[Rarebooks] FS: Fine Wallace Stegner Letter on The Big Rock Candy Mountain
Charles Agvent
agvent at erols.com
Thu Jul 2 10:01:07 EDT 2009
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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