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A review by blacklake
Collected Stories of Wallace Stegner by Wallace Stegner
4.0
[b:Collected Stories of Wallace Stegner|1349898|Collected Stories of Wallace Stegner|Wallace Stegner|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1251935012s/1349898.jpg|1339567] is a large collection of short stories that largely concentrate on the American West in the first half of the 20th century. I’ve read a couple of [a:Wallace Stegner|157779|Wallace Stegner|http://photo.goodreads.com/authors/1252177524p2/157779.jpg]’s novels—[b:Angle of Repose|3359|Angle of Repose|Wallace Stegner|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1163437175s/3359.jpg|283706], and [b:Crossing to Safety|9820|Crossing to Safety|Wallace Stegner|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1166065576s/9820.jpg|1488871], which I really responded to, and knew that with this collection I’d be settling in for a few weeks’ appreciative and thoughtful reading. I was also interested by the note at the beginning that let me know that some of this material made it into novels later on, so I was happy, too, to be getting a taste of his other books. I wasn’t prepared for the harshness to many of these stories, and at times I found it very difficult to pick up the book again. It is hard to read these kinds of things, over and over, and it occurs to me that it is one thing to read a story like this in a magazine, and another some long time after, and quite another to read them one after another in succession without a break. If I had known it would be like this, I would, I think, not have read them this way. So yet again I find myself grateful for not knowing ahead of time what I was in for.
I love how the people talk. So many of them talk like people I know, or people in family stories I’ve heard. My dad grew up in Montana, and I grew up in the Bay Area of northern California, and I like hearing about places like these, and others I’m not so familiar with. I like the new words I learn, especially the ones I gradually get a feel for, and I like knowing how people work. It’s amazing how little you ever know about the jobs you don’t do, and no matter how many times we have the small conversation about what we do, it never comes out as clearly as it does in these stories. These are people I remember, in the end, and the relationships between wives and husbands, and fathers and sons are real ones, and it’s amazing to me how Stegner seems to be on everyone’s side without ever moving from one position to another. It’s wonderful how substantial the stories are—like some kind of rich ore he’s got, where he only has to point out a vein or two, and he lets you find the rest.
I love how the people talk. So many of them talk like people I know, or people in family stories I’ve heard. My dad grew up in Montana, and I grew up in the Bay Area of northern California, and I like hearing about places like these, and others I’m not so familiar with. I like the new words I learn, especially the ones I gradually get a feel for, and I like knowing how people work. It’s amazing how little you ever know about the jobs you don’t do, and no matter how many times we have the small conversation about what we do, it never comes out as clearly as it does in these stories. These are people I remember, in the end, and the relationships between wives and husbands, and fathers and sons are real ones, and it’s amazing to me how Stegner seems to be on everyone’s side without ever moving from one position to another. It’s wonderful how substantial the stories are—like some kind of rich ore he’s got, where he only has to point out a vein or two, and he lets you find the rest.