| Description |
Wallace Stegner emerged as a literary figure at a critical juncture in the history of the American West. No longer a vast territory of outposts surrounded by "hostile" Indians, the West was still trapped between its mythical past, its present made unsure by economic and cultural exploitation and individualism, and it's future, dependant on the ability of Westerner's to let go of their wandering past and develop a sense of place. Traditional Western history and literature, represented by historians like Frederick Jackson Turner and William Smythe, and by novels such as Owen Wister's landmark The virginian, have created a view of the West separate from Western reality. This view of the West as a frontier has retarded the development of a stable regional culture. Represented by the novels The Big Rock Candy Mountain, Angle of Repose, and Recapitulation, Stegner's writing portrayed a West caught up in a struggle between competing human impulses. The raiding impulse of those seeking fortune and position by moving from place to place, exploiting the boom/bust economy of the West, was juxtaposed with the impulse to settle in one place and establish roots. Caught up in between were characters like Stegner himself, whose wandering past left him feeling rootless. ii In his essays Stegner revealed overtly his intention to reshape Western history and literature. He held the view of a region floating in midair: amputated from its history and thus subject to whatever winds might blow in. This view of the West has been exemplified by its curious modern history, in which it grew into an economic power while seeming to remain a cultural outpost and a center of tempestuous politics. Stegner's message carried implications beyond the West. It was Turner's hypothesis that the entire nation had been shaped by the frontier. So, too, did the dangerous continuation of exploitation and individualism affect the whole nation. The new genre of literature and the new perspective of history that Stegner pioneered have taken roots in the work of other novelists and historians. This intellectual movement has carried with it Stegner's hope that their exists in people a hunger for roots and tradition that will eventually supersede the raiding impulse. |
