Tim Egan is the only guy the NYT regularly bothers to have write about the west. See link. Comments are interesting too -- as if all of us who read Stegner, Harrison, Hasselstrom, Abbey, etc crawl out of the woodwork to offer support. I generally find High Country News far more relevant than the big papers. As Egan quotes Stegner at the end: If you don't know where you are, you don't know who you are.
http://egan.blogs.nytimes.com/
3 comments:
Cool...thanks. His post has lots of great comments too. Very interesting read.
I have to admit that I sometimes dream of New York bestseller-dom. :)
But frankly, I'd rather just be a Western writer and know that I actually live in the real world, and I love it. I wonder if Stegner felt the same...
My Dear Julie - Who does not dream of NYT bestseller-dom? If you are a writer, like you and me?
Stegner had a mixed up relationship with both east and west as a result of his desires to be taken seriously by writing establishment back east and by the west's own lack of shall we say "educated" culture back in the day. I can see the point, and have had my moments of sour grapes, believe me.
Latest one is truly noting what gets published these days and how much of it is rot...also the state of the publishing industry, which is very very sorry indeed.
But I won't complain. First novel got published and now second will be, both by presses totally outside the Random House, Knopf, etc scene. It may be better that way, just as HCN or the (dying!) Zephyr may be as per the NYT. Still. I have this fanstasy of a truly national conversation that includes ALL of us.
We're gonna have to get together and chat sometime...
If you're interested in the direction of book publishing, Time magazine had a really good story a couple of weeks ago.
Check it out here: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1873122,00.html
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