William Saroyan by Edward Halsey Foster, and: Mari Sandoz by Helen Winter Stauffer, and: Barry Lopez by Peter Wild, and: Tillie Olsen by Abigail Martin (review)

Reviews William Saroyan. By Edward Halsey Foster. (Boise State University Western Writers Series #61, 1984. 51 pages, $2.00.) Mari Sandoz. By Helen Winter Stauffer. (Boise State University Western Writers Series #63, 1984. 51 pages, $2.00.) Barry Lopez. By Peter Wild. (Boise State University Western Writers Series #64, 1984. 49 pages, $2.00.) Tillie Olsen. By Abigail Martin. (Boise State University Western Writers Series #65, 1984. 48 pages, $2.00.) Twelve years ago Boise State University published the first five pamph­ lets in its Western Writers Series. Each year since then the editors, Wayne Chatterton and James Maguire, have given us new introductions to writers whose works speak significantly of the American West. The format — a bio­ graphical synopsis, a brief assessment of a writer’s published materials, an analysis of predominant ideas and themes — is at once the series’ strength and its weakness. While each pamphlet provides a welcome overview on the one hand, it may be limited by a prescriptive shape on the other, especially when the subject is too broad or too narrow to fit comfortably into fifty pages. Of the four individual authors considered this year, two were immensely prolific and two have written barely enough to qualify them for inclusion in the series. Yet all four are accorded an equal amount of critical prose. The results are predictable. The many works of William Saroyan and Mari Sandoz can be listed, catalogued, described, rejected, accepted, and/or hon­ ored, but they cannot, for the most part, be examined in depth. By contrast, the few pieces by Barry Lopez and Tillie Olsen must be viewed so micro­ scopically that the reader soon is aware of a precarious stretching of the critical imagination. It would seem that Edward Halsey Foster chose the best solution when he opted to discuss only four representative works by William Saroyan. This selective principle of organization should be effective, but Foster bogs down long before he gets to the four pieces — first with his defensiveness about Saroyan’s talents, then with an apologetic listing of Saroyan’s proliferations, finally with a description of Saroyan’s influences and inspirations. As a result, the reader unfamiliar with Saroyan’s career has difficulty comprehending either the pattern or the significance of the men’s accomplishments. Helen Winter Stauffer, writing of Mari Sandoz, handles a similar mass of materials much more effectively. She, too, selects only certain pieces for 56 Western American Literature detailed analysis. But after proclaiming a defensible rationale for her choices, she proceeds with a straightforward pattern of critical commentary. When the reader finishes this pamphlet, he or she knows precisely why the books of the Great Plains series were Sandoz’s best, why Old Jules captures the imagi­ nation more than the other five, and why Sandoz’s fiction was less successful. In short, Mari Sandoz is a thoughtful and valid introduction to that author’s canon. Almost as enlightening is Peter Wild’s introduction to Barry Lopez. Unfortunately, though, Wild has that insurmountable problem of space to combat, a dictum that forces him to fill out the proper number of pages. Where Stauffer can dismiss the worst of Sandoz, Wild must detail Lopez’s every failure. Of Wolves and Men and Winter Count rightfully merit almost ten pages apiece: Desert Notes and River Notes probably do not deserve ten together. Nonetheless, this occasionally unsettling composite of praise and condemnation is both perceptive and tantalizing in its analysis of Barry Lopez’s prose. Abigail Martin chose a different avenue by which to approach a writer who has penned very little. Instead of isolating Tillie Olsen’s words, Martin places them in a context of contemporary feminism. In so doing, her assess­ ment of Olsen becomes less literary than ideological, her critical opinions less heartfelt than studied. The reader learns that Olsen “shares Virginia Woolf’s philosophy,” but not why this fact makes her either talented or western. Martin, trying to stretch her materials, loses sight of them rhetorically. As one who has struggled with the dictates of the Western Writers Series format, I sympathize with the problems faced by these four essayists. I recog­ nize that introductory sets meet reader expectations by...