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Excerpts
from our 1994 Catalog
dedicated to Wallace
Stegner
View our Stegner
Items
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Wallace
Stegner
February 18, 1909 -- April 13,
1993
Introduction
to our 1994 catalog dedicated to Wallace
Stegner
I
suppose it was inevitable that I would
issue a catalogue so populated by Wallace
Stegner -- his books, anthologies,
magazine appearances -- virtually by his
presence.
Nearly
all the signed items in the catalog were
brought to him by me. They were lovingly
placed into his hands. Some he signed
quickly. Others he considered at some
length, remembering a connected story.
Most of the memories were good. Being with
him, being charmed by the man and our
shared experience gave me some of the
great times of my life.
I
have yet to meet anyone who knew Wally who
wasn't profoundly affected by him. The
stories we tell, as you will see, are
remarkably similar. He was charming,
witty, learned, funny, adaptable, hardy,
intelligent, giving. Indeed, he was the
most giving man I ever knew. He was very
much like the West, where he often lived,
and about which he often wrote.
It
had been one year since Wallace Stegner
died. So, in his memory, I developed a
catalogue devoted to him and blended it
with essays about him.
I
cannot well enough express my thanks and
gratitude to those who helped make the
catalogue possible. They include the
participants, Wendell Berry, Lynn Stegner,
Leo Holub, and Richard Kurtz. They also
include friends and bibliophiles such as
Melinda Gray, Jacqueline Koenig, Graham
Wilson, and my daughter, Tracy.
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Wallace
Stegner, A Collector's Friendship
by James M. Dourgarian
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I
knew very little about Wallace Stegner
when I first met him more than a decade
ago.
I
knew his name from catalogues of rare and
collectible books sent to me by other
booksellers. It seemed then as if his
reputation was good and that the value of
his books was on the rise. I had never
read anything of his myself, nor did I
know anything of him as an
environmentalist/conservationist. I even
thought he was still teaching at Stanford
University, although he had been retired
for about 11 years at that point. I wrote
to him in care of Stanford asking if he
would sign a beautiful copy of REMEMBERING
LAUGHTER for me.
He
wrote back to say he would indeed sign the
book. He said to call, and he would give
me directions. His modest stationery
listed his home address, but there was no
phone number to call. I pondered this
predicament for some time and then called
information. He was listed! I couldn't
believe it. Wasn't he hounded by pushy
booksellers and others who wanted
something from him?
When
I finally met him, he must have been about
73 years old. He looked about 55. He was
handsome and robust, and he had an
excellent head of slightly wavy white
hair. Like John in ALL THE LITTLE LIVE
THINGS, Stegner's countenance was one "of
sobriety, responsibility and masculine
resolution." At the same time, he was very
charming and had a twinkle in his eyes as
if he knew something I didn't. He
certainly did.
That
was the first of a series of visits that
continued until his death. He seemed to
enjoy our sessions, especially when
remembering an obscure book, or discussing
one of the multitude of writers he knew --
and he knew them all. Sometimes he would
marvel at the condition of an especially
ancient volume still in pristine
condition. I even managed to bring him a
few books that he had never seen before.
He enjoyed the idea that I brought him
anthologies and magazines and other
collectibles in addition to his primary
titles. He also liked the oddball editions
I could find, such as the Armed Services
Editions, remembering how he had to cut
down THE BIG ROCK CANDY MOUNTAIN to fit
the A. S. E. size requirements of the
World War II books issued to American
soldiers.
Once
I arrived at Stegner's home to find him
gone -- away on an errand. His wife and
devoted friend, Mary, entertained me and
my boxes full of books. Then she
remembered the phone answering machine.
She had, after all, just returned home
herself. She excused herself to go have a
listen, but I could hear the messages
being played clearly from down the hall.
So-and-so was calling from Colorado. Mr.
Somebody Else called from Oregon. There
were calls from Washington, state and
capitol. There were a multitude of others,
mostly out-of-state. There were others who
wanted something from him, and most wanted
something other than having him sign
books. Could he appear at such-and-such a
cause? Could he write a speech, or, better
yet, could he deliver a speech? He was
needed at this and that function in a
fistful of places.
