The Sound of Mountain Water [Hardcover]

Wallace Earle, Stegner (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 1969

The essays, memoirs, letters, and speeches in this volume were written over a period of twenty-five years, a time in which the West witnessed rapid changes to its cultural and natural heritage, and Wallace Stegner emerged as an important conservationist and novelist. This collection is divided into two sections: the first features eloquent sketches of the West's history and environment, directing our imagination to the sublime beauty of such places as San Juan and Glen Canyon; the concluding section examines the state of Western literature, of the mythical past versus the diminished present, and analyzes the difficulties facing any contemporary Western writer. The Sound of Mountain Water is both a hymn to the Western landscape, an affirmation of the hope embodied therein, and a careful investigation of the West's cultural and natural legacy.

--This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Product Details

• Hardcover
• Publisher: Doubleday; 1ST edition (January 1969)
• ISBN-10: 0385071388
• ISBN-13: 978-0385071383
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.9 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,893,164 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars One of My Favorite Books of Essays, May 30, 2008

By 

J. Blilie "Naturalist-Skeptic" (Twin Cities, MN) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Sound of Mountain Water (Paperback)

I am the lone voice crying in the Wilderness here I guess. This was the first book by Stegner that I ever read (on advice from Edward Abbey) and I love this book. It is one of the finest books of essays I've read. I've read it several times and It doesn't grow stale.

I've lived most of my adult life in the mountain west, spending much time in the "woods" (climbing mountains, hiking, descending the rivers in kayaks, kayaking on the coast and inlets, skiing the mountains on X-country gear in winter), and I've read many books of essays, biographies, histories, and travel writing (broadly defined) and I own a large library of them. I would never let my library lack this book.

The essays in this book express Stegner's detailed knowledge of and love for the American West, especially the Colorado Plateau. His descriptions and expositions are, as always, wonderful. His writing is impeccable and also a joy to read.

If you prefer novels to non-fiction, you may prefer Stegner's novels. However, if you like non-fiction or are interested in the West or the Colorado Plateau, I think you will enjoy this book very much. (I don't own this edition; but rather an earlier paperback edition.) Enjoy.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Must Read for Western Writers, July 13, 2010

By 

Merl Ledford III (People's Republic of California, USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Sound of Mountain Water (Paperback)

Stegner's series of short essays trap the essence of what it means to live and write in the West like lightning in a bottle. The "west" he lived in and wrote for was roughly the area west of the 100th meridian where dry-land farming is problematic to the western edge of the Great Basin. (California and Oregon didn't really count as "western" to Stegner; they were "west of the west," as in the title of Mark Arax' book which, as an aside, is well-worth reading.)

I own a hardbound edition of this book. The paperback was a gift for a friend and intended as a short-cut for writing him a "Wallace Stegner Writer's Workshop Reading List." Essentially all the works that Stegner used as reference material in his creative writing classes at Stanford appear in Mountain Water. But the book contexts those reference materials in the landscape of Western American writing in ways that make sense to me despite their mix-and-match of genres that both defies and defines truly "western" writers.

10 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars The first part is great, October 25, 2000

By 

Richard E. Kravitz - See all my reviews

This review is from: Sound of Mountain Water (Paperback)

I had this book recommended to me by someone who I really respect intellectually and since I was very moved by "Big Rock Candy Mountain" by Stegner I looked forward with great anticipation to "The Sound of Mountain Water". The Introduction was great. The first narrative, "The Rediscovery of America: 1946", was about an area very familiar to me from my travels and so I enjoyed that story. The rest of the first part of the book talked about the West, Utah and Arizona (Havasu Falls, where I have also been.)

The second part of the book (except for the first story which is about Stegner growing up in Salt Lake City) is concerned with literary criticism about Western Writers and Writing. And after the second selection of the second part, "Born A Square", I stopped reading the book and am going to try and return it.

There are so many good books waiting to be read I didn't feel the last 100 pages was worth reading--and I rarely do this, I almost always finish a book.

Stick with his novels!!