Wallace Stegner (1908-2003) is often described as a superlative Western author and thinker - the Wise Man of the American West. Stegner won a Pulitzer Prize and a National Book Award for his fiction, and wide critical and popular attention for his non-fiction. He is regularly named as one of the leading spokesmen for conservation. Historian Richard Etulain will present the life and work of this award-winning author who created a great impact on the West through his devotion to conservation, history, and intellectual thought in "Wallace Stegner: Wise Man of the American West." Benton County Historical Society is pleased to host this Oregon Chautauqua program from the Oregon Council for the Humanities.

What was it about this modest son of a frontier ne'er-do-well that attracted such acclaim and so many readers throughout the country? Should his controversial research for the novel Angle of Repose (1971) call into question his larger roles as novelist, historian, teacher, or environmental advocate? Richard Etulain, who has studied and interviewed Stegner as well as wrote with him, deals with the man's major contributions and raises probing questions about his career as Westerner, public intellectual, and wilderness defender. Tuesday, July 8, 2008, 12:00pm at the Corvallis-Benton County Public Library (645 Monroe, Corvallis, OR 97330). Bring your brown bag lunch!

Selected Resources for Oregon Chautauqua
Wallace Stegner program

Benson, Jackson J. Wallace Stegner: His Life and Work. New York: Viking, 1996.

Colberg, Nancy. Wallace Stegner: A Descriptive Bibliography. Lewiston, Idaho: Confluence Press, 1990.

Etulain, Richard W. Beyond the Missouri: The Story of the American West. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2006.

Etulain, Richard W. Re-imagining the Modern American West: A Century of Fiction, History, and Art. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1996.

Etulain, Richard W., and Wallace Stegner. Conversations with Wallace Stegner on Western History and Literature. Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press 1983, 1990; Reno: University of Nevada Press, 1996.

Fradkin, Philip L. Born on Wheels: A Biography of Wallace Stegner and a Memoir of the American West. New York: Knopf, 2008.

Meine, Curt, ed. Wallace Stegner and the Continental Vision. Washington D. C.: Island Press, 1997.

Rankin, Charles, ed. Wallace Stegner: Man and Writer. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1996.

Stegner, Wallace. Angle of Repose. New York: Doubleday, 1971.

Stegner, Wallace. Beyond the Hundredth Meridian: John Wesley Powell and Second Opening of the West. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1954.

Stegner, Wallace. Big Rock Candy Mountain. New York: Duell, Sloan & Pearce, 1943.

Stegner, Wallace. Crossing to Safety. New York: Random House, 1987.

Stegner, Wallace. The Spectator Bird. New York: Doubleday, 1976.

Topping, Gary. Utah Historians and the Reconstruction of Western History. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2003.

Richard Etulain: Biography

Richard Etulain's father emigrated from the Old World Basque Country in northern Spain to the United States in 1921, and the family lived on an isolated sheep ranch in rural Eastern Washington. His first years of schooling took place in a one-room schoolhouse with five students, twenty-two miles from the nearest town of Ritzville. He graduated magna cum laude from Northwest Nazarene College (now University) in Nampa, Idaho, earned his master's degree in American literature at the University of Oregon, and received a PhD from UO where his dissertation was on Oregon historical novelist Ernest Haycox.

It wasn't until Dick received an NEH Fellowship to study American ethnic and racial groups that he began to more fully explore his Basque heritage and the unique story of the Amerikanuak (American Basques). He spent a year at the renowned Basque Studies Program at the University of Nevada in Reno, and studied Basque language, Old World Basque Culture, and the Basques of the American West under the well-known anthropologist William A. Douglass.

His distinguished career as an educator includes teaching at his alma mater of Northwest Nazarene University, Idaho State University in Pocatello, and the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque, where Dick taught and later served as the director of the Center for the American West. Upon his retirement, UNM established the Richard W. Etulain Lecture series in Western Regional Culture.

Dick served on the Boards of the Association for the Humanities in Idaho and the New Mexico Endowment for the Humanities, and has been an evaluator of NEH grants. He worked with the Treasure Valley Museum in Ontario and the High Desert Museum in Bend to develop exhibitions about Basque history and heritage. He is the author or editor of over forty books, including Conversations with Wallace Stegner on Western History and Literature, Re-Imagining the Modern American West: A Century of Fiction, History, and Art, and Telling Western Stories: From Buffalo Bill to Larry McMurty.

Dick's program is made possible by funding from the Oregon Council for the Humanities (OCH), an independent, nonprofit affiliate of the National Endowment for the Humanities that is dedicated to the belief that knowledge and ideas are fundamental to the health of our communities. More information about OCH's programs and publications, which include Oregon Chautauqua, Humanity in Perspective, and Oregon Humanities magazine, can be found at www.oregonhum.org.