And
why not? He had won the Pulitzer Prize for
ANGLE OF REPOSE and the National Book
Award for THE SPECTATOR BIRD. He founded
the creative writing program at Stanford.
Among the writers he nourished are Larry
McMurtry, Tillie Olsen, Raymond Carver,
Robert Stone, Wendell E. Berry, N. Scott
Momaday, Ernest J. Gaines, Evan S.
Connell. His 1960 missive has come to be
known as the Wilderness Letter, a rallying
point for conservationists to this day. As
Wendell Berry once wrote, "He was no
bystander; he served what he cared for.
For him, caring and serving were two
motions of a single thought."
Early
on, I tried to move unobtrusively into
Stegner's life. I wanted him to sign my
books, but I didn't want to bother him. He
was still writing. CROSSING TO SAFETY was
in the pipeline. Over the years, my
bringing a few books turned into my
bringing a few boxes full of books.
Naturally, the more I pursued him, the
more I read his work; the more I read
about him, the more I learned from him
through out conversations. While he was
very down to earth in many ways, his
wide-ranging intelligence was inescapable.
I used to tell my friends that my IQ went
up every time I visited him. I think it
rare to find common sense and high
intellect in the same person. Wally had
that duality, and I ad mired him for it.
It was also clear that he was an artist,
one who expressed his vision via the
written word. He had this ability to take
information experienced or learned,
process it through his being, and then
write about it as if it were his own. By
that time, it was indeed his
own.
One
of the most endearing moments I ever spent
with him concerned the 1960 O. Henry
Awards anthology. He had already signed
his introduction when I remembered that
his Mary had edited the book. I asked him
if she too would sign it for me. Mary was
somewhere in the back of their house,
while Wally and I sat at the kitchen
table. He picked up the book, arose, and
tiptoed down the hall in an exaggerated
manner, calling "Meery...Meeery," in a
little boy voice. He was in his 70s and
still capable of being a young boy --
playful, loving, still on a first-name
basis with the flowers he gardened. And
that very same year he produced CROSSING
TO SAFETY, a brilliant work by a mature
man. As a friend said of him, "Wally was
unaware of his greatness."
Wallace
Stegner as a person, as a writer and
story-teller, as an example, was a gift. I
am privileged in having benefited from
that gift, memories of which I cherish,
helping the gift to live on -- just as his
words and spirit will continue to live in
the books and minds he left
behind.
I
have very often looked back at my having
written to him so many years ago, each
time wondering why I thought of him when
there were so many other writers living in
the San Francisco Bay Area who might sign
books for me. Maybe it was my having that
one spectacular copy of his first novel.
It is sweet irony that originally I just
wanted to increase the value of a book. In
the end, my entire life has been enriched.
I think now that choosing Wallace Stegner
must have been pure blind luck. I couldn't
have chosen more wisely.
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Wallace
Stegner: A Remembrance
by Lynn Stegner
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I knew Wallace Stegner for ten years;
he was my father-in-law, though in truth
the hyphened suffix eventually held no
meaning. My past had effectively orphaned
me, and when one balmy spring afternoon
day, my husband to be, and Wally's and
Mary's only son, took me up to the house
in Los Altos Hills for the traditional
meet-the-parents evaluation, I felt doubly
the important of this first interview.
Wally was out on the deck where lunch had
been set, wrestling with a new slipcover
for an ancient chaise lounge. Rarely could
he bring himself to throw things away; if
there was any evidence of any residual
value, he, the ultimate conservator, would
make it work, even if it meant having to
make annoying accommodations.
He was a splendid looking man, tall and
gracefully postured, with white hair,
exotic from a distance, like the crest of
a rare creature, and a strong face in
which unwavering blue eyes reposed, gazing
out speculatively as though always ready
-- ready to be amused or engaged, ready to
learn. On all counts I regarded myself the
unlikeliest of candidates. Abandoning his
skirmish with the slipcover -- it wasn't
clear who had got the better of whom -- he
greeted me easily and warmly, offending
neither of us with an immediate and false
closeness, nor a formally cautious
distance. He was a master -- and there was
nothing studied or contrived or effortful
about it -- at the appropriate: the
appropriate word or gesture, attitude and
response, the appropriate emotional
bearing. This came, I believe, of a
natural acumen for determining, measuring,
and judging the relationships between
things -- whether casual or circumstantial
-- and at all times maintaining a balance.
