again. I’m going to read Big Rock Candy Mountain again, this book reminded me of what a great read it was. I also plan to ready my favorite, Crossing to Safety for the second time.
March 27, 2025
3.75 🌓🌔🌖🌗
June 10, 2017
I feel like this book was written for me. But that's only partially due to the fact that it's the story of a man returning to his boyhood home of Salt Lake City after a long absence, and I began reading it on my first visit to Salt Lake in nearly four years. There were so many references to the city and its surrounds and its culture that I can't imagine anyone who hadn't grown up along the Wassatch Front to even comprehend it. When Stegner describes an advancing thunderstorm as seen from the Salt Lake City Cemetery by writing, "The southern end of the Oquirrhs was gone, and a wall of black rain was advancing through Murray." I not only know the scene, but I know what the air feels like, and what color the lake is, and what the slope of the mountain feels like underfoot. And I love Stegner's description of the Salt Lake Temple: "Spiney as a horned toad." I'm sure non-native readers can appreciate Recapitulation in the same way I loved Middlesex without ever having set foot in Detroit, or Love in the Time of Cholera without even knowing what Cartagena looks like. But Stegner's prose coupled with my own nostalgia made this as vivid a books as I've ever read.
April 2, 2022
“What is an event? What constitutes an experience? Are we what we do, or do we do what we are?�
In this book, Wallace Stegner returns to one of his characters from The Big Rock Candy Mountain. Bruce is the sole survivor of the Mason family. It is 1977, and he is now a retired diplomat. He has returned to Salt Lake City, where he spent his teenage years, to arrange his aunt’s funeral. He looks back on his adolescence, coming to terms with his regrets and painful past. We meet his abusive father, loving mother, supportive friend, and ex-girlfriend he intended to marry.
“This territory contained and limited a history, personal and social, in which he had once made himself at home. This was his place—first his problem, then his oyster, and now the museum or diorama where early versions of him were preserved.�
It takes place over the course of two days, but the narrative floats back and forth between the present and the past (1920s to 1930s). The writing is exquisite. It is character-driven, quiet, and contemplative. It contains poignant scenes that are easy to bring to envision.
“He feels how the whole disorderly unchronological past hovers just beyond the curtain of the present, attaching itself to any scent, sound, touch, or random word that will let it get back in. As a stronger gust rattles through the tops of the cottonwoods below him, he stops dead still to listen. Memory is instantly tangible, a thrill of adrenalin in the blood, a prickle of gooseflesh on the arms.�
It is about memory. It is about the lucky breaks, choices, and decisions (or postponements) that determine a person’s path through life. While one can enjoy this book for the pure poetry of the writing, I think it is best to read it after The Big Rock Candy Mountain (one of my favorite books and highly recommended).
“He was beginning to discover that the memory had no calendar. Inside there, all was simultaneous. A sense of time had to be forcibly imposed on it.�
In this book, Wallace Stegner returns to one of his characters from The Big Rock Candy Mountain. Bruce is the sole survivor of the Mason family. It is 1977, and he is now a retired diplomat. He has returned to Salt Lake City, where he spent his teenage years, to arrange his aunt’s funeral. He looks back on his adolescence, coming to terms with his regrets and painful past. We meet his abusive father, loving mother, supportive friend, and ex-girlfriend he intended to marry.
“This territory contained and limited a history, personal and social, in which he had once made himself at home. This was his place—first his problem, then his oyster, and now the museum or diorama where early versions of him were preserved.�
It takes place over the course of two days, but the narrative floats back and forth between the present and the past (1920s to 1930s). The writing is exquisite. It is character-driven, quiet, and contemplative. It contains poignant scenes that are easy to bring to envision.
“He feels how the whole disorderly unchronological past hovers just beyond the curtain of the present, attaching itself to any scent, sound, touch, or random word that will let it get back in. As a stronger gust rattles through the tops of the cottonwoods below him, he stops dead still to listen. Memory is instantly tangible, a thrill of adrenalin in the blood, a prickle of gooseflesh on the arms.�
It is about memory. It is about the lucky breaks, choices, and decisions (or postponements) that determine a person’s path through life. While one can enjoy this book for the pure poetry of the writing, I think it is best to read it after The Big Rock Candy Mountain (one of my favorite books and highly recommended).
“He was beginning to discover that the memory had no calendar. Inside there, all was simultaneous. A sense of time had to be forcibly imposed on it.�
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July 5, 2019Bruce Mason spent his life carrying an awful load of emotional baggage.
Forty five years after the events in Bruce Mason returns to Salt Lake City for an aunt’s funeral. His presence in Salt Lake City unleashes a torrent of memories. The city has changed a great deal, but wherever he goes he finds himself confronted by his past.
That is as much as I’ll say of the plot in order not to spoil it for those who wish to read these two novels about the Mason family. The writing is superb, so here are some quotes (within spoiler tags so that you may read it or not as you choose):
Quotes
Forty five years after the events in Bruce Mason returns to Salt Lake City for an aunt’s funeral. His presence in Salt Lake City unleashes a torrent of memories. The city has changed a great deal, but wherever he goes he finds himself confronted by his past.
That is as much as I’ll say of the plot in order not to spoil it for those who wish to read these two novels about the Mason family. The writing is superb, so here are some quotes (within spoiler tags so that you may read it or not as you choose):
Quotes
July 31, 2023
Nudging it up to 4 stars
Bruce Mason returns to Utah for his aunt’s funeral some thirty years after the death of his father. Through hazy memories of love and loss, often laced with bitterness because of his strained relationship with his father, he reflects on what is true, and what is worth holding on to.
I wouldn’t recommend this unless you’ve already read—and enjoyed�Big Rock Candy Mountain, but if you have you will likely appreciate this much delayed follow-up.
Bob wrote a great review:
/review/show...
