Stegner: Conversations On History And Literature

Front Cover

L i t e r at u r e wallace stegner & richard w. etulain c o n v e r s a t i o n s o n h i s t o r y a n d l i t e r a t u r e “A rich and remarkable book.” —C. L. Sonnichsen, Pacific Historian “Stegner constitutes a model for effective oral history.” —Pacific Northwest “Richard Etulain has put together a masterful interview. His Stegner is an excellent measure of not only Stegner himself, but of the West generally. You can turn to this work for Stegner’s assessment of his writing, especially of The Big Rock Candy Mountain (1943) and of Angle of Repose (1971), which get full chapters. But there is also information on Stegner’s formative years in Canada and Montana, his life among the Mormons , his academic career, and his work to protect wilderness. At the end, there seems hardly a stone of Stegner’s that remains unturned.” —Western American Literature “The book is spontaneous, open, informal, and engaging. It is the kind of book that will appeal not only to Stegner devotees, but to those interested in the views of a knowledgeable and articulate commentator.” —Utah Holiday “Stegner’s remarks about notable literary figures are sharp and pungent. . . . Hopefully his sense of responsibility should encourage younger writers who follow him.” —Frank Waters, Colorado Heritage “Wallace Stegner is a regional writer and thinker in the very best sense of the term. Never bound by a narrow provincialism, he uses the American West as his springboard to wide-ranging and perceptive thoughts about all of contemporary civilization. He is indeed a twentieth-century literary figure of universal stature, as this book shows.” —New Mexico Historical Review Universit y of Nevada Pre ss Cover photograph of Wallace Stegner by Leo Holub Wall ace Stegner (1909–93) was an award-winning historian, novelist, teacher, and environmentalist who is considered one of the most important voices of the twentieth-century American West. His novels include Angle of Repose, which won a Pulitzer Prize in 1972, and The Spectator Bird, which won a National Book Award in 1977. Richard W. Etul ain is professor emeritus of history and former director of the Center for the American West at the University of New Mexico. He is the author or editor of more than twenty books, and co-editor of Portraits of Basques in the New World (also from University of Nevada Press). p r a i s e f o r Stegner: Conversations on History and Literature 9 7 8 0 8 7 4 1 7 2 7 4 4 ISBN 978-0-87417-274-4 9 0 0 0 0 stegner conversations on history and literature stegner stegner and etulain nevada Books by Wallace Stegner Remembering Laughter, 1937 The Potter's House, 1938 On a Darkling Plain, 1940 Fire and Ice, 1941 Mormon Country, 1942 The Big Rock Candy Mountain, 1943 One Nation, 1945 (with the editors ofLook) Second Growth, 1947 The Women on the Wall, 1950 The Preacher and the Slave, 1950 reprinted asJoe Hill: A Biographical Novel, 1969 Beyond the Hundredth Meridian: John J#sley Powell and the Second Opening ofthe J#st, 1954 / This Is Dinosaur: Echo Park Country and Its Magic Rivers, 1956 (editor) The City ofthe living, and Other Stories, 1956 Great American Short Stories, 1957 (editor, with Mary Stegner) A Shooting Star, 1961 Wolf Willow: A History, a Story, and a Memory ofthe Last Plains Frontier, 1962 The Gathering ofZion: The Story ofthe Mormon Trail, 1964 The American Novel: FromJames Fenimore Cooper to William Faulkner, 1965 (editor) Twenty }ears ofStanford Stories, 1966 (editor, with others) All the little Live Things, 1967 The Sound ofMountain Water, 1969 Angle ofRepose, 1971 Discovery! The Search for Arabian Oil, 1971 The Uneasy Chair: A Biography ofBernard DeVoto, 1974 The Letters ofBernard DeVoto, 1975 (editor) The Spectator Bird, 1976 Recapitulation, 1979 American Places, 1981 (with Page Stegner and Eliot Porter) One Way to Spell Man, 1982 Crossing to Safety, 1987 The American J#st as living Space, 1987 Collected Stories, 1990 Where the Bluebird Sings to the Lemonade Springs, 1992 ...