That this is true has been amply proven by the publication of almost 30 books of fiction and nonfiction. It is a distinct place, a unique people, a common history and a shared heritage remembered as only Stegner can. The reader of Stegner’s writing is immediately reminded of an essential America-one of fact and fiction. From among the memories of these places and experiences, he has invented and recorded these exemplary stories. He now lives in Los Altos Hills, Calif., and in Greensboro, Vt. He is America’s pre-eminent teacher of English and of writing and has taught at the universities of Utah, Wisconsin, Harvard and Stanford. He was educated at the University of Utah (BS) and at the State University of Iowa (MS, Ph.D.).
Born in 1907 in Lake Mills, Iowa, he grew up in North Dakota, Montana, Nevada and western Canada. Together, Stegner, 81, and his stories represent a remembrance of almost 100 years of an American century.įor Stegner is quintessentially an American writer. Some first saw print as chapters in novels and have been reworked back to their original forms. Others are suggestive of American times further past and more distantly remembered. Many were first published in American magazines at mid-century and were expressive of events and concerns of the day.
Stegner’s inventions and recordings here include 31 fiction stories.
This is central to the reading of his work. In his foreword, Stegner says that his memory is as much an inventor as it is a recorder. So too, is the act of reading an exercise in creative memory, especially when the words and sentences are those of the master writer, Wallace Stegner, and are from his most recent book, “Collected Stories of Wallace Stegner.” The very act of writing, of the creation of words and of sentences, is an exercise in mnemonics-the art of memory and of remembrance.
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