Bruce Mason returns to Utah for his aunt’s funeral some thirty years after the death of his father. Through hazy memories of love and loss, often laced with bitterness because of his strained relationship with his father, he reflects on what is true, and what is worth holding on to.
I wouldn’t recommend this unless you’ve already read—and enjoyed�Big Rock Candy Mountain, but if you have you will likely appreciate this much delayed follow-up.
Bob wrote a great review:
/review/show...
June 5, 2016
I savor Stegner's work and this book particularly so beautifully and aptly describes Salt Lake City which is where I was born and continue to live. Though I read it long ago, I still remember rereading sentences for their beauty and nostalgia. This is a small little book I will reread.
April 2, 2009
This is a good book, but not great like "The Big Rock Candy Mountain." It's only half the length, but felt twice as long. I wasn't compelled to read on like I was with the earlier book. I would definitely read "Big Rock..." first to get to know the characters. "Recapitulation" fills in gaps from the earlier book, told in flashbacks. The character has returned to Salt Lake City 45 years after leaving, looks up old haunts and the memories come flooding back. I was disappointed in the one item from Bruce's to-do list that he fails to fulfill in the end (without giving away what that was).
January 16, 2025
"He was beginning to discover that memory had no calendar. Inside there, all was simultaneous. A sense of time had to be forcibly imposed on it."
I didn't even know what recapitulationmeant, but after looking it up (thank you Merrian Webster) I learned it means, "a concise summary." With that in mind, that's exactly what this story is; Bruce Mason, now in his mid-sixties, (one of the sons in, The Big Rock Candy Mountain)revisits his youth and formative years.
The moral of this book is a five-star moral, the story itself was more of a 3 star for me; however, that was likely becauseof my own headspace and the fact that I started this months ago and then got too busy to finish it and finally picked it back up and really enjoyed it. All in all, I'm giving this four stars.
Wallace Stegner is a masterful writer (sometimes a bit pompous with his references!) and managesto revisit Bruce's youth in an authenticway. However, some scenesfelt overdone to me—I think he covered a dream remembrance, a remembrance as if it were a movie, a remembrancediscussing it witha figment of Bruce's imagination, etc. I didn't love all of Bruce's decisions, and yet everything was writtenin an appropriate way. I loved the idea of Bruce reconciling his youth and what hethought he knew with his present.
If you liked, The Big Rock Candy Mountains, I’d definitely recommend this. If you’ve not read, The Big Rock Candy Mountains don’t read this one until you have—and you should definitely read that one.
—�
The next quote mightbe a spoiler, but I want to remember, so only read at your own peril:
"You know nothing at all, you know less than nothing because you know things wrong." (What Bruce imagines that his father's issaying to him.)
I didn't even know what recapitulationmeant, but after looking it up (thank you Merrian Webster) I learned it means, "a concise summary." With that in mind, that's exactly what this story is; Bruce Mason, now in his mid-sixties, (one of the sons in, The Big Rock Candy Mountain)revisits his youth and formative years.
The moral of this book is a five-star moral, the story itself was more of a 3 star for me; however, that was likely becauseof my own headspace and the fact that I started this months ago and then got too busy to finish it and finally picked it back up and really enjoyed it. All in all, I'm giving this four stars.
Wallace Stegner is a masterful writer (sometimes a bit pompous with his references!) and managesto revisit Bruce's youth in an authenticway. However, some scenesfelt overdone to me—I think he covered a dream remembrance, a remembrance as if it were a movie, a remembrancediscussing it witha figment of Bruce's imagination, etc. I didn't love all of Bruce's decisions, and yet everything was writtenin an appropriate way. I loved the idea of Bruce reconciling his youth and what hethought he knew with his present.
If you liked, The Big Rock Candy Mountains, I’d definitely recommend this. If you’ve not read, The Big Rock Candy Mountains don’t read this one until you have—and you should definitely read that one.
—�
The next quote mightbe a spoiler, but I want to remember, so only read at your own peril:
"You know nothing at all, you know less than nothing because you know things wrong." (What Bruce imagines that his father's issaying to him.)
September 22, 2024
Wallace Stegner, though well respected by other writers, appears to be less well known, certainly on this side of the pond than he should be. He has written novels, short stories, non-fiction and memoir as well as founding the creative writing programme at Stanford University and producing the useful ‘�. He was awarded a Pulitzer Prize in 1972 for his novel, '' which is the only other book of his I have read. AoR is a vast historical novel based on the letters of Mary Hallock Foote.
'Recapitulation' is somewhat different. Bruce Mason returns to Salt Lake City to bury his last remaining relative in the family plot. The city is much changed from his memories before he left as a young adult. What unfolds are the memories and reminiscences that the places he visits bring back to him. It is a superbly crafted and stylistically elegant book which, in character reminds me of the pure elegance of ‘�. The memories are laid out like a series of camera contact sheets with the stories associated with each frame. Each memory makes Mason confront something from his past so that the trip begins to feel like catharsis. Bruce Mason is now a pretty hard and ruggedised diplomat, alone (possibly lonely), single and childless, diffident, self-assured (perhaps to the point of being stubborn) yet at the same time carrying all those latent doubts of the self-assured. We get this through accumulations and hints within Stegner’s prose. Mason was an extremely well-thought of member of the State Department and a Middle East ambassador.
What unfolds is an epic examination of memory and reminiscence initiated by every sensation � not just a cerebral function. And because memory is both fugitive and mutable it tries to look at our memories as parts of what makes us human. Stegner wants us to think carefully about this and he sets his marks out early.”Are we what we do, or do we do what we are? Mason looks back to what drove him as a young man in the city and what led him to leave and finds that what he believed was merely trivia hides a wealth of deep content, that there is in fact no such thing as trivia where memory is concerned, that the important is composed of accumulations of trivial moments accreting to form the significant. And in reading this it is easy to become engrossed in one’s own stock of memories, to look at one’s own ‘significant�, the personal dream seed of memory that we each carry. Stegner asks us through the writing to move from the general to the personal and to comprehend our own actions through the actions of Bruce Mason. The discussions of the mechanisms of memory in themselves become the catalysts for a personal journey - and Stegner knows this and has designed the book to do precisely this. The realisation of this leads you to understand that we are dealing with a very canny and crafty writer.
