Wallace Stegner - Böcker

An iconic novel of the American West — a deeply moving narrative of one family and the traditions of the pastLyman Ward is a retired professor of history and author of books about the Western frontier, who returns to his ancestral home of Grass Valley, California, in the Sierra Nevada. Living with a debilitating bone disease, he embarks on a search of monumental proportions, as he strives to rediscover the life of his grandmother – now long dead – who made her own journey to Grass Valley nearly a hundred years earlier. But as he explores his grandmother's history, Lyman's great quest also leads him deep into the dark shadows of his own life.Winner of the 1972 Pulitzer Prize for fiction, Angle of Repose is Wallace Stegner’s masterpiece and a fascinating glimpse into frontier-era America.With an Introduction by JACKSON J. BENSON

Literary agent Joe Allston, the central character of Stegner's novel All the Little Live Things, is now retired and, in his own words, 'just killing time until time gets around to killing me.' His parents and his only son are long dead, leaving him with neither ancestors nor descendants, tradition nor ties. His job, trafficking the talent of others, had not been his choice. He passes through life as a spectator. A postcard from an old friend causes Allston to return to the journals of a trip he and his wife had taken years before, a journey to his mother's birthplace, where he'd sought a link with the past. The memories of that trip, both grotesque and poignant, move through layers of time and meaning, and reveal that Joe Allston isn't quite spectator enough.Wallace Stegner was the author of, among other works of fiction, Remembering Laughter (1973); The Big Rock Candy Mountain (1943); Joe Hill (1950); All the Little Live Things (1967, Commonwealth Club Gold Medal); A Shooting Star (1961); Angle of Repose (1971, Pulitzer Prize); Recapitulation (1979); Crossing to Safety (1987); and Collected Stories (1990). His nonfiction includes Beyond the Hundredth Meridian (1954); Wolf Willow (1963); The Sound of Mountain Water (essays, 1969); The Uneasy Chair: A Biography of Bernard deVoto (1964); American Places (with Page Stegner, 1981); and Where the Bluebird Sings to the Lemonade Springs: Living and Writing in the West (1992). Three short stories have won O.Henry prizes, and in 1980 he received the Robert Kirsch Award from the Los Angeles Times for his lifetime literary achievements.

A novel of the friendships and woes of two couples, which tells the story of their lives in lyrical, evocative prose by one of the finest American writers of the late 20th century.When two young couples meet for the first time during the Great Depression, they quickly find they have much in common: Charity Lang and Sally Morgan are both pregnant, while their husbands Sid and Larry both have jobs in the English department at the University of Wisconsin. Immediately a lifelong friendship is born, which becomes increasingly complex as they share decades of love, loyalty, vulnerability and conflict. Written from the perspective of the aging Larry Morgan,Crossing to Safety is a beautiful and deeply moving exploration of the struggle of four people to come to terms with the trials and tragedies of everyday life.With an introduction by Jane Smiley.Wallace Stegner (1909-1993) was the author of, among other novels, Remembering Laughter, 1937; A Shooting Star, 1961; Angle of Repose (Pulitzer Prize), 1971; The Spectator Bird (National Book award), 1977; Recapitulation, 1979. Three of his short stories have won O.Henry prizes, and in 1980 he received the Robert Kirsch award from the Los Angeles Times for his lifetime literary achievements. His collected stories were published in 1990.Jane Smiley is the author of many novels and works of non-fiction, including, most recently, "Thirteen Ways of Looking at the Novel", about the history and anatomy of the novel. Her most recent novel is "Good Faith". She won the Pulitzer Prize in 1992 for "A Thousand Acres", and was shortlisted for The Orange Prize in 2001 for Horse Heaven.

Bruce Mason returns to Salt Lake City not for his aunt's funeral, but to encounter the place he fled in bitterness forty-five years ago. A successful statesman and diplomat, Mason had buried his awkward childhood and sealed himself off from the thrills and torments of adolescence to become a figure who commanded international respect. Both the realities of the present recede in the face of ghosts of his past. As he makes the perfunctory arrangements for the funeral, we enter with him on an intensely personal and painful inner pilgrimage: we meet the father who darkened his childhood, the mother whose support was both redeeming and embarrassing, the friend who drew him into the respectable world of which he so craved to be a part, and the woman he nearly married. In this profound book, the sequel to the bestselling The Big Rock Candy Mountain, Wallace Stegner has drawn an intimate portrait of a man understanding how his life has been shaped by experiences seemingly remote and inconsequential.

Written during World War II and its immediate aftermath, the eighteen stories of The Women on the Wall move from women to war and back again, but it is the women who remain central. There are Alma, a war bride who runs a farm better than the neighbor men; Lucy, a former WAAF, working through college; Tamsen, who keeps her husband drunk so she can do as she pleases; and the women on the wall, who, with nothing to do but wait for their husbands to return from the war, find their private consolations. To these stories Wallace Stegner brings the same skill and thoughtfulness that won him the National Book Award for The Spectator Bird

A New England village, untouched by history since the American Revolution, is the unquiet arena containing, but just barely, the aloof natives and the summer residents. Their paths cross, happily or disastrously, in a book that seems too real to be fiction. As Wallace Stegner writes, the conflict on this particular frontier "has been reproduced in an endlessly changing pattern all over the United States."

