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Angle of Repose (Paperback)
Wallace Stegner; Introduction by Jackson J. Benson
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R380
R297
Discovery Miles 2 970
Save R83 (22%)
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Ships in 5 - 10 working days
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The novel tells the story of Lyman Ward, a retired professor of
history and author of books about the Western frontier, who returns
to his ancestral home in the Sierra Nevada. Wheelchair-bound with a
crippling bone disease, Ward embarks nonetheless on a search to
rediscover his grandmother, no long dead, who made her own journey
to Grass Valley nearly a hundred years earlier.
An American masterpiece and iconic novel of the West--a deeply
moving narrative of one family and the traditions of our national
past.
Lyman Ward is a retired professor of history, recently confined to
a wheelchair by a crippling bone disease and dependant on others
for his every need. Amid the chaos of 1970s counterculture he
retreats to his ancestral home of Grass Valley, California, to
write the biography of his grandmother: an elegant and headstrong
artist and pioneer who, together with her engineer husband, made
her own journey through the hardscrabble West nearly a hundred
years before. In discovering her story he excavates his own,
probing the shadows of his experience and the America that has come
of age around him.
Called a “magnificently crafted story . . . brimming with wisdom” by Howard Frank Mosher in The Washington Post Book World, Crossing to Safety has, since its publication in 1987, established itself as one of the greatest and most cherished American novels of the twentieth century. Tracing the lives, loves, and aspirations of two couples who move between Vermont and Wisconsin, it is a work of quiet majesty, deep compassion, and powerful insight into the alchemy of friendship and marriage.
Bo Mason, his wife, Elsa, and their two boys live a transient life
of poverty and despair. Drifting from town to town and from state
to state, the violent, ruthless Bo seeks out his fortune - in the
hotel business, in new farmland and eventually, in illegal
rum-running through the treacherous back roads of the American
Northwest. In this affecting narrative, Wallace Stegner portrays
more than thirty years in the life of the Mason family as they
struggle to survive during the lean years of the early twentieth
century. Wallace Stegner was the author of, among other works of
fiction, Remembering Laughter (1973); Joe Hill (1950); All the
Little Live Things (1967, Commonwealth Club Gold Medal); A Shooting
Star (1961); Angle of Repose (1971, Pulitzer Prize); The Spectator
Bird (1976, National Book Award); 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.
"He was precocious, alert, intelligent, brash, challenging,
irreverent, literary, self-conscious, insecure, often
ostentatiously crude, sometimes insufferable", Wallace Stegner says
of Bernard DeVoto, who, in the words of a childhood acquaintance,
was also "the ugliest, most disagreeable boy you ever saw". Between
the disagreeable boy and the literary lion, a life unfolds, full of
comedy and drama, as told in this definitive biography, which
brings together two exemplary American men of letters.
Born within a dozen years of one another in small towns in Utah,
both men were, as Stegner writes, "novelists by intention, teachers
by necessity, and historians by the sheer compulsion of the region
that shaped us". From this unique vantage point, Stegner follows
DeVoto's path from his beloved but not particularly congenial Utah
to the even less congenial Harvard where, galvanized by the
disregard of the aesthetes around him, he commenced a career that,
over three and a half decades, would embrace nearly every sort of
literary enterprise: from modestly successful novels to
prize-winning Western histories, from the editorship of the
Saturday Review to a famously combative, long-running monthly
column in Harper's, "The Easy Chair". A nuanced portrait of a
stormy literary life, Stegner's biography of DeVoto is also a
window on the tumultuous world of American letters in the twentieth
century.
Winner of three O. Henry Awards, the Commonwealth Gold Medal, the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award, and the Kirsch Award for Lifetime Literary Achievement, Wallace Stegner was a literary giant. In Marking the Sparrow's Fall, the first collection of Stegner's work published since his death, Stegner's son Page has collected, annotated, and edited fifteen essays that have never before been published in any edition, as well as a little-known novella and several of Stegner's best-known essays on the American West. Seventy-five percent of the contents of this body of work is published here for the first time.
Sabrina Castro is a wealthy, attractive woman married to an older
society physician who no loonger fulfills her dreams. An almost
accidental misstep leads her down the slow descent of moral
disintegration. How she comes to terms with her life is the theme
of this absorbing personal drama by the National Book Award-winning
author of The Spectator Bird.
Set in 1885, The Ox-Bow Incident is a searing and realistic portrait of frontier life and mob violence in the American West. First published in 1940, it focuses on the lynching of three innocent men and the tragedy that ensues when law and order are abandoned. The result is an emotionally powerful, vivid, and unforgettable re-creation of the Western novel, which Clark transmuted into a universal story about good and evil, individual and community, justice and human nature. As Wallace Stegner writes, [Clark's] theme was civilization, and he recorded, indelibly, its first steps in a new country.