The narrative is split between the contents and actions within Mason’s mind � his reminiscences and intellectualisations � and observations of the environment in which they were taking place. This is his life � this is the actualité of how he (and I would suggest ‘we�) proceed � of where we are and what is happening in the old brainpan as we proceed through the day-to-day of existence. This is modern writing old stylee � none of your postmodernism here, thank you. Stegner draws his ideas of peri-pubescent longing so well that you cannot but avoid self-assessment. Our own attempts at assessment of Stegner’s writing lead us to assessments of ourselves as persons. This is why Stegner is so good.
Mason begins to see that through all the trivia of memory, there are deep shafts of illumination which are fundamentally and psychologically troubling and are the root causes of events and have contributed like building blocks to character. These events are what made him! Those deep important psyche-forming experiences which sear the memory so much so that we bury them deep and mutate them, so that only with effort can we get back to the whys. This is psychoanalysis in novel form. His mother’s submissiveness but unconditional love; his rapscallion bootlegging father’s contempt for him; the total lack of belonging to anything all put away in a box and now, on Mason’s return, touched on like a cavity in a tooth. These memories brought back to life when they had been carefully psychologically stored well away so they could not impinge. We approach nostalgia, that longing for a golden age of the past, with a degree of hypocrisy if we are truthful. Whilst we are aware of the fallacious nature of this vision, there is still part of us that wants to believe that somehow it was better and there was an element of truth in it.
We are dealing with Stegner’s delineation of Mason’s memories. What is it that Stegner wants us to draw from this? That memories are both tangible and mutable? That however good or bad it seemed at the time, it was never that good or bad when looking back. So Mason’s life was not that bad. It wasn’t unmitigated bullying from an unloving father, and he was academically good enough to be offered a scholarship to Law School. He was, in fact, upwardly mobile and a bit of a ligger, but also prepared to work hard when needed to get what he wanted. Stegner isn’t beyond wading into a bit of class consciousness.
His memories of his first true love, Nola, come forward in stark light. Stegner gives us hints of the uncertainty of first sex in the 1930s. Mason himself wonders whether he is the first at the trough. And they both lead each other on, though Nola seems to be more duplicitous, Mason choosing to ignore what is hinted at in his desire to love and be loved and to lose his virginity even if it means committing to a marriage. Then comes the conflict that will determine whether he becomes an average Joe, stays in Salt Lake marrying Nola, or takes up the Law School scholarship. This section is written so well describing the vagaries and uncertainties � of commitment to different causes all of which serve different ends and which have varying degrees of importance depending on where at any point you stand in an attempt to assess their varying claims. “When you live by daily postponements, you better have hope.� It is easier to be stubborn than to chance into the unknown and be overwhelmed. And Nola is not the intellectual that Mason sees and wants in himself. Nola wants conformity � marriage, children, family, locale. Mason sees the hints of beyond all that yet he knows that conformity is all encompassing and the easy way. What Mason experiences unfolds through a three chapter tour de force of writing by Stegner. Of first sex, the belief that his love was reciprocated, but the realisation this may not be the case when he returns from Law School to find she has taken up with one of his friends. This is what it feels like to be rejected, to be judged and found to be wanting, to realise that what you were experiencing was in fact hollow. You thought it was the real thing, refused to accept or understand all those little perturbations which were like the iceberg above the surface indicative of the massive bulk hidden below the surface. What Mason the Ambassador-to-be experiences is the trauma and grief of loss through his memories on this return trip to his past. These are the inked-out frames that cannot forever remain inked-out when their affects have been so profound. They must be apprised.
There is a deep sense of wisdom in what Stegner has written here. And the way that he has written it is to make the reader approach and examine themselves through the writing. The novel becomes an exercise in self-examination; that we all carry our pasts with us and that the inked-out sections need to be confronted at some point because those experiences are deeply pertinent. To leave them inked-out is to be forever wounded by them.
It is a marvellous novel, far deeper than you would even begin to believe in a novel with no story (allegedly)!
'Recapitulation' is somewhat different. Bruce Mason returns to Salt Lake City to bury his last remaining relative in the family plot. The city is much changed from his memories before he left as a young adult. What unfolds are the memories and reminiscences that the places he visits bring back to him. It is a superbly crafted and stylistically elegant book which, in character reminds me of the pure elegance of ‘�. The memories are laid out like a series of camera contact sheets with the stories associated with each frame. Each memory makes Mason confront something from his past so that the trip begins to feel like catharsis. Bruce Mason is now a pretty hard and ruggedised diplomat, alone (possibly lonely), single and childless, diffident, self-assured (perhaps to the point of being stubborn) yet at the same time carrying all those latent doubts of the self-assured. We get this through accumulations and hints within Stegner’s prose. Mason was an extremely well-thought of member of the State Department and a Middle East ambassador.
What unfolds is an epic examination of memory and reminiscence initiated by every sensation � not just a cerebral function. And because memory is both fugitive and mutable it tries to look at our memories as parts of what makes us human. Stegner wants us to think carefully about this and he sets his marks out early.”Are we what we do, or do we do what we are? Mason looks back to what drove him as a young man in the city and what led him to leave and finds that what he believed was merely trivia hides a wealth of deep content, that there is in fact no such thing as trivia where memory is concerned, that the important is composed of accumulations of trivial moments accreting to form the significant. And in reading this it is easy to become engrossed in one’s own stock of memories, to look at one’s own ‘significant�, the personal dream seed of memory that we each carry. Stegner asks us through the writing to move from the general to the personal and to comprehend our own actions through the actions of Bruce Mason. The discussions of the mechanisms of memory in themselves become the catalysts for a personal journey - and Stegner knows this and has designed the book to do precisely this. The realisation of this leads you to understand that we are dealing with a very canny and crafty writer.
