Sound of Mountain Water

Stegner's series of short essays trap the essence of what it means to live and write in the West like lightning in a bottle. The "west" he lived in and wrote for was roughly the area west of the 100th meridian where dry-land farming is problematic to the western edge of the Great Basin. (California and Oregon didn't really count as "western" to Stegner; they were "west of the west," as in the title of Mark Arax' book which, as an aside, is well-worth reading.) I own a hardbound edition of this book. The paperback was a gift for a friend and intended as a short-cut for writing him a "Wallace Stegner Writer's Workshop Reading List." Essentially all the works that Stegner used as reference material in his creative writing classes at Stanford appear in Mountain Water. But the book contexts those reference materials in the landscape of Western American writing in ways that make sense to me despite their mix-and-match of genres that both defies and defines truly "western" writers.

I am the lone voice crying in the Wilderness here I guess. This was the first book by Stegner that I ever read (on advice from Edward Abbey) and I love this book. It is one of the finest books of essays I've read. I've read it several times and It doesn't grow stale. I've lived most of my adult life in the mountain west, spending much time in the "woods" (climbing mountains, hiking, descending the rivers in kayaks, kayaking on the coast and inlets, skiing the mountains on X-country gear in winter), and I've read many books of essays, biographies, histories, and travel writing (broadly defined) and I own a large library of them. I would never let my library lack this book. The essays in this book express Stegner's detailed knowledge of and love for the American West, especially the Colorado Plateau. His descriptions and expositions are, as always, wonderful. His writing is impeccable and also a joy to read. If you prefer novels to non-fiction, you may prefer Stegner's novels. However, if you like non-fiction or are interested in the West or the Colorado Plateau, I think you will enjoy this book very much. (I don't own this edition; but rather an earlier paperback edition.) Enjoy.