Stegner, Wallace: Crossing to Safety

A man wants to be a poet. His wife wants him to be an academic. She doesn’t realize that the security for which she is fighting is the wedge that will splinter the family. That’s the hinge on which turns Wallace Stegner’s Crossing to Safety. Once you have tenure, says the wife, you can do what you want. I was reminded of the stepmother in the Cinderella story advising the stepsisters, one to cut off her heel, the other to cut off her toes, so that their feet might fit the glass slipper, because “Once you are queen, you will not need to walk.”