”All his earliest years in Salt Lake had been an effort, much of the time as unconscious as growth itself and yet always there as if willed, to outgrow what he was and become what he was not. A stray. He yearned to belong. An outsider and an isolate, he aspired to friends and family and community solidarity he saw all around him in the Mormon city. A runt, he dreamed of athletic triumphs. Insignificant, he coveted the kind of notices he saw given to football heroes, sheikhs, slickers and campus politicians with glib tongues � all of whom, he felt in his heart, which was arrogant even when most envious, were inferior to him in brains and potential.�The young Mason is someone with ability but not with the ladder of social acceptability and class entrée to be able to climb and attain what he wants. He is describing an arriviste who aims to achieve all those trappings by observing and assimilating what he sees.
The narrative is split between the contents and actions within Mason’s mind � his reminiscences and intellectualisations � and observations of the environment in which they were taking place. This is his life � this is the actualité of how he (and I would suggest ‘we�) proceed � of where we are and what is happening in the old brainpan as we proceed through the day-to-day of existence. This is modern writing old stylee � none of your postmodernism here, thank you. Stegner draws his ideas of peri-pubescent longing so well that you cannot but avoid self-assessment. Our own attempts at assessment of Stegner’s writing lead us to assessments of ourselves as persons. This is why Stegner is so good.
Mason begins to see that through all the trivia of memory, there are deep shafts of illumination which are fundamentally and psychologically troubling and are the root causes of events and have contributed like building blocks to character. These events are what made him! Those deep important psyche-forming experiences which sear the memory so much so that we bury them deep and mutate them, so that only with effort can we get back to the whys. This is psychoanalysis in novel form. His mother’s submissiveness but unconditional love; his rapscallion bootlegging father’s contempt for him; the total lack of belonging to anything all put away in a box and now, on Mason’s return, touched on like a cavity in a tooth. These memories brought back to life when they had been carefully psychologically stored well away so they could not impinge. We approach nostalgia, that longing for a golden age of the past, with a degree of hypocrisy if we are truthful. Whilst we are aware of the fallacious nature of this vision, there is still part of us that wants to believe that somehow it was better and there was an element of truth in it.
We are dealing with Stegner’s delineation of Mason’s memories. What is it that Stegner wants us to draw from this? That memories are both tangible and mutable? That however good or bad it seemed at the time, it was never that good or bad when looking back. So Mason’s life was not that bad. It wasn’t unmitigated bullying from an unloving father, and he was academically good enough to be offered a scholarship to Law School. He was, in fact, upwardly mobile and a bit of a ligger, but also prepared to work hard when needed to get what he wanted. Stegner isn’t beyond wading into a bit of class consciousness.
”Accident, they say, favours the prepared mind. Opportunity knocks only for those who are ready at the door. If we believe the novels we read, upward mobility is always ambitious, hungry and aggressive, or at the very least, discontented. The George Willards are forever yearning away from the spiritual starvation of Winesburg towards some vague larger life.This is the step into adulthood � of taking it on without a supporting safety net; of having to do it all alone and singular; of battling to get ahead of the surface without connections or shoe-ins.
But that is not always the way it is. Some of us didn’t know enough to be discontented and ambitious. Some of us had such limited experience and limited aspirations that only accident, or the actions of others, or perhaps some inescapable psychosocial fate, could explode us out of our ruts. In a way, I suppose I had to hitchhike out of my childhood; but if I did, I did it without raising my thumb.�
His memories of his first true love, Nola, come forward in stark light. Stegner gives us hints of the uncertainty of first sex in the 1930s. Mason himself wonders whether he is the first at the trough. And they both lead each other on, though Nola seems to be more duplicitous, Mason choosing to ignore what is hinted at in his desire to love and be loved and to lose his virginity even if it means committing to a marriage. Then comes the conflict that will determine whether he becomes an average Joe, stays in Salt Lake marrying Nola, or takes up the Law School scholarship. This section is written so well describing the vagaries and uncertainties � of commitment to different causes all of which serve different ends and which have varying degrees of importance depending on where at any point you stand in an attempt to assess their varying claims. “When you live by daily postponements, you better have hope.� It is easier to be stubborn than to chance into the unknown and be overwhelmed. And Nola is not the intellectual that Mason sees and wants in himself. Nola wants conformity � marriage, children, family, locale. Mason sees the hints of beyond all that yet he knows that conformity is all encompassing and the easy way. What Mason experiences unfolds through a three chapter tour de force of writing by Stegner. Of first sex, the belief that his love was reciprocated, but the realisation this may not be the case when he returns from Law School to find she has taken up with one of his friends. This is what it feels like to be rejected, to be judged and found to be wanting, to realise that what you were experiencing was in fact hollow. You thought it was the real thing, refused to accept or understand all those little perturbations which were like the iceberg above the surface indicative of the massive bulk hidden below the surface. What Mason the Ambassador-to-be experiences is the trauma and grief of loss through his memories on this return trip to his past. These are the inked-out frames that cannot forever remain inked-out when their affects have been so profound. They must be apprised.
There is a deep sense of wisdom in what Stegner has written here. And the way that he has written it is to make the reader approach and examine themselves through the writing. The novel becomes an exercise in self-examination; that we all carry our pasts with us and that the inked-out sections need to be confronted at some point because those experiences are deeply pertinent. To leave them inked-out is to be forever wounded by them.
It is a marvellous novel, far deeper than you would even begin to believe in a novel with no story (allegedly)!
