Stegner: Conversations On History And Literature

Afterword

Afterword By RICHARD W. ETULAIN Early in 1978 I asked Wallace Stegner to collaborate in these interviews because I believed he was a major figure in American letters and perhaps the leading western writer. Within the previous decade he had capped a full and very successful career with a Pulitzer Prize and a National Book Award for fiction and had narrowly missed another Pulitzer for his biography of Bernard DeVoto. In addition, his authoritative comments on conservation and on western American culture had been widely cited for many years. Before we began the conversations, Stegner warned me that he had "probably said more than once ... everything [he] knew about the West and its history and literature." But, as I suspected, the interviews proved to be much more than repetitions of earlier observations. Indeed, as readers of this volume will soon discover, he had many new things to say about the West, about his life and career, and a good deal about the culture of the American West, past and present. Few, if any, of my previous experiences can match the stimulation I received in talking with Stegner for two hours a day for two weeks. I experienced firsthand what so many observers have been saying recently: no one speaks with more persuasion, with more humane insight about the American West than Wallace Stegner. Working closely with him on this project has been a challenging and memorable experience. Five interviews were conducted in August of 1980 at Stegner's attractive home in the Los Altos Hills west of Palo Alto and Stanford University. The second set of five also took place there eight months later, in March of [199] 200 CONVERSATIONS WITH WALLACE STEGNER 1981. After the conversations were transcribed, Stegner and I made minor changes in wording and punctuation, but the interviews are essentially as they were recorded. Above all, we have tried to retain the mood and format of informal conversations. For their help in preparing this book for publication I wish to thank several people. Ellen K. Foppes helped with transcription, and Marion Honhart typed drafts of several interviews. Most of all, Annabelle Oczon did yeoman service in transcribing most of the conversations, typing drafts of several conversations, and helping prepare the index. I would like to thank Pat Devejian for her help with the 1989 conversation with Wallace Stegner that follows Norman Cousin's Foreword. I am also indebted to the Research Allocations Committee of the University of New Mexico, which provided funds to conduct the interviews and a second grant to help cover some of the costs of typing the manuscript. Finally, lowe a great deal to Trudy McMurrin, editor-in-chief of the University of Utah Press, who remained enthusiastic and helpful from the project's inception to its conclusion. BOOKS BY RICHARD W. ETULAIN Interpretive Approaches to J%stern American Literature, 1972 (coeditor) Owen WISter, 1973 The Popular J%stern, 1974 (editor, with Michael T. Marsden) The Idaho Heritage, 1974 (editor, with Bert Marley) Idaho History: A Bibliography, 1974 (editor, with Merwin R. Swanson) The Frontier and American J%st, 1977 (editor. with Rodman W. Paul) Anglo-American Contributions to Basque Studies, 1977 (coeditor) Jack London on the Road, 1979 (editor) The American Literary J%st, 1980 (editor) Basque Americans, 1981 (editor. with William A. Douglass) Fifty American miters, 1982 (editor. with Fred Erisman) A Bibliographical Guide to the Study ofJ%sternAmerican Literature, 1982 (editor) J%stern Films: A Short History, 1983 (editor) Faith and Imagination: Essays on Evangelicals and Literature, 1985 (editor) Ernest Haycox, 1988 The Twentieth-Century J%st: Historical Interpretations, 1989 (coeditor) The American West: A Twentieth-Century History, 1989 (coauthor) miting J%stern History, 1991 (editor) Basques ofthe Pacific Northwest, 1991 (editor) Contemporary New Mexico, 1994 (editor) The American J%st in the Twentieth Century: A Bibliography, 1994 (coeditor) ...