Customer Reviews

The Selected Letters of Wallace Stegner

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Behind the book's title page is a Stegner quote, "What does more to stay us and keep our backbones stiff while the world reels than a sense that we are linked with someone who listens and understands and so in some way completes us?" What a joy to hold and read the nearly 400 pages of Stegner's letters. Thank you Wally (and thank you Page) for this gift from a dear friend.

I used to like Wallace Stegner's persona and writings - especially the historical "Beyond the 100th Meridian." I guess I still like that book, and others like "Shooting Star." However, about a third of the way through "Selected Letters" I began to ask myself why I cared about this man. I am a professor and assigned my class his "Wilderness Letter" to read, hoping it would awake their environmental consciences. But I was taken aback how many of the students thought he came across as an elitist, out-of-touch snob. Perhaps it was a generational thing. But then I thought about it and while reading "Selected Letters" that perception seemed to hit home. I think I need to Read Elizabeth Cook-Lynn's "Why I Can't Read Wallace Stegner and Other Essays."