"Without some external evidence, he had no way of sorting out truth from wistfulness and self-deception and grievance; �.. he told himself that it is easy enough to recover from a girl, who represents to some extent a choice. It is not so easy to recover from parents, who are fate."A great book on memory, far more psychological than you could at first imagine � the mutability of memory and the vanity of selection that is kept rosy and cherished rather than the inked-out and forgotten. It leaves you feeling that this may not be all novel and that this may have more than a little memoir in it. It is as if he is writing out himself from memory, making out the diminutive, wry youth with his dismal family background so that he can continue as he is, as he wants to be forward.
August 24, 2019
As Utah born and a lifelong admirer of Stegner, I was way overdue for reading this very moving and stunningly beautiful narration of life in Salt Lake City over the course of decades. I so admire his powers of description and his analyses of human motivation. It is fitting closure to Big Rock Candy Mountain.
February 28, 2009
The perfect case for a 3.5-star rating. Stegner loses focus a bit in the first half of "Recapitulation" but saves things nicely in the second half, so I bumped this up. His prose is typically fine, and late in his life Stegner wrote old characters better than just about anybody. His protagonist here, the boy from "The Big Rock Candy Mountain" now a diplomat on the down side of his life on this earth, is less crotchety than usual for Stegner but still is a fine study. Here, in contrast to several of his later books, "Recapitulation" is told in the third person.
I'm not quite sure why Penguin Books chooses not to tell us that the main character is from a book as popular as "The Big Rock Candy Mountain" and that this is a sequel of sorts. Oh, well.
There is frankly much, much less of the "here and now" in the story than I was expecting. Much of the book is Bruce Mason's reminiscences of his difficult father, or of his college days, or of his long-lost love as Bruce moves through Salt Lake City as he prepares for a funeral of a family member he barely cared about. It doesn't work all the time, but Stegner's descriptive powers and occasionally scintillating turn of phrase save the day.
All in all, fifth or sixth of the six Stegner novels I've read ("All the Little Live Things" is first) but certainly worth a try.
I'm not quite sure why Penguin Books chooses not to tell us that the main character is from a book as popular as "The Big Rock Candy Mountain" and that this is a sequel of sorts. Oh, well.
There is frankly much, much less of the "here and now" in the story than I was expecting. Much of the book is Bruce Mason's reminiscences of his difficult father, or of his college days, or of his long-lost love as Bruce moves through Salt Lake City as he prepares for a funeral of a family member he barely cared about. It doesn't work all the time, but Stegner's descriptive powers and occasionally scintillating turn of phrase save the day.
All in all, fifth or sixth of the six Stegner novels I've read ("All the Little Live Things" is first) but certainly worth a try.
October 15, 2015
I was first introduced to this wonderful author with his classic, Big Rock Candy Mountain. The same characters of a boy and his parents continue in this work, as the now grown Bruce Mason, returns home to Salt Lake City following the death of an aunt - the last of his living family.
Stegner is a master of prose. His lyrical writing style gently carries you into the world of Mason's past, hovering around the year 1929. Amazingly, despite the era, Stegner's foray into his character's thoughts and emotions, has the ability to strike a chord with modern readers - the subject matter being truly timeless. Mason confronts a past and people which, although painful, represent a pivotal time in his life. It's a time when he realizes that he is not doomed to repeat the sins of his father, but that his life could be much, much more. Recapitulation is a recollection of the singular events in Bruce Mason's past, but only Mason himself realizes their importance.
A beautiful work, and one which I highly recommend.
Stegner is a master of prose. His lyrical writing style gently carries you into the world of Mason's past, hovering around the year 1929. Amazingly, despite the era, Stegner's foray into his character's thoughts and emotions, has the ability to strike a chord with modern readers - the subject matter being truly timeless. Mason confronts a past and people which, although painful, represent a pivotal time in his life. It's a time when he realizes that he is not doomed to repeat the sins of his father, but that his life could be much, much more. Recapitulation is a recollection of the singular events in Bruce Mason's past, but only Mason himself realizes their importance.
A beautiful work, and one which I highly recommend.
January 9, 2012
This was the second book in Stegner's semi-autobiographical novels and follows The Big Rock Candy Mountain. It was written 45 years after the first and picks up where the first one leaves off, except in flashbacks from an older Bruce Mason (Stegner) as he returns to Salt Lake City for his aunt's funeral. Although his writing is as gorgeous as usual, the story bogs down, particularly in the first half. Mason is in college and then in law school as the story progresses through a failed romance, his inability to find his purpose in life, and the ongoing trials with his family life. He finally comes close to accepting his abusive father and gets some closure. Although not as good as The Big Rock Candy Mountain, it's still a good read for those who like Stegner.
October 9, 2022
I had forgotten how much I love Wallace Stegner.
A mid life crisis book, a book for anyone who's aged past 40.
The observations about youth, difficult family relationships, missed opportunities, regrets, memory are all resoundingly realistic and familiar. I could easily identify with our hero, Bruce Mason, and I found his odyssey into his past endlessly absorbing.
I also loved, loved, loved the descriptions of places I know. This book had everything --deep realism, philosophizing, a love story, complicated characters, exquisite nature writing.
A mid life crisis book, a book for anyone who's aged past 40.
The observations about youth, difficult family relationships, missed opportunities, regrets, memory are all resoundingly realistic and familiar. I could easily identify with our hero, Bruce Mason, and I found his odyssey into his past endlessly absorbing.
I also loved, loved, loved the descriptions of places I know. This book had everything --deep realism, philosophizing, a love story, complicated characters, exquisite nature writing.
July 17, 2012
I feel like if I had read this right after Big Rock Candy Mountain I might have given it five stars. With a clearer memory of that book, I think I might have felt like this was more of a continuation/completion than a....well....a recapitulation.
But maybe that was the point. It is interesting to think about someone telling the same story at different points in their life and how the tellings would be different.
But maybe that was the point. It is interesting to think about someone telling the same story at different points in their life and how the tellings would be different.