Pulitzer Prize-winning author Wallace Stegner tells about a thousand-mile migration marked by hardship and sudden death—but unique in American history for its purpose, discipline, and solidarity. Other Bison Books by Wallace Stegner include Mormon Country, Recapitulation, Second Growth, and Women on the Wall.

Where others saw only sage, a salt lake, and a great desert, the Mormons saw their “lovely Deseret,” a land of lilacs, honeycombs, poplars, and fruit trees. Unwelcome in Ohio, Missouri, and Illinois, they migrated to the dry lands between the Rockies and the Sierra Nevada to establish Mormon country, a wasteland made green. Like the land the Mormons settled, their habits stood in stark contrast to the frenzied recklessness of the American West. Opposed to the often prodigal individualism of the West, Mormons lived in closely knit – some say ironclad – communities. The story of Mormon country is one of self-sacrifice and labor spent in the search for an ideal in the most forbidding territory of the American West.Richard W. Etulain provides a new introduction to this edition.

This Is Dinosaur was first published in 1955, in the midst of a bitter controversy over the proposed construction of dams at Echo Park. The outcome of the controversy--a congressional vote to prohibit the dams--"set in brass the principle that any part of the national park system should be immune from any sort of intrusion and damage," wrote Wallace Stegner in the 1985 edition of the book. Reprinted with new color photographs, This Is Dinosaur still stands as a classic introduction to the historic, scenic, archeological, and biological resources of the Monument by an impressive array of writers.Contains the following essays:·"The Marks of Human Passage" by Wallace Stegner·"Geological Exhibit" by Eliot Backwelder·"The Natural World of Dinosaur" by Olaus Murie and Joseph W. Penfold·"The Ancients of the Canyons" by Robert Lister·"Fast Water" by Otis "Dock" Marston·"A Short Look at Eden" by David Bradley·"The National Park Idea" by Alfred A. Knopf

»Romankonst när den är som allra bäst« – Hanna Jedvik, P1 Kultur

»Strålande roman om nära vänskap« - Dan Sjögren, Hallands Nyheter

»Det är en vacker, vindlande skrift han lämnat efter sig. Delvis självbiografisk och så skickligt disponerad att jag blir alldeles till mig. Prosan utkarvad liksom i eneträ av en åldrad slöjdares hand.«– Jonas Gren, Helsingborgs Dagblad

»Romanen är elegisk, intellektuell och innerlig och erbjuder en berättelse om vänskap som är starkt berörande.« – Ingrid Bosseldal, Göteborgsposten

»det är på många sätt en underbar roman: rolig, rörande och med fantastiskt levande personskildringar« – Therese Bohman, Expressen

»en roman att luta sitt trötta huvud mot, att sjunka ner i som i ett varmt bad där stormen utanför bara hörs som en viskning« – Jonas Thente, DN

»en stillsam och samtidigt nästan rusigt hyllning till kärlek och gemenskap« – Alexander Skantze, Tidningen Vi

”Vad jag bevarat” är Wallace Stegners magnum opus. Den utkom 1987, då han var nästan åttio år gammal, femtio år efter att han debuterat som författare. I denna roman om två par, fyra vänner, når de motiv han intresserade sig för genom sitt författarskap sin fulländning.Berättarrösten tillhör Larry Morgan, en åldrad författare som tillsammans med sin hustru Sally har rest från New Mexico till ett sommarhus i Vermont. Stugan tillhör vännerna Sid och Charity; den senare är svårt sjuk och i väntan på att hon ska somna in får de två parens trettio år tillsammans nytt siktdjup. Larry och Sid träffas första gången 1938 i Wisconsin, när båda är unga universitets lärare i litteratur. De finner varandra trots sina olikheter, liksom Charity och Sally. Där Charity är en rastlös natur, besatt av framgång, liv och rörelse, är Sally en re!ekterande person som så småningom drabbas av polio och hamnar i rullstol. Det handlar om klass och strävan, förlust och försakelse, och de starka och dunkla krafter som rör sig mellan vänner och älskande under ett helt liv.

WALLACE STEGNER (1909–1993) är ett av den amerikanska litteraturens stora namn. Förutom ett antal älskade romaner, där ”Angle of Repose” som fick Pulitzerpriset 1972 bör nämnas, skrev han essäistik, kritik och biografier. Stegner föddes i Iowa och var en västerns epiker med ett brinnande miljöengagemang. Han ledde i tjugofem år författarutbildningen vid Harvarduniversitetet.

»En enastående bok … Ingenting i dessa liv sjabblas bort eller förslösas; lidandet blir en berikande välsignelse och själva livet en erfarenhet fylld av ljus.« DORIS GRUMBACH, NEW YORK TIMES (1987)

Översättning: Eva Johansson