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American Places (Paperback)
Wallace Stegner, Page Stegner
1
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R415
R367
Discovery Miles 3 670
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A book about America by one of the greatest writers of the American
West This book is an attempt, by sampling, to say something about
how the American people and the American land have interacted, how
they have shaped one another; what patterns of life, with what
chances of continuity, have arisen out of the confrontations
between an unformed society and a virgin continent. Perhaps it is
less a book about the American land than some ruminationsabout the
making of America. . . . We are the unfinished product of a long
becoming. --from American Places For more than seventy years,
Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the
English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin
Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout
history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series
to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes
by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as
up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.
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.
Wallace Stegner founded the acclaimed Stanford Writing Program—a program whose alumni include such literary luminaries as Larry McMurtry, Robert Stone, and Raymond Carver. Here Lynn Stegner brings together eight of Stegner's previously uncollected essays—including four never-before-published pieces—on writing fiction and teaching creative writing. In this unique collection he addresses every aspect of fiction writing—from the writer's vision to his or her audience, from the use of symbolism to swear words, from the mystery of the creative process to the recognizable truth it seeks finally to reveal. His insights will benefit anyone interested in writing fiction or exploring ideas about fiction's role in the broader culture.
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Crossing to Safety (Paperback)
Wallace Stegner; Introduction by Jane Smiley
1
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R302
R247
Discovery Miles 2 470
Save R55 (18%)
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Ships in 9 - 15 working days
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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.
Wallace Stegner weaves together fiction and nonfiction, history and impressions, childhood remembrance and adult reflections in this unusual portrait of his boyhood. Set in Cypress Hills in southern Saskatchewan, where Stegner's family homesteaded from 1914 to 1920, Wolf Willow brings to life both the pioneer community and the magnificent landscape that surrounds it. This Twentieth-Century Classics edition includes a new introductory essay by Page Stegner.
Filled with intelligence and wit, this account follows Joe Allston,
a retired literary agent, as he reflects on the transcendental
aspects of his life with his wife Ruth. The arrival of a postcard
from an old friend reminds him of the journals he kept during a
long-ago trip to his mother's Danish hometown. The memories of that
trip--both grotesque and poignant--awaken feelings and lead him to
confront long neglected questions while revealing that he has not
quite passed through life as a mere spectator. "Llena de
inteligencia e ingenio, este relato sigue a Joe Allston, un agente
literario retirado, mientras reflexiona sobre los aspectos
trascendentales de su vida con su esposa, Ruth. La llegada de una
postal de un viejo amigo le recuerda del diario que escribio
durante un viaje hace anos a la ciudad natal de su madre danesa.
Los recuerdos de ese viaje--tanto grotescos como
conmovedores--despiertan sentimientos y lo llevan a enfrentarse a
preguntas que se han cuidado sin contestar por mucho tiempo
mientras revelan que el no ha pasado por la vida como un simple
espectador."
When two young couples meet during the Great Depression they begin
a life-long friendship. From the very beginning they have a lot in
common: Charity Lang and Sally Morgan are expecting their first
child, and their husbands Sid and Larry are literature professors
at the University of Wisconsin. But their relationship becomes more
complex as they share decades of loyalty, love, weakness, and
disagreements. Thirty-four years after the beginning of this
friendship, the Morgans visit their friends' summer home in Vermont
for what they know will be their last weekend with Charity. During
this visit Larry remembers all their years of friendship, but more
importantly than a retelling of past events, this reflection on
their shared pasts offers a profound insight into love and
friendship, into the attempts of four people to overcome life's
trials and tribulations. "Cuando dos jovenes parejas se conocen
durante la Gran Depresion surge entre ellas una amistad que durara
toda la vida. Son muchas las cosas que inicialmente comparten:
Charity Lang y Sally Morgan estan esperando su primer hijo, y sus
maridos Sid y Larry son profesores de Literatura en la Universidad
de Wisconsin. Pero su relacion se va haciendo mas compleja a medida
que comparten decadas de lealtad, amor, fragilidad y desacuerdos.
Treinta y cuatro anos mas tarde del inicio de esta amistad, los
Morgan visitan la casa de veraneo de sus amigos en Vermont para el
que saben sera su ultimo fin de semana junto a Charity. Durante esa
visita Larry rememora todos sus anos de amistad, pero por encima
del relato de los hechos late una profunda reflexion sobre el amor
y la amistad, sobre los intentos de cuatro personas por hacer
frente a las tribulaciones de la vida."
Louis Tikas was a union organizer killed in the battle between
striking coal miners and state militia in Ludlow, Colorado, in
1914. In "Buried Unsung" he stands for a whole generation of
immigrant workers who, in the years before World War I, found
themselves caught between the realities of industrial America and
their aspirations for a better life.
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." "Wallace Stegner's story about a rural community is
told with subtle restraint in a style which is often poetic and
always sensitive."-Chicago Sun Book Week "Incisive, restrained
character delineation reminiscent of Willa Cather. Strongly
recommended."-Library Journal "Second Growth . . . is a creation of
remarkable penetration and skill. Its small, accurate touches build
up to a full and firm whole. Its objectivity, its air of knowledge
and judgment, are accompanied by an almost lyrical, delicately
restrained tenderness. Its prose is disciplined, sensitive and
luminous."-New York Times
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"
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