February 04, 2005

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Throwing a long shadow

by Robyn Israel

Wallace Stegner loved bourbon, adored Harpo Marx and paused thoughtfully before he spoke. He also saved Dinosaur National Monument by writing a book of short stories.

These are just some of the tidbits people will discover when they visit the Los Altos History Museum, where a new exhibit dedicated to Stegner's life and work is on display. In addition to being a respected novelist, Stegner was a beloved teacher who founded the acclaimed Creative Writing program at Stanford University. He was also a passionate environmentalist who co-founded Committee for Green Foothills and fought to preserve open space on the Peninsula and in other states.

What could have been a dry, academic enterprise is instead a creative look at a man whose love of words and landscape left a legacy, both locally and nationally.

But the installation is not just about dates, books and official papers. Thanks to voice recordings, film presentations and video interviews with his family, friends and colleagues, viewers also learn more about Stegner, who died in 1993.

Look beyond the pictorial timeline on display, and visitors will discover that "Angle of Repose," his Pulitzer Prize-winning novel (1972), was turned into an opera (which closed after five performances at the War Memorial Opera House in San Francisco) and that famed authors Scott Turow and Larry McMurtry were Stegner's students.

"I think it's a remarkably thorough re-visiting of Wally's life and career -- early and late," said Nancy Packer, a Stegner fellow (1959-60) who later became the director of the Creative Writing program at Stanford. "The text and the accompanying pictures tell the whole story very well indeed and are quite handsomely presented. The exhibit does justice to this great man."

Stegner was a prolific author who continued to produce great works -- even in his later years. When he was 58, he wrote "All the Little Live Things," which was awarded the California Book Award Gold Medal by the Commonwealth Club of California in 1967. At the age of 62, Stegner published "Angle of Repose." "Crossing to Safety," his last novel (1987), was nominated for the National Book Critics Circle Award. He kept a full calendar of literary appearances until his death. (he died at the age of 84, from injuries sustained in an automobile accident).

Visitors will even discover a recreation of Stegner's home study with personal artifacts, such as his lamp and a gavel presented to him from the National Parks Advisory Board. There is even a photograph depicting the view of the foothills Stegner saw when he sat at his desk.

"We're really excited about the depth of interest visitors have. Many are repeaters," exhibit co-chair Julie Cummer said. "People reflect. They read. They actually watch a 56-minute video.

The latter is Stephen Fisher's film, "Wallace Stegner: A Writer's Life." Narrated by Robert Redford, it was originally shown on PBS in 1996. Another is a 25-minute piece that originally aired in 1966 on "Telescope," a Canadian program. In it, Stegner reminisced about his Saskatchewan boyhood (1914-20) -- how it left the "deepest engravings" on his psyche, he said -- and how he returned there to do research for "Wolf Willow." Expecting to find the vast prairies of his youth a "barnyard," Stegner was surprised to discover they were still as colossal as he had perceived them.

"Remembering Wallace Stegner" is a 20-minute video that was created especially for the exhibit. Notable locals interviewed include Lois Crozier Hogle (co-founder of Committee for Green Foothills), Ruth Spangenberg, Leo Holub (who photographed the famous print of Stegner wearing his Scandinavian sweater) and Stegner's son, Page, who reminisced about collaborating with his father on a piece about the Rocky Mountains for the "Atlantic Monthly." He submitted a draft to his father, who rewrote substantial portions of the piece.

"I couldn't recognize what I had written. I was a bit annoyed," said Page, an author who now lives in New Mexico. "But I learned a lot about writing and about non-fiction."

The timeline is divided into eight panels, beginning with Stegner's frontier childhood (1909-1921) and his nine-year-stay in Salt Lake City (1921-1930), which gave him the sense of community and belonging his early childhood lacked.

"We decided to present his biography as a series of stories that we thought were important," said Cummer, who chaired the exhibit with Nan Geschke.

As an example, Cummer referred to an essay Stegner wrote about his mother in "Where the Bluebird Sings to the Lemonade Springs: Living and Writing in the West" (1992). In it, he praised his mother for all the sacrifices she made during his nomadic youth, when "the family was in constant motion." Born in Iowa in 1909, Stegner lived in North Dakota, Montana, Washington and Saskatchewan before settling in Utah.