December 26, 2019
This is an apt sequel to Big Rock Candy Mountain, though I didn’t like it as well. Bruce Mason returns to Salt Lake City after 45 years away and wanders about the city in a haze of memories, filling in bits of the Mason family story. At heart it is a book about the way your past is always a part of you and yet you can never really go back. The highlights for me were the beautiful portrayals of the geography � they speak to my Utah-born soul.
November 2, 2013
Favorite quotes from Recapitulation:
"But Bruce Mason walked double. Inside him, moving with the same muscles and feeling with the same nerves and sweating through the same pores, went a thin brown youth, volatile, impulsive, never at rest, not so much a person as a possibility, or a bundle of possibilities: subject to enthusiasm and elation and exuberance and occasional great black moods, stubborn, capable of scheming but often astonished by consequences, a boy vulnerable to wonder, awe, worship, devotion, hatred, guilt, vanity, shame, ambition, dreams, treachery; a boy avid for acceptance and distinction, secretive and a blabbermouth, life-crazy and hence girl-crazy, a show-off who could be withered by a contemptuous word or look, a creature overflowing with brash self-confidence one minute and oppressed by its own worthlessness the next; a vessel of primary sensations undiluted by experience, wisdom, or fatigue."
"On the merest glance, he is younger than she -- younger in years, younger in manner and self-command. He is blond where she is dark, his eyes are blue where hers are brown, he is thin and hyperactive by contrast with her composure, darkly tanned where she is golden. She makes a center, he orbits it. She smiles, he laughs. He talks with his mouth, eyes, hands, body; she listens. He whips around her as if she were egg and he spermatozoon. Utter opposites, they make a one: Yin and Yang. Their force field deflects intrusions. From the first note of the band until now, they have avoided trading a single dance."
"What could she have felt when, out of his arrogant inexperience, out of his sheer undergraduate enthusiasm for hard doctrine, or the self-pity that had made him believe he was suffering's biographer, he plucked things like this from the great grab bag of Western culture and demanded that she read and ponder them? He might as well have suggested that she learn Turkish. Her mind operated on a direct hookup with the senses, not by abstract ideas...."
"Question: Why the mule headed inertia? Answer: In the first place, he was mule-headed. He hated to back up, start over, change direction. To this day he drove that way, gerade aus like a German, despising the people who dart from lane to lane. Moreover, he was used to delayed rewards. He knew something about having to work for what he wanted, and even more about frustrations and disappointments. He was a digger, but there was a fatalist in him, too. He mistrusted the rewards that he would break his neck to win. He half expected to fail even though experience should have taught him that most of the time he did not. In his bones he knew that the world owed him nothing. Some part of him was always preconditioned to lose. And though he felt himself superior to his background, and capable of some vague unspecified distinction, he knew himself unworthy. He was a sticker because it was easier to dig in and be overrun than to attack and be repulsed."
"The quintessentially deculturated American, born artless and without history into a world of opportunity, Bruce Mason must acquire in a single lifetime the intellectual sophistication and the cultural confidence that luckier ones absorb through their pores from earliest childhood, and unluckier ones never even miss. He is a high jumper asked to jump from below ground level and without a run, and because he is innocent and has the temperament of an achiever, he will half kill himself trying."
"Both have the beaks of hawks and eyes that bore into the camera like the eyes of zealot grandfathers in old tintypes."
[He awakens just before reliving the consummation of a relationship in a dream]
"The trouble with the censor is that it knows too much. It has another, and much longer, and presumably far more important life to remember and keep under control. It is wary about accepting the illusion of wholeheartedness that would have to accompany this uncensored dream. It knows that the girl and first love are both victims, and so is the boy who took them joyriding. They cluster at the edge of consciousness like crosses erected by the roadside at the place of a fatal accident."
What truly shone out of that golden portrait, as out of Holly herself, was not glamour but innocence. Under the sheath she was positively virginal, a girl from Parowan who had made the big step to city excitements but remained a girl from Parowan. If you cracked the enamel of her sophistication you found a delighted little girl playing Life. (p. 11)
…he feels how the whole disorderly unchronological past hovers just beyond the curtain of the present, attaching itself to any scent, sound, touch, or random word that will let it get back in. As a stronger gust rattles through the tops of the cottonwoods below him, he stops dead still to listen. Memory is instantly tangible, a thrill of adrenalin in the blood, a prickle of gooseflesh on the arms. (p. 114)
Below the lawn, spread along the fossil beach terrace of the lake that thousands of years ago filled the valley, was a long hanging darkness, the playing field where in paleozoic gym-class softball games he had patrolled an invariable, contemptuous right field and batted ninth. (p. 120)
Abruptly the capitol winked out. Its afterimage pulsed, a blue hole in the darkness, and before it had faded, the temple, too, went dark, cued to the same late clock. Something invisible but palpable, some recognition or reassurance,, arced from the dark desert across the city and joined the dark loom of the Wasatch. In one enfolding instant, desert and mountains wrapped closer around the valley and around him their protective isolation.
