Where the Bluebird Sings to the Lemonade Springs: Living and Writing in the West [Paperback]

Wallace Stegner (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 1, 1993

Stegner's enchantment with the West and his ability to capture in words what the land has taught him, not only about nature but about the human condition, are beautifully united in this collection of 16 essays. Stegner introduces the reader to a western literary tradition as varied as the landscape itself.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Stegner's love of unspoilt nature and of the American West shines forth in these 17 graceful essays. This book by the Pulitzer Prize and NBA winner is a National Book Critics Circle Award nominee for criticism.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Kirkus Reviews

Western Americana and literary history by the Pulitzer-winning novelist. Now 80, Stegner here reviews his life in part, the West as writers have written about it, its landscape and the ever-changing effect of humanity upon it, and so on. Stegner believes that the West is finally coming into its own as a literary entity distinct from what eastern critics have found in it. Even so, he warns, ``without a more developed and cohesive society than the West, in its short life and against all the handicaps of revolutionary change and dispersion, has been able to grow--and without a native audience for its native arts--there may come a time in a writer's career when the clutch of the imagination will no longer take hold on the materials that are most one's own.'' That sentence points up Stegner's strengths and flaws: It digs into his subject of change and fragility both in landscape and citizenry, but does so in a voice more academic than earthy. Ever in search of the loamy detail, one reads through this collection of recent magazine essays and introductions to Stegner's own and others' books and finds less appeal to the senses than the wise overview, rich in itself but not rich in words. The best essay by far is a sigh-heavy memoir of his mother, ``Letter, Much Too Late,'' written some 50 years after her death, with her breath and heartbeat moved into the reader's own chest. Stegner's friendships with writers such as Walter Van Tilburg Clark and Wendell Berry ring with praise, as do his comments on John Steinbeck, Norman Maclean, and George Stewart. And one feels deeply rewarded by Stegner's wisdom about population shifts, the five or six main types of landscape, and his words about conservation, deadly dams, and the death of the desert. Absolutely worthwhile, but highly charged only here and there. -- Copyright ©1992, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 256 pages
• Publisher: Penguin (Non-Classics) (April 1, 1993)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0140174028
• ISBN-13: 978-0140174021
• Product Dimensions: 7.7 x 5 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,122,341 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

18 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The American west., May 21, 2002

By 

Wesley L. Janssen (San Diego, CA USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Where the Bluebird Sings to the Lemonade Springs (Hardcover)

"Easterners are constantly being surprised and somehow offended that California's summer hills are gold, not green. We are creatures shaped by our experiences; we like what we know, more than we know what we like. ... Sagebrush is an acquired taste."
Stegner taught writing at the University of Wisconsin and at Harvard, but he had a strong sense of place and his place was the West. He accepted a position at Stanford University where he spent many years, and became, what many consider to be, 'the dean of Western writing' (by which we do not mean that he wrote "Westerns"). In this volume, Stegner sacks the Hollywood myths, and addresses the far more fascinating realities of the West. Featured here is a studied and caring investigation of what lies between the 98th meridian and the Pacific Ocean; of the land's great beauty and vulnerability to human foolishness. The compilation of essays also includes the author's reflections on his own life and work in the West, and examines critically the work of several significant literary "witnesses" of the American West. He reminds the reader of what criticism is: "A critic ... is not a synthesizer but an analyzer. He picks apart, he lifts a few cells onto a slide and puts a coverglass over them... His is a useful function and done well, ... may even give the reader the illusion of understanding both the product and the process. But ... whatever they can analyze has to be dead before it can be dissected ... critical analysis explains everything but the mystery of literary creation."
If you enjoy the works of John Steinbeck or Norman Maclean, or the powerful but fragile beauty of western lands, the essays collected in the Lemonade Springs are highly recommended.

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Beautiful, August 8, 2000

By 

jerseymca "jerseymca" (Oakland, CA United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Where the Bluebird Sings to the Lemonade Springs: Living and Writing in the West (Paperback)

Stegner has a way with words, and this collection of excerpts and essays shows them off. In fact, reading Stegner in these discrete chunks may be the best way to appreciate him - especially if you read it out loud, letting the cadences of his writing drive the tempo. This is true for the fiction, non-fiction, and even the literary analyses he includes here. This was the book that got me excited about reading Stegner.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars To Let Go the Color Green, January 1, 2009

By 

Heath Nieddu (American Alley) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Where the Bluebird Sings to the Lemonade Springs: Living and Writing in the West (Modern Library Classics) (Paperback)

As 2008 rolled to a close in the early days of December I gripped the steering wheel of a U-Haul truck as it shimmied through the plains on I-80, heading towards Wyoming, Utah, Idaho,and finally Oregon. Virginia and Florida were falling to my stern. Right before I left for our big move I read Stegner's "Angle of Repose." Maybe I left because of "Repose." Once I settled at my destination, Portland, I visited Powell's book store and purchased, "Where the Bluebird Sings to the Lemonade Springs: Living and Writing in the West." I'll make no pretensions about being able to impartially point out this anthology's strengths or weaknesses. My appreciation for Stegner's work is so profound my judgment is dimmed. I'm still in receive mode, and my thoughts float around digesting what I find.

Previously here, one reviewer retained sobriety and concluded that Stegner's Lemonade Springs was insular and xenophobic. I think there's some truth that Stegner's work had a geographic focus, and maybe a moral purpose, but that wasn't because he believed in the infallibility of the West, but rather because he loved it with its faults. Perhaps he felt his generation under-appreciated, or more likely, misunderstood his Western context. I think that the reviewer's analysis may have more weight if she were from the West, but being from Texas, maybe she was surprised by someone from outside the lone star state celebrating their home.

Stegner's work could be considered advocation, but it is also approachable from all corners because he was inspired by the good, and wounded by the bad. His precision in defining the rough, scrubby edges of his cultural landscape reveal more passion than desire for domination. Stegner not only attempted to define, but genuinely wanted to share whatever nuggets he felt he picked up along the way. Maya Angelou admitted to an audience in New York this year that she was a teacher who writes, and this is a sentiment expressed in Stegner's writing, as well as his years as a professor.

The sense of place is a strong backdrop, maybe too much so, but he also calms us with easy prose, allays our fears about the sometimes biographical nature of fiction, convinces us we're not alone in familial pain of a certain type, and provides lingering analogies about his art.

One question about his work for me that this volume didn't answer was his view of God and spirituality. He said he was, "not-so-Christian." At times he admired the Mormons, but not completely. He probably meant for it to be this way, not wanting to drift into the ambiguity of the Transcendentalists. I think that these lingering questions become the most important about his work: Did he believe that Nature, dominating the Western man's experience, was a reflection of something higher, or the end itself? Did he view his existence along an arch that began and ended in the arid desert, or did he see the Divine as he gazed across the Great Divide?
I don't think that it was his nature to give it all away, but he did give us Lemonade Springs: a literary gem, a completely engaging book, and a must-read for those interested in learning about living and writing in the West.