But it is a contemporary novel as well, because it also tells of how Lyman Ward, a retired history professor tries in the late sixties of the 20th century to piece together the history of his grandmother Susan from letters and other documents. Angle of Repose, then, is for the most part a historical novel, describing the fate of Susan Ward and her husband Oliver Ward in the American West at the end of the 19th century. more concerned about what the American West during the days of the pioneers actually looked and felt like, as opposed to contributing to (or even concerning itself with) its myths and legends. Part of this at least might be due to the fact that Angle of Repose is essentially a Western – a Western, however, in the sense that Heaven’s Gateis a Western, i.e. I suspect, however, that this popularity extends mostly to readers from the US only – I at least had never heard of Stegner before, and I consider myself decently informed about US fiction in the 20th century. The novel has a lot of reviews both on Librarything and on Goodreads, so I assume that it is somewhat popular. Angle of Repose is, in my opinion one of those exceptions, in fact it is a very big slip-up as it is a truly exceptional work of fiction. There are, however, (as even Gass admits) the occasional execptions where the Pulitzer jury slipped up and gave the prize to an outstanding work. According to a well-known essay by William Gass, it is not a good thing for any ambitious writer to receive the Pulitzer Prize for fiction, because the prize has consistently been awarded to mediocre writers, and thus brands each of its recipients with the stamp of mediocrity.
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