Collected Stories of Wallace Stegner.
New York: Random House, 1990. First Printing of the First US Edition. A Fine tight copy in a Fine unclipped dust jacket. These 31 stories record much of the cultural climate of 20th-century America, its West in particular, constituting, not an autobiography, but "a sort of personal record." As combined here, the tales are a window onto a vivid American past that is as focused as a Norman Rockwell painting, although far more astringent and hardly as wholesome. Settings range from Stegner's native Canada to Utah, California and Vermont--all memorable places in the author's life. The stories are not arranged chronologically: Stegner's dark, voyeuristic peek into the lives of women awaiting letters from men serving in WW II gives way to an account of a bloodthirsty boyhood on the hot, flat frontier of a Saskatchewan farm. Best of all is the slicing wit of "Field Guide to the Western Birds," in which a curmudgeon acidly comments on the petulant antics of a would-be virtuoso. Several of the stories have been reshaped and interpolated into such novels as Wolf Willow and The Big Rock Candy Mountain. Item #27022
ISBN: 0394584090
Price: $95.00