Jean Stafford (1915–1979)

The Mountain Lion by Jean Stafford is stunning in terms of prose and story in its beautiful evocation of California and Colorado settings, but most memorably in relating the disgust of children for adults. When her brother's lascivious remark passes the line from childhood to adulthood, ("he has literally beat a rivet of hatred into my heart by a remark he passed on the train today") ten-year-old Molly, two years younger than Ralph, despises him and their special bond is broken. Molly is a fantastic character supposedly based on Stafford, a writer, a misanthrope filled with hatred for herself and others, witty and mean, and a smart aleck " [Molly}returned her cup to the tea wagon and said, “If you will pardon me, this is the pause in the day’s occupation which is known as the children’s hour.”), who seeks funds from the president for a typewriter and collects hibernating ladybugs to send to the university for scientific explanation.
"Ralph's childhood and his sister's expired at that moment of the train's entrance into the surcharged valley. It was a paradox, for now they would be going into a tunnel with no end, now that they had heard the devil speak."
The landscape descriptions are alive.
"There was a silence. Studebaker and Falcon had calmed down now and were cropping side by side in the middle of the meadow. It was not really silent; there was a steady undercurrent of the noises of the land, bu they were so closely woven together than only a sudden sound, like the short singing of a meadowlark, made you realize that everywhere there was a humming and a rustling. And, then, the separate sound, the song or a splashing in the river, was like a bright daub on a dun fabric."
"They saw the mountain lion standing still with her head up, facing them, her long tail twitching. She was honey-colored all over save for her face which was darker, a sort of yellow -brown. They had a perfect view of her, for the mesa there was bare of anything and the sun illuminated her so clearly that it was as if they saw her close up. She allowed them to look at her for only a few seconds and then she bounded across the place where the columbines grew in summer and disappeared among the trees."
I keep finding the best books already on my shelves.… (more)

This book shouldn't have been the slog for me that it was. I love short stories generally and Jean Stafford has a very rich vocabulary and dense writing style that makes paying attention to what you are reading, a must.

I felt strongly that reading Jean Stafford was like reading a pre-cursor to more modern prose styles like Joyce Carol Oates, and indeed, Oates wrote a New York Times piece defending the works of Jean Stafford and pointing out how neglected her works are...https://www.nytimes.com/1988/08/28/books/adventures-in-abandonment.html?pagewanted=all

All the same, this was a slog. While there were many stories that I enjoyed, there were also many that seemed to have similar character types from story to story and the old fashioned language of her stories was, at first, interesting because it was unusual to me, but later became a bit of a drag. It was a bit like picking up The Lord of the Rings again after not having read it for 20 years...once it had been new and even exciting to me at 10 years old, but now I feel like I am reading an archaic form of english.

So I am giving it 3 stars and an "I liked it" but it was not the best Pulitzer winner I have read so far and I doubt I will ever want to go back and read it again. I also doubt I will purposely pick up anything else by Jean Stafford any time soon.… (more)

Stafford arranged her Pulitzer-winning collected stories geographically. All of the stories appear to be set in places where Stafford lived or spent a considerable amount of time, and consequently all of the stories have a strong sense of place.

The stories in the first section, “Innocents Abroad,” are set in continental Europe, and mostly in Germany. The most memorable story for me in this section is “The Echo and the Nemesis,” about a friendship between to expat college students in Germany that turns into something worthy of The Twilight Zone.

Section two, “The Bostonians and Other Manifestations of the American Scene,” features stories set in New England. The story that stood out to me in this section is “A Country Love Story,” about the disintegration of a May-December marriage after the couple moves to the country for the husband’s health. Many aspects of this story reminded me of Middlemarch.

The third section, “Cowboys and Indians, and Magic Mountains,” contains stories set in the Western U.S. In this section, “A Reading Problem” will resonate with avid readers. The story tells how a young girl finds a place where she can read alone to her heart’s content, and then loses it.

The stories in the concluding section, “Manhattan Island,” are set in New York. “Cops and Robbers” is perhaps the most heartbreaking story in the collection, as it depicts the disintegration of a marriage with a five-year-old child used as a proxy.

This is a collection to be savored rather than rushed through. Although it took me several weeks to read it, Stafford’s exquisite use of language and her attention to detail provided the motivation I needed to read the entire collection.… (more)