The Spectator Bird (31 page)

 

 

 

“The west does not need to explore its myths much further; it has already relied on them too long.”

—Wallace Stegner

 

Wallace Stegner's life stretched from the horse-and-buggy age of the last homestead frontier to the information age on the edge of the Silicon Valley in suburban California. In this magisterial new biography, Jackson J. Benson traces the trajectory of Stegner's prolific and highly influential career as author of endless literary treasures, including the Pulitzer Prize-winning
Angle of Repose
(1971), National Book Award-winning
Spectator Bird
(1976), and the best-selling
Crossing to Safety
(1987), and teacher of Larry McMurtry, Robert Stone, Ken Kesey, and Ivan Doig.

 

Jackson J. Benson is the author of
Hemingway: The Writer's Art of Self-Defense
and
The True Adventures of John Steinbeck, Writer,
winner of the PEN-West U.S.A. award for nonfiction.