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All the Little Live Things
by Wallace Stegner
Product Group: Book
Publisher: University of Nebraska Press (1979-08-01)
ISBN: 0803291094
EAN: 9780803291096
Dewy Decimal #: 813
Paperback: 345 pages
SKU: T071125-3327
Condition: Good
Comments: Good overall condition. Tight binding. Book has highlights/underlines. General wear. Ships same day or next in a bubble mailer. Enjoy.
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Editorial Reviews
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Product Description
Award-winning and bestselling author Wallace Stegner takes on the hippy generation in a novel of "crackling vividness."--The New York Times Book Review. A bearded young cultist invades the lives of a retired literary agent and his wife after the death of their wayward son.
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Customer Reviews
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"Life is One New Position After Another."
Rating  (5)
Date: 2008-09-30
2 out of 2 customers found this reveiw helpful
Reading this novel was often like looking at an impressionist's painting. It's incredibly rich in scenic description, character nuances and, most importantly, mood setting tone. Wallace Stegner lives on through his writing and we shall all be richer for this reading experience. This novel, while focused on a socially turbulent era (late 1960s), is timeless. Generational and political conflict, as well as the matters of preservation and development, life and death, and the persistence of human crisis will always be relevant topics.
And so we have the characters portrayed in All the Little Live Things. Joe Allston, the narrator, is much like a diarist recording his keen and colorful observations from his five-acre hideout in glorious California. With his wife Ruth at this side, together they grieve the loss of their 37-year-old son, and try to fit in as key players in their new community. Meanwhile, a freethinking, anti-establishment sort named Jim Peck squats on Allston's property--first with permission--however, Peck takes extreme liberties. Joe's distain for him (and his beard!) is the focus of much of the novel, and it leads him to come to terms with his feelings toward his son. Meanwhile, there's another neighbor, a young woman named Marian, who helps enable Joe to come to terms with his feelings about both life and death.
This is the most beautifully written novel I've read all year. Highly recommend for those who appreciate fine, sensory-based literature.
Michele Cozzens is the author of It's Not Your Mother's Bridge Club.
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All the Little Live Things
Rating  (4)
Date: 2008-07-16
0 out of 1 customers found this reveiw helpful
I was so disappointed in the quality of the paper and print that I returned this book. A big part of the enjoyment of a new book for me is the physical quality of the product. I thoroughly enjoyed the author's other works and was disappointed not to read this one.
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Quality, thy name is Stegner
Rating (5)
Date: 2008-01-09
1 out of 1 customers found this reveiw helpful
All the Live Little Things began the golden era of Wallace Stegner's writing career. Finding the right voice in a first person narrative, he followed this beautiful novel with Angle of Repose, The Spectator Bird and Crossing to Safety; all are highly acclaimed.
In All the Live Little Things Stegner brings to the page a great deal of raw material from his life. The character of Marian was a composite of friends who had died of cancer, Peck was a composite of the 60s "beatnik", which in real life caused Stegner to retire from teaching and devote his time fully to writing. The callousness of Dave Weld's bulldozing on virgin land reflected the author's long term concern for the environment. His beautiful description of nature throughout the novel, and use of nature as a learning tool, expressed his life-long love and dedication to the American West. Even Joe and Ruth Allston were drawn from the real life marriage of Wallace and Mary Stegner. This matrimonial understanding and bliss is reflected in the opening page of the recently published "Selected Letters of Wallace Stegner":
What does more to stay us and keep our backbones stiff while the
world reels than the sense that we are linked with someone who
listens and understand and so in some way completes us?
All the Live Little Things flows beautifully. It has rich, well written characters that keep the novel moving towards a bittersweet conclusion. I did not believe the plot was forced or took unnatural turns; rather it followed the characters as they thrashed about with their struggles, sins and destinies, all seen through the eyes of the flawed but wise Joe Allston. As the character says near the story's conclusion: "There is no way to step off the treadmill. It is all treadmill."
Stegner once wrote that "In fiction I think we should have no agenda but to tell the truth." All the Live Little Things does draw heavily from the truths of Stegner's life in the 1960s, but it also holds its own as a thoughtfully written fictitious story of pain, hope, resignation, acceptance, and other qualities that mark the human condition.
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the hippie in the book was actually Ken Kesey
Rating (4)
Date: 2006-10-31
2 out of 7 customers found this reveiw helpful
just a note for everyone
the hippie in the book was actually based on Ken Kesey
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Recommended companion reading
Rating (5)
Date: 2006-06-02
5 out of 6 customers found this reveiw helpful
This is my third Stegner novel including Angle of Repose and Crossing to Safety. All the Little Live Things has a more 'elemental' style than the other 2 novels. It is compact and extremely logical. There is not a throwaway sentence in the book. For anyone looking for deeper, relevant background reading - I suggest these pre-requisities prior to reading Little Live Things: Shakespears 'The Tempest' - where the literarary figures of 'Calaban (i.e., Peck)' and 'Prospero' are introduced. I would have been quite lost without having first read Tempest. Another great book that I think provides the 'mythological basis' for Little Live Things is Joseph Campbell's 'Pathways to Bliss'. In Campbell's book I learned the basic philosohpy of Jainism - which is the foundation for Marian Catlin's character as well as the title of the book. You get a better sense of the Joe Allison's heroic struggle as he confront his personal demons (personified by Peck)living deep in the gully across the 'spritual bridge' that he cannot bring himself to go across. Quite a hero's journey indeed.
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