Wallace Stegner by Forest G. and Margaret G. Robinson (review)

172 Western American Literature men with big dreams are anathema. May it always be that way, may the splendid Alaskan anarchy continue in cooperation with the state and federal planners.” After all his experiences, all his probing into the lives and goals of Pipeline workers, I am glad indeed that Andrasko feels he can give us this gleam of hope. If enough of the Land itself can be saved, there is strong basis for such hope. “Alaska Crude” is a potent document. Read it. You will not forget it soon. And it is true. MARGARET E. MURIE, Moose, Wyoming Wallace Stegner. By Forest G. and Margaret G. Robinson. (Boston: G. K. Hall &Co., 1977. 188 pages, index, $8.50.) Twayne United States Authors Series, volume 282. Yawn? It will be unfortunate if this first ambitious study of Wallace Stegner should be associ­ ated with that often undistinguished collection, for the book has several advantages over most: it concerns a major writer, covers his full career, and is the product of careful research, insight, and great intelligence. It also has style. I recommend it to anyone interested in Stegner’s fiction. To write an introductory’ study of a man of Stegner’s broad interests and voluminous achievement is more problematic than might first be apparent. At least twice before, different individuals agreed to undertake this Twayne study, but failed, perhaps for the same reason that for a time denied Stegner the appreciation he deserves: they underestimated the subject. He is more than a “Western writer.” Investigation of Stegner’s fiction, history, biography, and criticism soon reveals the vastness of his energy and knowledge — there will be no such thing as a quick book on Stegner. The real book on Stegner, in fact, can be written only by a person of Stegner’s quality who shares his passion for and responsiveness to the physical West. The authors of this book speak in their preface of Stegner’s giving them “detailed instructions for a trip through the heart of his favorite territory— a trip [they] plan to take.” I cannot imagine anyone’s writing with the requisite passion on this subject who has not taken that trip. The ideal might be a historian-geologist-critic, a lover of libraries and big skies, a sensitive person-of-action who, for example, seeing the Green River under 1-80, would get a tingling spine remembering that John Wesley Powell had set out down the canyons at just that spot. These notions merely second the Robinsons’ idea that theirs is a first book on Stegner, and should not hide the fact that their study will influence all that follow. What the Robinsons’ book does best is to inform us in a host of ways about Stegner the man and his development as a writer. Their opening chapter, a mini-biography of excellent detail and perfect length, traces the Reviews 173 artist’s past as it is relevant to his work and shows the tensions between civilization and lack of it, between holding fast and breaking loose, that enlivened his existence since earliest memory. Sometimes I am uneasy with their identification of real and fictional characters — as though Bo Mason is George Stegner and nothing more — and I want them to separate the teller from the tale: one of the least interesting things to my mind is Stegner’s role as purveyor of ideas (if his art means criticism of wild energy and defense of the Elsa Norgaard way, it means very little; on the other hand, one cannot help but notice that Stegner is fascinated by the wild ones, and can do little with the Elsa type until Angle of Repose, when in Susan Ward it acquires a consciousness of its own complexities and guilts.) Stegner’s work contains what Lawrence called the “duplicity” of great American art, and Stegner’s “consciously offered spirit” is not the only possible presence for study. With a nice bit of insight, the Robinsons ignore chronology to consider in their second chapter Stegner’s nonfiction, showing how his concerns during the 1950’s— when he produced little fiction — allow us to better read the mature novels of the last two decades...