Carlin Romano reviews Philip A. Fradkin‘s biography Wallace Stegner and the American West:
[D]oes Stegner merit a third full-scale biography? He does. First, his 13 novels, eight nonfiction books, and 242 articles, including “The Wilderness Letter” (1961), a modern manifesto for conservationists, carry weight. While Stegner didn’t, like Saul Bellow, consistently turn out masterpieces, novels such as the Pulitzer Prize-winning Angle of Repose (1971) and The Big Rock Candy Mountain (1943) endure as quality work, as do a number of his nonfiction books.
The review notes a recent controversy over the release of Stegner’s written-for-the-money history of a Saudi oil firm. The Washington Post story on that book is here.
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