The Spectator Bird

The Spectator Bird, Wallace Stegner’s 11th novel and winner of the 1977 National Book Award, takes a hawklike view, both expansive and intimate, of such things as aging, death, love, loss, temptation, and regret. A sequel to his novel All the Little Live Things (1967), Bird follows the same protagonist and narrator, the retiree Joe Allston, but interlaces past and present, death and rebirth, memory and mythology. Stegner, who was 67 when Bird was published, explores the dislocations of late middle-age, as well as many of his longtime concerns, including history, The Dangers of Tampering With Nature, American Deracination Versus European Gothic, and Choice and the Inevitability of Regret.

This guide refers to the 2010 Vintage edition of The Spectator Bird.

Content Warning: The source material contains references to suicide, rape, incest, and eugenics. Additionally, the narrator’s sardonic sense of humor includes some flippant references to coerced sex.

Plot Summary

Restless and forlorn in the rural hills of northern California, Joe Allston spends much of his time looking back since there seems so little left ahead for him. As recounted in All the Little Live Things, his only child, a bohemian surfer named Curtis, drowned as a young man, and Joe’s passive career as a literary agent has left him no “monument” to carry his name into the future. The terminal cancer of a neighbor, which Joe learns about when he goes to get the mail, brings these questions of legacy to the forefront of his mind.

In the mail, Joe discovers a postcard from a Danish friend named Astrid, who is now caring for her estranged but dying husband. The postcard prompts Joe to dig out a 20-year-old journal, he kept during a trip he and Ruth took to Denmark in 1954—just after Curtis’s death, and in the hopes of learning more about Joe’s family. Ruth persuades him to read a bit of the journal aloud with her each night, believing the experience might prove healing. This need for healing becomes more urgent after a failed lunch with Césare Rulli, a novelist Joe once represented, whose vitality makes Joe feel all the more bitter about his life.

Joe’s journal focuses largely on his and Ruth’s dealings with the destitute countess, Astrid Wredel-Krarup, whom they meet while renting rooms from her in Copenhagen. Joe is drawn to Astrid and pities her, as she is estranged from both her husband—a former Nazi collaborator—and her brother, Eigil. Astrid is related to the writer Karen Blixen and offers to introduce her to Joe; they share a cryptic conversation during which Blixen hints at Eigil’s (and his father’s) scandalous genetic experiments and predations on the local peasant women. Nevertheless, having learned that Astrid’s ancestral castle is close to the home of Joe’s long-dead mother, Joe and Ruth accompany her to the castle, Ørebyslot.

Though the trio arranged to visit Ørebyslot while Eigil is away, events soon go awry. A pregnant woman named Miss Weibull shows up unexpectedly to dine at Ørebyslot, to Astrid’s obvious displeasure. During the meal, Joe mentions the name of the family that raised his orphaned mother—Sverdrup—causing silence around the table. Before leaving, Miss Weibull mentions that she is a Sverdrup.

Later that day, Joe visits the cottage where his mother grew up. While there, he runs into Eigil, who challenges him to a tennis match. Impressed by Joe’s ability to hold his own, he then gives Joe a tour of his estate, which he has mechanized for maximum efficiency and productivity. He laments that Nazi experiments in eugenics have made people leery of applying similar breeding principles to humans; he prides himself on the purity of his bloodline but would like to produce a race of true “supermen.” Returning to the castle, Joe learns that Astrid’s grandmother has experienced a medical emergency, possibly instigated by Joe’s faux pas at lunch. She dies shortly afterward, and Joe and Ruth return to Copenhagen.

Still curious about the Røddings, Joe researches the family and learns that Astrid and Eigil’s father died by suicide after it emerged that he was sleeping with his daughter as part of his bid for genetic superiority. Assuming this is a reference to Astrid, Joe feels disgusted with her when she arrives in Copenhagen and tells him and Ruth that she would like to explain her family’s secrets. When she does, it emerges that Astrid was not the daughter in question. Rather, the count hoped to diversify and improve the family gene pool, so he coerced various peasant women into sex; Miss Weibull was the product of one such union, and he continued his genetic project by sleeping with her. Eigil has since adopted his father’s practices, having previously had one child with Miss Weibull (his half-sister) and now expecting another.

Joe’s journal stops after these events, to Ruth’s consternation. Reading the journals has proved healthy—they have discussed Joe’s guilt regarding Curtis’s death, among other things—but she suspects he is withholding something important. Eventually, he breaks down and confesses that he asked Astrid to move to America with him and Ruth. She declined, citing her responsibilities in Denmark, but not before the two kissed. Although Joe has long wondered whether his failure to pursue Astrid further was a mistake, he now recognizes that leaving Ruth certainly would have been. The pair reaffirm their love for one another, and Joe reconciles himself to the path his life has taken.