Angling for Repose

When Wallace Stegner published his first book in 1937, a stereotypical Western novel invariably included a gun-slinging cowboy hero, a near-mythical gunfight at dusk, and a formulaic, predictable plot. Stegner recognized the limitations of such archetypal assumptions about the American West, and, consequently, began to debunk them in his work. Stegner marks an essential turning point in the development of a western American literary canon. Through his impressively prolific career, we can begin to recognize and move beyond the mythologies that embed themselves in American language, history, and culture, and instead foster a literature that is rich both in history and in the diversity of today's contemporary West.