Saturday, August 25, 2012

BIG ROCK CANDY—NO CUSTARD PIE


I’m in the midst of reading The Big Rock Candy Mountain, Wallace Stegner’s big, sprawling, beautiful novel, which was published in 1943, when Stegner was thirty-four years old. I’ve been reading this book for a couple of weeks now, and I’ll still be reading it a couple of weeks hence. That’s partly because I have so little time for reading, but more because I’m a terribly (or wonderfully) slow reader. Furthermore, the better the book the slower I read it. I savor each word, to hear it as I read. And when I read an especially beautiful passage, such as one of Stegner’s many descriptions of the American Western scenery in all the seasons, I enjoy the luxury of slowing down and rereading whole sentences, whole paragraphs, whole scenes.
I won’t write a review of The Big Rock Candy Mountain here, because the book has already been reviewed by the best of critics and countless scholars; anything I could write would read, in comparison, like a high school book report. But I will say that The Big Rock Candy Mountain shows handsomely the hardy, lawless frontier spirit that survived into the twentieth century, after the West had supposedly been tamed. It is a book of vast opportunity, incurable dreams, and reckless adventure, worthy of the West itself.


I was a student of Wallace Stegner’s in 1968. At that time I was twenty-seven years old, and he was an elder statesman at fifty-nine. Those statistics fascinate me now, because I’m now seventy years old and still trying to learn to write. What’s more, I’m presently learning to write by reading a book that Wallace Stegner must have been writing in his late twenties and early thirties, when he was less than half the age I am now.
 One thing I learned from Stegner back in 1968 is that writing should have consequence. It should be important. That seems now to go without saying, but back then on college campuses, the favorite fiction writers, the ones that many students admired and imitated, were clever, entertaining, but in the long run inconsequential writers like Richard Brautigan, Donald Barthelme, and Terry Southern. When shallow student work of that stripe showed up in our seminar, Mr. Stegner kindly, politely pointed out that cleverness was not enough. As he pointed out, “You can’t nail a custard pie to the wall.”
Well, if I’ve caught your interest, and if you agree that a novel needs to be important to be great, then read (or reread) The Big Rock Candy Mountain. It’s no custard pie.

p.s. This is my second blog post honoring Wallace Stegner. An earlier tribute appeared February 16, 2011. For more thoughts about this fine teacher and great writer, see: http://johnmdaniel.blogspot.com/2011/02/remembering-wally.html

11 comments:

  1. Back in 1992 I was wandering through a used book store in San Jose, Costa Rica and found a tattered copy of 'Angle of Repose.' The next day, I read it on the bus ride up to the cloud forest, and I didn't even get out to see the cloud forest until I had finished. I sure wish I could write like that.

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    1. Angle of Repose is on my list, Bill. It's another big door-stopper of a book, and from all I've heard, it's wonderful.

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  2. Stegner is one of those writers you MUST read slowly. And one you'll remember--unlike some of those others named above. Thanks for reminding me of a book that needs to be re-read, John.

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    1. Yes indeed. A Stegner novel I want to reread is Crossing to Safety.

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  3. Absolutely brilliant man. Great memory!

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  4. Very nice blog. I know what you mean about savoring every word. It's that way with the really greats...

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    1. Madeline, Thoreau said great books should be read as they were written: slowly and carefully.

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  5. I did read that book, but I don't remember it--but to tell the truth there are lots of things I don't remember. Great post as usual.

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    1. Marilyn, one of the pleasures of memory loss is that often when we reread a book, it's a new read every time!

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  6. I haven't read any of Stegner's books yet, but thanks for the referral. Like you, I don't have enough time to read books and it takes me awhile to finish them. I'm usually juggling three at a time. I love the Thoreau quote! Think I'll use that in my next newsletter.

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