"I was not intelligent enough to comprehend the example you had been setting for me, until it was too late to do anything but hold your hand while you died," Stegner wrote in "Contemporary Authors Autobiography Series."

The following panels (1930-1939 and 1939-1945) delve into Stegner's education, marriage and early career. After graduating from the University of Utah, Stegner earned a master's and Ph.D. from the University of Iowa. It was there that he met Mary Stuart Page, the woman he would love for the rest of his life. They married six months after their first meeting and would remain "valentines" until his death.

"They were adorable," Crozier Hogle recalled of the couple, who lived in Los Altos Hills.

A stint on the East Coast followed, with stays at Middlebury College, the University of Wisconsin and Harvard. It was at Middlebury that Stegner became involved with the Bread Loaf Writers Conference, a celebrated summer program for authors. There he met and befriended Robert Frost, who would remain a lifelong friend and influential force.

"(At Bread Loaf) for the first time in my life I was moving among people who really rattled my brain," Stegner recalled.

Bread Loaf also inspired Stegner to establish the Creative Writing program at Stanford, which attracted aspiring poets, novelists and playwrights. Many were returning GIs, who were thirsty for knowledge.

"Instead of green 19 and 20-year-olds, my classes were full of mature, highly motivated men and women with hard experience, serious minds and an urge to catch up lost time. Teaching had never been, and has not been since, the pure pleasure that it was in those years," Stegner recalled.

When Stegner's widow viewed the exhibit, she was very moved, Cummer said, by the sight of her husband's Scandinavian sweater, which along with his walking sticks, glasses and fedora, were encased in a glass display. She was also moved by the simulation of a seminar room on the second floor of Green Library, where Stegner would meet with his students. It includes a photograph of the author with his students (a rarity, as few such photographs exist, Cummer said) and photographs of prominent fellows, including Nancy Packer, Ernest Gaines and Larry McMurtry.

"He stayed in contact with his students," Cummer said. "He would write congratulatory notes. It was important for him to encourage them in that way."

Packer, now a Stanford professor emeritus, recalled her mentor as having "more integrity than just about anyone I ever knew."

"One thing I'm sure Wally was asked dozens of times is, 'Can creative writing be taught?' I never asked him the question," Packer wrote in "Geography of Hope." I knew the answer was yes because he and Dick (Scowcroft) taught me. They didn't teach me genius, alas, but they taught me craft. They could word an idea or a criticism exactly to fit the student so that we could incorporate it, make it part of our own creative process, and thus take the talent we had, however frail, and craft it into some kind of form."

The remaining panels chronicle Stegner's career at Stanford, from his early years (1945-1950) to the tumultuous final years (1965-1971), when Stegner found the excesses of the '60s in sharp conflict with the values he believed in and lived by. The political turmoil that erupted on campus -- students used the unrest over the Vietnam War to disrupt classes and destroy property -- played a major decision in Stegner's decision to retire early.

"I don't really belong in the 20th century," Stegner told biographer Jackson Benson. "My demands upon life are 19th-century demands rather than 20th."

What: "Wallace Stegner: Throwing a Long Shadow."

Where: Los Altos History Museum, 51 South San Antonio Road in Los Altos.

When: Through June 12. Regular viewing hours are Thursday through Sunday from noon to 4 p.m.

Cost: Admission is free.

Info: Please call (650) 948-9427 or visit www.losaltoshistory.org.

Upcoming events:

Feb. 10: Stanford professor emeritus Nancy Packer will talk about Stegner from 7:30 to 9 p.m. at the museum. The event is free to Los Altos History Museum members; $10 for non-members.

March 1: Miriam Marr will lead a discussion about "All the Live Little Things" from 2 to 3:30 p.m. at the Hillview Community Center Room, 97 Hillview Ave. in Los Altos. The event is free and open to the public.

March 9: Miriam Marr will lead a discussion about "All the Live Little Things" at 7:30 p.m. at the Los Altos Library's Community Program Room, 13 South San Antonio Road in Los Altos. The event is free and open to the public.

March 16: Professor Ken Fields of Stanford's Creative Writing Program will lecture and lead a discussion about "All the Live Little Things" at 7:30 at the Los Altos Youth center, 1 North San Antonio Road. The event is free and open to the public.

April 14: The museum will present Stephen Fisher's film, "Wallace Stegner: A Writer's Life," from 7:30 to 8:30 p.m.

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