(A defining masterpiece by the dean of Western writers (...)
A defining masterpiece by the dean of Western writers (The New York Times) and the Pulitzer Prizewinning author of Angle of Repose and Crossing to Safety
Bo Mason, his wife, Elsa, and their two boys live a transient life of poverty and despair. Drifting from town to town and from state to state, the violent, ruthless Bo seeks out his fortune-in the hotel business, in new farmland, and, eventually, in illegal rum-running through the treacherous back roads of the American Northwest. In this affecting narrative, Wallace Stegner portrays over three decades in the life of the Mason family as they struggle to survive during the lean years of the early twentieth century.
(This tour-de-force of American literature and a winner of...)
This tour-de-force of American literature and a winner of the National Book Award is a profound, intimate, affecting novel from one of the most esteemed literary minds of the last century and a beloved chronicler of the West.
Joe Allston is a cantankerous, retired literary agent who is, in his own words, "just killing time until time gets around to killing me." His parents and his only son are long dead, leaving him with neither ancestors nor descendants, tradition nor ties. His job, trafficking the talent of others, has not been his choice. He has passed through life as a spectator, before retreating to the woods of California in the 1970s with only his wife, Ruth, by his side. When an unexpected postcard from a long-lost friend arrives, Allston returns to the journals of a trip he has taken years before, a journey to his mother's birthplace where he once sought a link with his past. Uncovering this history floods Allston with memories, both grotesque and poignant, and finally vindicates him of his past and lays bare that Joe Allston has never been quite spectator enough.
Although sometimes categorized as merely a "western writer, " Wallace Stegner was more than that: he wrote 30 books, both fiction and nonfiction, served as a mentor to many young writers, and worked in support of conservation issues throughout his lifetime.
Background
Stegner was born on February 18, 1909 in Lake Mills, Iowa. He was the son of Hilda (née Paulson) and George Stegner. Stegner summered in Greensboro, Vermont. Most of his childhood was spent moving from place to place as his father, a restless schemer, searched for a way to get rich quick. The family finally settled in Saskatchewan, Canada, although Stegner's father alternated between living with his wife and two sons to roaming the frontier, in search of his ultimate opportunity. His father became, for Stegner, the model for many characters in his books: characters who relentlessly and thoughtlessly sought personal gain without any consideration for who or what they destroyed in the process.
Education
Stegner received a B. A. at the University of Utah in 1930. He went on to earn an master's degree in 1932 and a doctorate in 1935 from the State University of Iowa. In between his stints in graduate school and for the next several years after, he worked as an instructor at various institutions, including Augustana College in Rock Island, Illinois, the University of Utah at Salt Lake City, and the University of Wisconsin at Madison.
Career
Stegner wrote several books in 1940s, including the novels On a Darkling Plain, a story about a Canadian veteran who seeks peace on the prairie (1940), and Fire and Ice, about a college student who temporarily joins the communist party (1941). The novel is largely autobiographical, telling the story of a family's travels over the American and Canadian West as the father, Bo, relentlessly searches for the opportunity that will earn him his fortune.
At the end of World War II, Stegner returned to the West and became a professor of English at Stanford University in California, where he remained until 1969. He also continued to write, publishing the novels Second Growth, which compared the lives of residents and visitors in New Hampshire (1947); The Preacher and the Slave, (1950); A Shooting Star, which told about the lives of wealthy northern Californians (1961); and All the Little Live Things, which contrasted the lives of an older cultured man and a young hippie (1967).
Stegner left Stanford in 1971 and devoted his time to writing. In 1972, he won the Pulitzer Prize for his novel Angel of Repose, a work that James D. Houston of the Los Angeles Times Book Review said is now "recognized as a masterpiece. " Stegner's concern with the past's influence on the present and a societal sense of identity is most apparent, though, in his nonfiction books. Although Stegner is often classified as a regional writer, and many would agree with Daniel King of World Literature Today that Stegner is "the greatest writer of the West, " others assert that he is much more than that. Richard H. Simpson of the Dictionary of Literary Biography maintains that his "main region is the human spirit" and "the central theme of all of his work is the quest for identity, personal and regional, artistic and cultural. "
Stegner's childhood experiences and the respect he developed for the wilderness while living in Saskatchewan undoubtedly had an influence on his future involvement in environmental and social issues. The first sign of what he might very reluctantly called activism came when he published the nonfiction work One Nation in 1945. One Nation was recognized for its important message and won the Houghton-Mifflin Life-in-America Award and the Ainsfield-Wolfe Award, both in 1945. In 1953, he was convinced by a friend who was an editor at Harper's Magazine to write an article about the threats to the U. S. public lands. The book gained the attention of David Bower, who was working to save the Dinosaur National Monument in Colorado and Utah, which was in danger of being flooded behind proposed dams on the Green River. In this speech Stegner said, "I want to speak for the wilderness idea as something that has helped form our character and that has certainly shaped our history as a people. Something will have gone out of us as a people if we ever let the remaining wilderness be destroyed". Stegner did not think his message was extraordinary at the time, but it became a mission statement harked by conservationists around the world, despite its distinctly American references. It was also used to introduce the bill that established the National Wilderness Preservation System in 1964. Stegner's involvement in environmental causes intensified when he was invited to be an assistant to the secretary of the interior, Stewart Udall, in 1961. In 1962, Udall appointed Stegner to the National Parks Advisory Board. This was followed by a three-year term on the Board of Directors of the Sierra Club, an organization on which Stegner had a profound effect and in which he participated for nearly 40 years. Vice-president of the Club, Edgar Wayburn, told Sierra magazine that Stegner "captured the possibilities and spirit of the American West. He understood what it could be. "
Despite great efforts in the conservation movement, Stegner considered himself first and foremost to be a writer. He continued to write both fiction and nonfiction until his death.
Stegner died of injuries resulting from a car accident in Santa Fe, New Mexico, on April 13, 1993.