Seen and unseen, lighted and dark, it was all effortlessly present. Here was a living space once accepted and used, relied on without uncertainty or even awareness, security frozen like the expression on a face at the moment of a snapshot. This territory contained and limited a history, personal and social, in which he had once made himself at home. This was his place � first his problem, then his oyster, and now the museum or diorama where early versions of him were preserved. (p. 120)
The provinces export manpower, yes, as surely as atmospheric highs blow toward atmospheric lows. But the brains that are drawn outward to the good schools, the good jobs, the opportunities, don’t necessarily initiate their move. It can be as unavoidable as being born. They feel themselves being rotated into position. Even if they could know what they’re going to find outside, all that pain, blood, glaring light, sudden cold, forceps, scissors, hands tying Boy Scout knots in their umbilicus, they could neither prevent nor delay it. Head first, leg first, butt first, out they go. (p. 166)
Quickly he shuffled through the others. Only eight � one roll from his old bellows Kodak. One print was so over-exposed that all detail was washed out. Two were of a crowd � the wedding crowd � spread across the grass under the cottonwoods, self-conscious countrified strangers not even forgotten because never known, but once studied gingerly as potential relatives by marriage�. Buck’s hard face is a younger version of his father’s, curly dark hair an earlier stage of curly gray. Both have the beaks of hawks and eyes that bore into the camera like the eyes of sea lot grandfathers in old tintypes. (p. 185)
"But Bruce Mason walked double. Inside him, moving with the same muscles and feeling with the same nerves and sweating through the same pores, went a thin brown youth, volatile, impulsive, never at rest, not so much a person as a possibility, or a bundle of possibilities: subject to enthusiasm and elation and exuberance and occasional great black moods, stubborn, capable of scheming but often astonished by consequences, a boy vulnerable to wonder, awe, worship, devotion, hatred, guilt, vanity, shame, ambition, dreams, treachery; a boy avid for acceptance and distinction, secretive and a blabbermouth, life-crazy and hence girl-crazy, a show-off who could be withered by a contemptuous word or look, a creature overflowing with brash self-confidence one minute and oppressed by its own worthlessness the next; a vessel of primary sensations undiluted by experience, wisdom, or fatigue."
"On the merest glance, he is younger than she -- younger in years, younger in manner and self-command. He is blond where she is dark, his eyes are blue where hers are brown, he is thin and hyperactive by contrast with her composure, darkly tanned where she is golden. She makes a center, he orbits it. She smiles, he laughs. He talks with his mouth, eyes, hands, body; she listens. He whips around her as if she were egg and he spermatozoon. Utter opposites, they make a one: Yin and Yang. Their force field deflects intrusions. From the first note of the band until now, they have avoided trading a single dance."
"What could she have felt when, out of his arrogant inexperience, out of his sheer undergraduate enthusiasm for hard doctrine, or the self-pity that had made him believe he was suffering's biographer, he plucked things like this from the great grab bag of Western culture and demanded that she read and ponder them? He might as well have suggested that she learn Turkish. Her mind operated on a direct hookup with the senses, not by abstract ideas...."
"Question: Why the mule headed inertia? Answer: In the first place, he was mule-headed. He hated to back up, start over, change direction. To this day he drove that way, gerade aus like a German, despising the people who dart from lane to lane. Moreover, he was used to delayed rewards. He knew something about having to work for what he wanted, and even more about frustrations and disappointments. He was a digger, but there was a fatalist in him, too. He mistrusted the rewards that he would break his neck to win. He half expected to fail even though experience should have taught him that most of the time he did not. In his bones he knew that the world owed him nothing. Some part of him was always preconditioned to lose. And though he felt himself superior to his background, and capable of some vague unspecified distinction, he knew himself unworthy. He was a sticker because it was easier to dig in and be overrun than to attack and be repulsed."
"The quintessentially deculturated American, born artless and without history into a world of opportunity, Bruce Mason must acquire in a single lifetime the intellectual sophistication and the cultural confidence that luckier ones absorb through their pores from earliest childhood, and unluckier ones never even miss. He is a high jumper asked to jump from below ground level and without a run, and because he is innocent and has the temperament of an achiever, he will half kill himself trying."
"Both have the beaks of hawks and eyes that bore into the camera like the eyes of zealot grandfathers in old tintypes."
[He awakens just before reliving the consummation of a relationship in a dream]
"The trouble with the censor is that it knows too much. It has another, and much longer, and presumably far more important life to remember and keep under control. It is wary about accepting the illusion of wholeheartedness that would have to accompany this uncensored dream. It knows that the girl and first love are both victims, and so is the boy who took them joyriding. They cluster at the edge of consciousness like crosses erected by the roadside at the place of a fatal accident."
What truly shone out of that golden portrait, as out of Holly herself, was not glamour but innocence. Under the sheath she was positively virginal, a girl from Parowan who had made the big step to city excitements but remained a girl from Parowan. If you cracked the enamel of her sophistication you found a delighted little girl playing Life. (p. 11)
…he feels how the whole disorderly unchronological past hovers just beyond the curtain of the present, attaching itself to any scent, sound, touch, or random word that will let it get back in. As a stronger gust rattles through the tops of the cottonwoods below him, he stops dead still to listen. Memory is instantly tangible, a thrill of adrenalin in the blood, a prickle of gooseflesh on the arms. (p. 114)
Below the lawn, spread along the fossil beach terrace of the lake that thousands of years ago filled the valley, was a long hanging darkness, the playing field where in paleozoic gym-class softball games he had patrolled an invariable, contemptuous right field and batted ninth. (p. 120)
Abruptly the capitol winked out. Its afterimage pulsed, a blue hole in the darkness, and before it had faded, the temple, too, went dark, cued to the same late clock. Something invisible but palpable, some recognition or reassurance,, arced from the dark desert across the city and joined the dark loom of the Wasatch. In one enfolding instant, desert and mountains wrapped closer around the valley and around him their protective isolation.
