[Rarebooks] FS: Superb Wallace Stegner Letter on his Masterpiece: "I did mean it to be the Great American Novel"

[Charles Agvent]

 From our latest Internet Catalogue which contains a truly amazing array 
of TWENTIETH CENTURY LITERARY MANUSCRIPTS, LETTERS, AND PHOTOGRAPHS, a 
total of 90 items, many quite scarce and remarkable as well as revealing 
of the creative process and personal lives of the subjects.  It includes 
a number of archives, some rather substantial, including Sherwood 
Anderson, W. H. Auden (SOLD), Robert Lowell, Norman Mailer (SOLD), John 
Masefield (SOLD), John O'Hara, Clifford Odets, Maxwell Perkins, E. H. 
Shepard, and Philip Whalen, among others.  We also have similar material 
from previous catalogues that can be found with our search engine on our 
web site:
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STEGNER, Wallace.     TYPED LETTER SIGNED (TLS) with  superb  content
regarding THE BIG ROCK CANDY MOUNTAIN. [@1943].  Single-spaced,  1-1/2
pages, @700+ words to Mrs. [Gordon] Allport, wife of the psychologist,
with  numerous pencil notes in the margin, likely by Mrs. Allport.  An
important,  long letter discussing the themes of Stegner's best  known
book, THE BIG ROCK CANDY MOUNTAIN.  In part: "I'm a little overwhelmed
at  being  put even within shouting distance of Sigrid  Undset....  If
the  wanderer  is  a  Norwegian theme, tied up with  Odin,  how  about
Odysseus  and  Penelope?...   I admit that the theme is not especially
American  if  one  considers only American fiction; if  one  considers
American  life,  and what it has been almost since Plymouth Rock,  the
wanderer  theme  seems  to me so typically American that it's  a  holy
wonder  the Great American Novel hasn't long since been written on it.
The  whole  frontier imposed it--and it imposed also, because  of  the
very  nature  of the virtues that fitted the frontier and did not  fit
civilized  living, and because of the reduction of family tradition to
its  bare  rudiments, the incompleteness of the pioneer life  and  the
necessity  of its being supplemented by several generations which move
gradually toward sounder and more stable values....   I did mean it to
shift  its  mood and its values and its style, I did mean it  to  have
layers  of meaning, I did mean it to be representative in a way of the
whole  American frontier experience, I did mean it to be profound  and
universal and wonderful and the Great American Novel."  Fold marks and
some light wrinkling.  Very Good                              $1500.00

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CHARLES AGVENT
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