Indeed, in every respect, he was a man of
exquisite balance. In WOLF WILLOW,
referring to the prairie village of his
youth and the ways in which that part of
the earth had shaped him, he mentions
"...the way I adjudicate between personal
desire and person responsibility..."
Herein lay the machinations of that
exquisite balance, the source of his
decency and dignity; it was not a balance
in the literal sense, because Wally's
desire was to be responsible. He was a
kind of natural aristocrat.
The lunch was simple, elegant, the
conversation pleasantly comfortable; I did
my best to counter all with overeager,
overloud impressions of an impressive
possible daughter-in-law, which was met
with silent, twinkling forgiveness. I had
already read most of his books, I was
already and irrevocably unworthy, and in
the kitchen following lunch I heard myself
say with the casual minimalism of someone
who regards herself at an enormous
disadvantage, "I'm a great fan of your
books."
"I hope to be a fan of yours," Wally
replied.
It seemed to me then, and it still
does, that he could not have made a more
self-defining quip. Everything -- his
beliefs, his values, his methods, perhaps
even his disposition to affection -- was
contained in that lambent reply. Standards
exist, he meant, larger concerns, a debt
to honesty and truth, and none would be
forsaken simply to quarter misguided
notions of family loyalty. You're young,
he meant, you have a lot of work to do,
and while I am prepared to encourage you
and to hope for the best, there are
principles whose measure I will not
shorten for anyone.
It was the sort of remark that had the
effect of straightening my spine just a
little, and yet it was delivered with such
palpable kindness and generosity, a smile
that enlisted all his features, that I'm
convinced I departed that meeting a wee
bit taller. And not because in his
presence I felt myself to be somehow
better; no. In his presence, because of
his presence, because of the conduct of
his life, I wanted to be better. I went
away expecting more of myself, though this
upsurge of courage or confidence was
merely the counter-reflection of Wally's
vision: he believed if we tried and worked
and kept at it that we all could be better
-- better caretakers of the land, better
brothers to each other, better keepers of
the truth, better writers. He believed in
belief, the power of it, and he was not
only willing to employ it, but profoundly
sensible about what it would require of
him and of others. He worked hard.
Learning and understanding, achievements
of any sort, were part of a continuum.
I remember one summer afternoon in
Vermont walking from our house over to
Mary's and Wally's, a five minute journey
through moss and maples and black spruce
that led me to the base of their hill,
grassy about its crown with small ponds of
fern, giving way at its lower margins to
saplings, brush, golden rod, incipient
weed populations. That was where I found
Wally with a pair of clippers in hand.
"What are you doing?" I said.
"I've just cut 374 joe-pye weed," he
announced with a kind of boyish pride.
"You counted them?"
He smiled a Cheshire smile.
I could see that there were at least
that many more to cut; I knew, as he did,
that they would keep coming up.
This was the way Wally worked; in
steady and orderly increments, aware of
the road he had traveled, aware, much more
aware, of the height of the road he -- and
the rest of us possessing the courage and
will -- might travel if we dared. And he
was there in the middle of it, striding
along, forward-looking, keeping step with
the present. Yet history was always with
him -- his, the country's, humanity's. He
wanted to remember; for him remembering
was legacy, a legacy of things discovered,
perhaps comprehended, perhaps even
reconciled, a legacy of mistakes not to be
made again, paths to avoid -- and that
legacy he brought to bear upon the future.
The present was simply where the work got
done.
In 1988 Page and I built a log house
from 300 red pine that he and his father
had planted as seedlings forty years
earlier out on the old farm in North
Greensboro, Vermont where they had made
their first summer camp during Wally's
years at Harvard. Naturally Wally admired
the house -- it was a fine and solid house
-- but it was the idea of it that
enchanted him philosophically: "We grew a
house," he said on several occasions and
with visible delight. Continuity. Past
funding the present, informing the future.