Seen and unseen, lighted and dark, it was all effortlessly present. Here was a living space once accepted and used, relied on without uncertainty or even awareness, security frozen like the expression on a face at the moment of a snapshot. This territory contained and limited a history, personal and social, in which he had once made himself at home. This was his place � first his problem, then his oyster, and now the museum or diorama where early versions of him were preserved. (p. 120)
The provinces export manpower, yes, as surely as atmospheric highs blow toward atmospheric lows. But the brains that are drawn outward to the good schools, the good jobs, the opportunities, don’t necessarily initiate their move. It can be as unavoidable as being born. They feel themselves being rotated into position. Even if they could know what they’re going to find outside, all that pain, blood, glaring light, sudden cold, forceps, scissors, hands tying Boy Scout knots in their umbilicus, they could neither prevent nor delay it. Head first, leg first, butt first, out they go. (p. 166)
Quickly he shuffled through the others. Only eight � one roll from his old bellows Kodak. One print was so over-exposed that all detail was washed out. Two were of a crowd � the wedding crowd � spread across the grass under the cottonwoods, self-conscious countrified strangers not even forgotten because never known, but once studied gingerly as potential relatives by marriage�. Buck’s hard face is a younger version of his father’s, curly dark hair an earlier stage of curly gray. Both have the beaks of hawks and eyes that bore into the camera like the eyes of sea lot grandfathers in old tintypes. (p. 185)
March 18, 2017
I'm not sure what to think about this book. On one hand it's as well written as anything that Stegner has written, but on the other hand reading this book feels like reading a confession. It's an intensely private book, an exposed raw nerve, and in reading it I more than once got the impression that writing this must have been a painful experience, like digging into flesh to extract a buried thorn that though it has healed over, still causes pain. In this way, it wasn't a pleasant read; too voyeuristic, too close to the bone.
That is not to say that this book was all gloom. Bruce's nostalgic rambles through Salt Lake looking for remnants of his past were equally nostalgic for me - the mountains, the suburbs, the major landmarks are places I know, and finding familiar things presented to you through different eyes is always a welcome experience. There is also the familiarness of the wedding Bruce attends in Emery County, which brings to mind countless family, and extended functions, from the reprobate youths sneaking cigarettes out of sight of the adults, to the kitchen full of aunts; the sullen children upset with each other for unknowable reasons; the ice cream coolers full of hand churned ice cream. These things are so familiar to me that I believe I was the model for that twelve year old boy who was eating like the wedding dinner would be his last square meal before the Fourth of July.
This is where the conflict lies for me. This book is at once comfortable, and unsettling, and I'm not sure how to feel about it as a whole. I'm not sure I'd recommend it, but also I don't regret having read it. Pick it up if you'd like, you might enjoy it, but if you do decided to read this, be sure to have read Big Rock Candy Mountain beforehand, as Recapitulation is a sort of coda to that book, and I don't think it works without the foundation of the first novel. But even if you don't want to read Recapitulation you should still read Big Rock Candy Mountain because it's an amazing book.
As a post script, I'd like to note that this book also contains reworkings for two of Stegner's short stories - The Blue-Winged Teal, and Maiden in a Tower. Also, what is up with the photo on the cover of this edition of the book? How hard did they have to look to find a photo of Salt Lake that they could crop the temple out of? Odd that they are at such pains to remove the traditional symbol of Mormonism from a the cover of a book in which Mormons play such a large role (is it ironic that the Church Office Building is still in frame? Some sort of oblique statement on the state of the modern church? Who could tell.). Who takes a picture looking west in Salt Lake anyway? The Oquirrhs are pretty, sure, but the Wasach range is the proper backdrop for that city. Bad form Penguin books. Bad form.
That is not to say that this book was all gloom. Bruce's nostalgic rambles through Salt Lake looking for remnants of his past were equally nostalgic for me - the mountains, the suburbs, the major landmarks are places I know, and finding familiar things presented to you through different eyes is always a welcome experience. There is also the familiarness of the wedding Bruce attends in Emery County, which brings to mind countless family, and extended functions, from the reprobate youths sneaking cigarettes out of sight of the adults, to the kitchen full of aunts; the sullen children upset with each other for unknowable reasons; the ice cream coolers full of hand churned ice cream. These things are so familiar to me that I believe I was the model for that twelve year old boy who was eating like the wedding dinner would be his last square meal before the Fourth of July.
This is where the conflict lies for me. This book is at once comfortable, and unsettling, and I'm not sure how to feel about it as a whole. I'm not sure I'd recommend it, but also I don't regret having read it. Pick it up if you'd like, you might enjoy it, but if you do decided to read this, be sure to have read Big Rock Candy Mountain beforehand, as Recapitulation is a sort of coda to that book, and I don't think it works without the foundation of the first novel. But even if you don't want to read Recapitulation you should still read Big Rock Candy Mountain because it's an amazing book.
As a post script, I'd like to note that this book also contains reworkings for two of Stegner's short stories - The Blue-Winged Teal, and Maiden in a Tower. Also, what is up with the photo on the cover of this edition of the book? How hard did they have to look to find a photo of Salt Lake that they could crop the temple out of? Odd that they are at such pains to remove the traditional symbol of Mormonism from a the cover of a book in which Mormons play such a large role (is it ironic that the Church Office Building is still in frame? Some sort of oblique statement on the state of the modern church? Who could tell.). Who takes a picture looking west in Salt Lake anyway? The Oquirrhs are pretty, sure, but the Wasach range is the proper backdrop for that city. Bad form Penguin books. Bad form.
July 29, 2019
A coda to “Big Rock Candy Mountain� that was also a kind of “dear john� letter to Salt Lake City after ghosting the town. The nostalgia favors pain over sentiment. I was ambivalent toward Bruce Mason at the end of BRCM, but the end of this book and the parallels drawn with his father made me sad that he continued to runaway. All of the reliving of the past made no difference to a man who hadn’t learned the lessons of the failure of his mother’s life.
The Mormon wedding scene is practically ethnographic and affectionately spot on.
The Mormon wedding scene is practically ethnographic and affectionately spot on.
August 8, 2023
Wallace Stegner takes the reader on many walks and a few drives around Salt Lake City as he tells the story of a retired former resident who is "home" for a family funeral. Memories of his youth and teen-age years come to his mind as the hours and days go by. Not all memories are good and he stops short of being in touch with all his former friends. But, the question is why? What happened?
December 12, 2020
I’ve read a lot of books by Wallace Stegner and liked them very much. This was not my favorite. Neither the plot nor the characters was particularly interesting.
June 24, 2021
Although the story is not one of Stegner's most compelling, in my opinion, the writing is exquisite.
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