Description |
xx, 472 pages, 8 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations ; 24 cm |
Bibliography |
Includes bibliographical references (pages [423]-456) and index. |
Summary |
Drawing on nearly ten years of research and unlimited access to Stegner's letters and personal files, Benson traces the trajectory of Wallace Stegner's life from his birth on his grandfather's Iowa farm, his frontier childhood on the lonely prairie homestead in Saskatchewan, and his teenage years among Salt Lake City's Mormons up through his prominence as an award-winning writer, critic, historian, environmental activist, and teacher. Stegner founded Stanford University's legendary Creative Writing Program, where his students included such budding writers as Larry McMurtry, Ken Kesey, Wendell Berry, Robert Stone, Raymond Carver, Evan Connell, and Tillie Olsen. |
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But Benson's book is as much a consideration of Stegner's own literary legacy as it is a blow-by-blow retelling of his life. Providing a critical reassessment of the entire body of Stegner's work, Benson argues convincingly for his subject's place in the literary canon - and not merely as a "regional" Western writer, but quite simply as one of the great writers of twentieth-century American letters, whose books can stand comfortably on the shelf beside the work of Hemingway, Faulkner, and Steinbeck. |
Contents |
Introduction: Against the grain: a heritage of integrity -- The last homestead frontier: a prairie childhood -- From primitive to intellectual: the education of Wallace Stegner -- From student to professor: the further education of Wallace Stegner -- Becoming a novelist: write a novel and win a prize -- Accomplished writer, Harvard teacher, and friend to the famous: what more do you need? -- Hard work at Harvard: climbing the Big Rock Candy Mountain -- Looking back at the West from Cambridge -- From the fight against rugged individualism to the fight against prejudice and racism -- Back to fiction, on to Stanford -- Abandoning the novel and embracing the short story -- From short story writer to environmentalist -- To the barricades for the environment -- Travel, travel literature, and the search for narrative voice -- An all-star cast -- The struggle to locate oneself -- Historian and "contemporary" -- Trouble in the sixties -- A new life -- The Pulitzer and beyond -- Back to biography and another prizewinning novel -- The past that comes back to haunt us -- Crossing to safety -- Giving all to time. |
Form |
Also issued online. |
Subject |
Stegner, Wallace, 1909-1993.
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Authors, American -- 20th century -- Biography.
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Western stories -- History and criticism.
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Historians -- United States -- Biography.
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West (U.S.) -- Historiography.
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West (U.S.) -- In literature.
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Other Form: |
Online version: Benson, Jackson J. Wallace Stegner. New York : Viking, 1996 (OCoLC)605472701 |
ISBN |
0670862223 (acid-free paper) |
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9780670862221 (acid-free paper) |
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