Found objects. Natural harmony. The
builder or author or narrator or
conservationist who, with prudence and
polish, and mainly with honesty, might
make "a clear statement of the lens."
These he valued.
Of course, I was terrifically spoiled,
having Page, Mary, and Wally as readers,
each of whom brought to the task a
lifetime of books read, as well as a
variance of perspective and taste, and in
Page's and Wally's case, the practical
knowledge belonging to writers who
actually write. When Wally read the first
200 pages of the first draft of my first
novel, he wrote me a long and gently
pragmatic critique -- but the upshot was,
I was going to have to start over. I spent
two days in a kind of agony of waste --
time, hope, effort -- pretty handily
defeated by the immensity of what I didn't
know, and of what I would have to do. I
cried a lot. On the third night following
receipt of Wally's critique, when we were
all in San Francisco for the book signing
celebration of CROSSING TO SAFETY, Page
mentioned my distress to his father which,
until then, I had concealed. It was late,
we were driving down the peninsula, and
Wally and I were in the back seat. He
patted my hand, murmured something to the
effect that I ought not to be upset, and
then went on to discuss point of view --
how this was the most important of the
early decisions an author must make, how
it would shape naturally the course of the
story and its telling, and how he felt I
ought to confine the point of view to a
single character. Which I did. When he
read the third draft of the novel, a
small, exhilarating infection of faint
"ok's" appeared in the margins of the
manuscript. He did not dispense praise
wantonly; I suppose he felt to do so would
be somehow irresponsible. But one "ok"
from Wally equaled the effusive paragraphs
and exclamation marks of others. The "ok"
meant something more, though: it meant
this is fine, perhaps better than fine,
but don't settle down here, keep growing.
On the other hand, he felt that
recognition was important. One summer I
earned second place in a national short
story contest. I never mentioned it to
Wally and Mary, though at some point Page
did.
"Why didn't you tell us?" Wally asked
me.
"Oh, well," I fumbled, "by
comparison... well, it seemed
inconsequential."
"It isn't," he said. "It isn't at all."
But I could see he was in other ways
pleased not only by the temperance, the
recognition of a larger, more mature tribe
and my apprenticeship in it, but more
importantly, by the sense of what there
was yet to do, and to try to do. Now I
have a second novel coming out, and at
least in terms of progress, I think he
would be proud.
As with his writing, he was in life
direct and unflinching, reliable as the
land he loved. Unless Mary stepped in to
whisk him way, or impose a cautioning
restraint, he often found himself in the
grip of helpfulness. When I was seven
months pregnant, summer of '88, the days
trailing off behind the weatherman's
morning mantra -- hazy, hot, and humid --
six weeks going, and we had a wood floor
to lay in the new house. Wally, at age
eighty, was there with Page, on his hands
and knees, with his bad hip, and the bad
heat, singing some work jingle from his
youth -- all to spare me the toil. He was
the original gentleman, without the
mannered trappings that might condescend,
or make one uncomfortable. Of women he was
particularly respectful and cherishing,
seemed almost to wince whenever he saw me
carrying anything, even a laundry basket,
as though, knowing some of what my life
had been, he would now wrest from me any
burdens. When we all went to Italy in 1985
I was seldom allowed to carry suitcases. A
tray of champagne glasses I was passing
around at his birthday party was
preemptively snatched from my hands. And
of course for Mary he was a kind of
knight. They did everything together
walking, reading, editing, they even baked
bread together, she mixing the
ingredients, he popping in from his study
at the requisite intervals to pound and
knead the dough.
When Page and I were married in Vermont
-- a dozen friends, a short ceremony -- it
was Wally who took my arm and walked me in
to the house. This gesture was not
prearranged or discussed, not assumed by
me, not even imagined. There was no one to
give me away. But, characteristically,
Wally found the simplest, most perfectly
lovely gesture with which to officially
welcome me into the family.
