I really wanted to put this book down and abandon it in the first half of the story. I first tried listening to it with Sara, and it went nowhere with either of us. It was primarily about Elsa's leaving home and hooking up with Bo, up to the point after they got married and tried to make a go of it in Washington with a small cafe. Elsa seemed too much of a self conscious cypher and Bo was just Joe Jock who wanted to make a bundle of money. Neither of them seemed all that interesting and the plot was going nowhere.
Then I tried to finish listening to it by myself, while Bo and Elsa separated--or should I say after Bo ran away after abusing Elsa--and then Bo reached the point of bankruptcy with the farm in Canada after he persuaded Elsa to come back. I just found Bo intolerable. I couldn't feel anything for him and his travails as he convinced himself of one get rich quick scheme after another and dragged Elsa--and now the boys Chet and Bruce--along with him. I couldn't understand why Elsa allowed herself to go back to him, although her only options were to settle into a quiet life of conventionality and boredom in Minnesota. Especially in the audio format, I just found Bo suffocating, much as Elsa found herself smothered by him, especially as he began to bully his way around people, whether at the old Swede's farmhouse or with the bartender's family in North Dakota during his first bootlegging run during the flu epidemic. His character really began to deteriorate under the pressures of making money, showing itself with the mocking attitude toward the old British couple in Canada and then shooting the bird in front of Bruce and Elsa who were shocked by the brutality of the act.
I thought I'd give the book another try as a print novel, and that seemed to make all the difference. Also, Chet and Bruce were beginning to make a difference with the narration of the novel and the tensions in the family, rather than Elsa worries and sorrows and Bo's scheming, and the book became akin to Look Homeward Angel. I can't imagine that Stegner didn't have Wolfe in mind when he wrote the book for the parallels are too great--dysfunctional family trying to make it in the early 20th century, told from various points of view in the family, finally settling on the youngest son to have the final say in the book. It is Bruce that has some of the more interesting thoughts and experiments in narration (as in the car ride back to Nevada after his first semester in law school) and it's hard not to wonder whether great stretches of the book are autobiographical.
In short, I grew from loathing the book--or maybe more particularly, loathing Bo--to thinking that it was a very good, if not great, novel of American life. Having seen it through to the end and looking back on it as the history of a family, especially the family of a bootlegger during prohibition, and ending up in Salt Lake City, no less, gives the book a perspective that borders on insight into the human condition, what great literature is supposed to do. The final parts of the book, with Elsa dying and Bruce taking care of her--then reflecting on her and the rest of his family--contain great writing, even in the scenes where Bo reflects on his own situation and becomes desperate for money. He is even less likable than earlier in the book, as his needs and wants become even more hardened and self-centered. But as Bruce reflects, Bo had been very capable and even showed tenderness at times. It's almost as if Stegner asks: How does a bootlegger become as he is? What drives him? What becomes of him? And make no mistake, it is Bo's book. He is the center of its universe, and when he shoots himself finally, it brings a fitting end to his story and gives the book a finality and impact that was unexpected.
Author: Stegner, Wallace
Date Published: 1943
Length: 563 pp & 25 hr 38 min
print & audio
Narrator: Bramhall, Mark
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