The Geography of Hope: A Tribute to Wallace Stegner

by Page Stegner (Editor), Mary Stegner

The Legacy of Wallace Stegner (1909-1993) - as writer, teacher and conservationist - once moved Edward Abbey to declare him "the only living American worthy of the Nobel." Unequaled in the American literature of place, his Pulitzer Prize-winning fiction created an entirely new consciousness of the American West. As director of the Creative Writing Program at Stanford University, Stegner wielded a powerful influence on many of the most important writers of two generations. Through his work for the Sierra Club and the Wilderness Society and his service as special assistant to the Secretary of the interior, Stegner contributed substantially to the emergence and development of the environmental movement.
This remarkable tribute volume brings together eloquent testimonies from colleagues, friends, and family whose lives Wallace Stegner profoundly graced. Edited by Stegner's wife and son, and illustrated by a gallery of candid photographs, The Geography of Hope is a stirring memorial to a truly great man, whose incandescent spirit will remain an inspiration for generations to come.

140 pages, Paperback

First published June 3, 1996

About the author

Page Stegner is a novelist, essayist, and historian who has written extensively about the American West. He is the son of novelist Wallace Stegner.

Stenger received his B.A. in history from Stanford University in 1959, followed by a Ph.D in American literature in 1964. He served as a Professor of American Literature and Director of the creative writing program at the University of California, Santa Cruz from 1965 to 1995, at which time he focused his efforts on writing. He has received a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship (1980), a National Endowment for the Humanities fellowship (1981) and a Guggenheim Fellowship (1982). He is married to novelist Lynn Stegner. They live in Santa Fe, New Mexico. (from Wikipedia)

Reviews

[Kristi · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Something will have gone out of us as a people if we ever let the remaining wilderness be destroyed; if we permit the last virgin forests to be turned into comic books and plastic cigarette cases; If we drive the few remaining members of the wild species into zoos or to extinction; if we pollute the last clear air and dirty the last clean streams and push our paved roads through the last of the silence, so that never again will Americans be free in their own country from the noise, the exhausts, the stinks of human and automotive waste..... We simply need that wild country available to us, even if we never do more than drive to its edge and look in. For it can be a means of reassuring ourselves of our sanity as creatures, a part of the geography of hope." The Wilderness Letter, 1960….. I grew up about 30 miles from Lake Mills, Iowa where Wallace Stegner was born. We were related in an undefined way, probably through the Paulson family. Though the relationship was distant, this fact was a source of pride that an author could come from the flat farm land from which I could travel only through books. You know that you have read a great book if 40 years later the mere mention of the title brings back memories of the story. At the age of 71, I sometimes cannot remember books I read a few months ago - hence lists. "The Angle of Repose" (Pulitzer Prize ) was the first Stegner book that I read. I wondered then exactly what this meant. The technical definition is the maximum angle to the horizontal at which rocks, soil, etc, will remain without sliding. In other words, how high can you make a pile of sand or rocks before it becomes unstable and bits / pieces slide away. The main focus of the book is a mining engineer and his wife who move repeatedly because of the difficulties of the man while Susan seeks to put down roots - to seek her angle of repose. As a child Stegner was taken from place to place as his father sought that "big rock candy mountain". He found his angle of repose in the wilderness / nature. I knew about Stegner, the author, but I did not know about him as the male equivalent of Rachel Carson. When G.I's returned from WWII with the desire to become authors, there was only one program in the United States for an advanced degree in creative writing - The Iowa Writers' Workshop which conferred a Masters in Fine Arts. ( Yay!! ) Stegner built the program at Stanford. He served as special advisor to Stewart Udall, Secretary of the Interior during the Kennedy Administration. More than any other accolades, Stegner wished to be a valuable member of the human race. "Two of our minority groups are conquered peoples - the Indians and the Spanish colonists of the Southwest. Blacks came in a 'forced immigration' and even immigrants who came by choice, entered a nation that showed ugly signs of class and caste distinctions and an ugly will to suspect the foreign and the strange." ( Sound familiar??) Stegner spoke about police brutality toward minorities fifty years before anyone knew the name of Rodney King. In 1945, yes, 1945 he wrote: "The reason behind the frequent indifference of the police to the rights of minorities is the collective will of the society which hires them." In 1992 he quietly declined the National Medal for the Arts in protest against the capitulation of the National Endowment for the Arts to the right-wing censorship of the Bush administration. *** I have learned so much about Wallace Stegner through this book which is a collection of tributes / eulogies. I have found a new hero. It seems in this day and age live ones are rare and precious, so discovering a new one, even if gone, is a blessing. "It is love and friendship, the sanctity and celebration of our relationships, that not only support a good life, but creates one. Through friendships, we spark and inspire one another's ambitions.". Kristi & Abby Tabby

[Julie Barnard]

Almost finished. Good book.

[Robin Eseny · Rating 3 out of 5]

Excellent collection of essays written in memoriam of Wallace Stegner. It lead me to Stegner's "What I Believe" essay, written for the series by the same name. Another kindred spirit, always a wonderful find.

[Nalani]

http://www.ptreyesbooks.com/

[Josephine Ensign · Rating 2 out of 5]

Lovely photographs of Stegner and some nice tributes, but nothing of particular interest to me in this book.