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Typewriter of the moment: Wallace Stegner

June 4, 2010 2:00 am


Wallace Stegner and his typewriter - KUED image

Wallace Stegner and his typewriter – KUED image (via What Fresh Hell Is This?)

Wallace Stegner's books, KUED imageI’ve lived with Wallace Stegner’s work since I first got to the University of Utah.  Stegner was the biographer of Bernard DeVoto, whose works I read in a couple of different classes.

More important, Stegner wrote about the West and wild spaces and places, and how to save them — and why they should be saved.

Salt Lake City’s and the University of Utah’s KUED produced a program on Stegner in 2009 — he graduated from and taught at Utah — a film that wasn’t broadcast on KERA here in Dallas, so far as I can find..

In conjunction with the University of Utah, KUED is honoring alumni Wallace Stegner – the “Dean” of western writers. WALLACE STEGNER, a biographical film portrait, celebrates the 2009 centennial of his birth. Wallace Stegner was an acclaimed writer, conservationist, and teacher. He became one of America’s greatest writers. His books include the Pulitzer Prize-winning “Angle of Repose” and “Beyond the Hundredth Meridian.” His “The Wilderness Letter” became the conscience of the conservation movement. Wallace Stegner mentored a generation’s greatest writers including Ken Kesey, Edward Abbey, and Larry McMurtry. Former Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor was a student.

It’s difficult to tell from the photo, but his typewriter here looks a lot like a Royal.

Have you seen the film?

More:

Spread the word; friends don't allow friends to repeat history.

Posted by Ed Darrell

Categories: Biography, Books, Environmental protection, History, Literature, National Parks, Technology, Typewriters, Utah

Tags: , , , , , , , ,

5 Responses to “Typewriter of the moment: Wallace Stegner”

  1. Thank you, Mr. Weiss!

    News and samples of the music at Wayne Horvitz’s website:
    http://www.waynehorvitz.net/projects/joe_hill.html

    Wayne Horvitz’s speech on the oratorio, and why Joe Hill as a subject:
    http://www.waynehorvitz.net/speech/joe_hill_essay.html

    Has anyone listened? What do you think?

    Horvitz said:

    As Paul Magid, my collaborator on this project has consistently pointed out, the question was and still is, “What is fair?” Even if we, for the sake of argument, want to say that Marx didn’t solve the problem, it is still important to remember how well he asked the question. Everyone agrees that there is such a thing as too little money, but is there such a thing as too much money? If we believe in checks and balances as it applies to power, and money is power, then what kind of culture reveres and aspires almost universally to those that have the most? In many ways this is more prevalent today than in Joe Hill’s time. If you asked most Americans in his day what they desired, I imagine many would say, “A home, a living wage, and a decent work day “. Now many citizens, even at the lowest ends of the economy, might just say they want to be rich – very rich – with no conception that one person’s gain has to be another’s loss at least to some extent. This line of thinking brought me back to something Gregory Bateson said in a lecture class I took in college. Not an economist or a political scientist, Bateson was a pioneer in combining cybernetics, anthropology, biology, and the early field of “ecology.” He also made a major contribution to the understanding of schizophrenia with his “double-bind” theory. (That sure is apt right about now!) One day he turned to the class and simply said, ” All properly functioning systems have a concept of too much and too little. Too hot/too cold; too dry/too wet; too empty/too full; even (in art, let’s say,) too clever/not clever enough.” So, how balanced a culture can we have that has no concept of “too much money?”

    Now I know the ironies. Just for starters, this piece was funded first and foremost by the Rockefeller Foundation, and I am eternally grateful to them. In fact, the list goes on. That is how it works – some people make a whole lot more money than others and some of them are generous with it, or their children are or whatever. But the big questions remain, does anyone really think the system isn’t stacked, that anyone can just work hard and get the same success or access as anyone else, that all you need to do is ” Believe I can Fly,” that anyone can grow up to be president. Why do cops and teachers get paid crap in a country whose greatest concerns are supposed to be security and no child left behind? Why is “taxes” the dirtiest word in the English language while people complain when an ambulance takes more than 2 minutes to arrive or there are potholes in their streets? (Excuse me, I digress!) Does not, in fact, the structure itself have plenty to do with the course of people’s lives?

    Which brings me back to Joe Hill and the IWW. In my copy of the 19th Edition of the Little Red Book, on pg. 53, right below Joe Hill’s Last Will are the following 2 questions:

    Why should any worker be without the necessities of life when ten men can produce enough for a hundred?

    Why does a short work day and a long pay always go together?

    Well I admit, 3 years ago when I set out on this journey, I appreciated these remarks, but I also viewed them with the sophisticated eye of the cynic. I was too smart to think it was that simple.

    Not any more. Here is what I feel now. “Goddamn good questions, I’d sure wish someone could give me a straight answer for once.”

    I hope you enjoy the music.

    Like

    By Ed Darrell on January 8, 2011 at 7:03 am

  2. Wayne Horvitz more recently created, with Paul Magid, an evening-length through-composed oratorio about labor martyr Joe Hill based partly on Stegner’s “The Preacher and The Slave”…performed only twice, not likely to enter the canon (of jazz, classical, Americana crossovers) but available on cd and features performances by Bill Frisell, Danny Barnes, Robyn Holcomb and Rinde Eckert, names which resonate in certain sometimes overlapping music and arts circles.

    Like

    By Mark Weiss on January 7, 2011 at 9:11 pm

  3. […] Typewriter of the moment: Wallace Stegner « Millard Fillmore's Bathtub […]

    Like

    By Soft Air Thompson Typewriter AEG | Metal Airsoft Guns on June 4, 2010 at 9:53 pm

  4. Didn’t know that (further proof that I’m among “most people”). 1976 found me well behind enemy lines in what would soon become known as the Sagebrush Rebellion, though I did spend nearly six weeks in Marin County at the end of the year . . .

    The libretto is available, but I haven’t found a recording yet. It was broadcast live, so there may be hope.

    I wonder if it’s good to listen to. Did you see it or hear it?

    Like

    By Ed Darrell on June 4, 2010 at 11:08 am

  5. Most people are unaware that Angle of Repose was used as the basis of an opera composed by Andrew Imbrie. It premiered at the San Francisco Opera (which commissioned it) in 1976. It obviously was not successful enough to make it into the repertory. Even the SF Opera hasn’t revived it.

    Like

    By Zeno on June 4, 2010 at 8:11 am

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