There were certain kinds of assumptions
for which he had little tolerance. One of
these was the assumption that there
existed 'an easy way,' and that one had
only to locate it, or finesse it. He was
faithful to whatever bond he made -- to a
book, to a place, to a friend, to a woman.
He was witty, which is not to say he was
funny: funny is a broader, sloppier thing,
and Wally's witticisms were like small,
intricate gifts wrapped in beautiful
timing that went on pleasing the mind as
well as the heart long after their moment
of delivery. He sang when he was happy,
folk songs of the old west; he could play
a blade of grass for my daughter's
delight. In the pursuit of daily chores he
could find the sublime. He made
connections, often between the seemingly
wildly disparate, producing metaphors with
prismatic effect. He liked football,
Mozart, my lemon meringue pies. What he
didn't like inspired for the most part his
silence, except for the abuse of Western
lands about which he was practically
evangelical, I supposed because he
believed that something like
evangelicalism was what it would take to
save it. He admired diligence,
understatement, the skillful
impersonations of the mockingbird perched
on the wire above the house. He admired a
willingness to do things on one's own,
even while on a larger scale he believed
cooperation was what finally would
preserve the land and improve its
civilization, and render humanity a more
humane species.
On any scale and at any distance, maybe
especially up close, he was a hero. Truth
lies in the details, and from the "small
muscle jobs" (as he referred to them),
like baking bread or laying floors or
cutting down joe-pye weed or tapping out a
travel piece, to the large muscle jobs,
like trying to save the West from itself,
or writing a Pulitzer Prize winning novel
that would embody and enliven western
settlement without romance, without the
figments of myth, without undue promise,
Wally was exactly what he appeared to be,
behaved according to what he believed was
decent, responsible behavior, and he wrote
what his heart knew to be the truth. His
life flowed easily into his work, his work
was no intruder in his lived life; and
between the two he resisted sleights of
hand, fabulous optimism, short cuts,
language for its own or his own
aggrandizement.
Wally never granted himself the stature
that others granted him, though he
deserved every inch of it. I suppose he
didn't want it to get in the way of work
there was to do. He was intent on
progress, eager about it, and by that I
mean the progress of the species. Perhaps
he thought that too much self-appreciation
would have weakened resolve, or robbed him
of the necessary urgency to keep moving
forward.
I suppose knowing him, being in his
close presence, might have been at time
dangerous -- dangerous to one's own
capacity for self-acceptance. Because he
was emphatically yet quietly great. And
gracious, and wise, as good a citizen of a
dinner party as he was of this country, a
participant, a giver, a human being who
genuinely felt for others and without a
sentimentality that would have had a
reductive effect. Of course, he possessed
huge gifts, but these gifts would not have
attained their full range of consequence
had he not at the same time accepted with
characteristic humility the obligations
they implied and the work they suggested.
For he was above all else, a tireless,
enthusiastic worker.
I suppose one might have felt somehow
less being around Wally, but, aside from
the fact that he never regarded anyone as
essentially less than he, indeed, accorded
one an d all decorous attention and
respect, there was the simple fact of his
being, the quality of his presence, like a
single note struck purely, without
distortion, and sounding across the miles
and the years with undiminished beauty.
His presence was like a call to duty;
around Wally I could seldom sit idle.
Around Wally, too, I felt possibilities
within and without; what he taught me,
among many things, was that to disregard
possibilities -- both good and bad -- was
to abandon life. Wally never abandoned
life.
I loved him. I told him frequently; it
is in my nature to do so. And it always
seemed to embarrass him -- not the
sentiment, but the statement of it. Like
the characters in his novels, he was a man
revealed through his actions, and his
actions were thoroughly and more than
sufficiently expressive of deep concern,
and of affection carefully tended. He
simply preferred evidential signs to
declaratory emblems.
Point of view -- this, he told me, was
one of the most important formative
decisions a novelist must make. A man,
too, perhaps. It seems to me that early in
Wally's life he must have made just that
sort of decision, and he stood by it, and
it shaped and informed him as a person.
His was a point of view both singular and
encompassing. Fortunately, he shared it
with the rest of us.
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Biography:
Wallace Stegner, The Quiet Revolutionary
by James Hepworth
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