The American West as Living Space

by Wallace Stegner

A passionate work about the fragile and arid West that Stegner loves

Genres: Nonfiction, History, Essays, Environment, Westerns, Nature, Travel

104 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1987

About the author

Wallace Earle Stegner was an American historian, novelist, short story writer, and environmentalist. Some call him "The Dean of Western Writers." He won the Pulitzer Prize in 1972 and the U.S. National Book Award in 1977.

Reviews

[Pat · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Instead of adapting, as we began to do, we have tried to make country and climate over to fit our existing habits and desires. Instead of listening to the silence, we have shouted into the void. We have tried to make the arid West into what it was never meant to be and cannot remain, the Garden of the World and the home of multiple millions." - p.36

"...when the waves of overpopulation that have been destroying the West have receded, leaving the stickers to get on with the business of adaptation." - p.86

[Emily Carlin · Rating 4 out of 5]

“in the west it is impossible to be unconscious of or indifferent to space. at every city’a edge it confronts is as federal lands kept open by aridity and the custodial bureaus; out in the boondocks it engulfs us. and it does contribute to individualism, if only because in that much emptiness people have the dignity of rareness and must do much of what they do without help, and because self-reliance becomes a social imperative, part of a code.”

[Meg · Rating 3 out of 5]

Welp. Sometimes the depth to which Stegner was embedded in dominant white supremacist culture just jumps off the page. It doesn't always negate what he's saying in the moment—say his thoughts on aridity or the legacy of the Bureau of Reclamation—but sometimes one rather wishes he stayed away from broad cultural interpretation or speculation, as he does in the third essay, with all its omission of indigenous culture and its inability to take in the many cultural sources that make up the West, as opposed to the more narrow ones upon which he focuses.

[Nathan Abels · Rating 4 out of 5]

Taken from a series of lectures made in 1986 by Wallace Stegner. It is a really dense and informative book. I've been writing down a lot of quotes or excerpts from it and I wanted to share this one in particular:

"...the rootlessness that expresses energy and a thirst for the new and an aspiration toward freedom and personal fulfillment has just as often been a curse. Migrants deprive themselves of the physical and spiritual bonds that develop within a place and a society. Our migratoriness has hindered us from becoming a people of communities and traditions, especially in the West. It has robbed us of the gods who make places holy. It has cut off individuals and families and communities from memory and the continuum of time. It has left at least some of us with a kind of spiritual pellagra, a deficiency disease, a hungering for the ties of a rich and stable order. Not only is the American home a launching pad, as Margaret Mead said; the American community, especially in the West, is an overnight camp. American individualism, much celebrated and cherished, has developed without its essential corrective, which is belonging. Freedom, when found, can turn out to be airless and unsustaining. Especially in the West, what we have instead of place is space. Place is more than half memory, shared memory. Rarely do Westerners stay long enough at one stop to share much of anything."

[Zuberino · Rating 4 out of 5]

Three lectures that Stegner delivered in Ann Arbor in 1986, here collected in book form. Stegner is in seriously political, polemical mood. The first lecture defines the fundamental condition of the West which is aridity, and its adjunct which is space. Lecture 2 is a furious screed against the wanton rape of scarce water resources in the West; the author is no more here to see it, but one indirect consequence may be the millennial megadrought that is now ravaging Western states in this midsummer of the coronavirus. But he called it for sure.

The third and final chapter is the charm as Stegner finally dives into a brief exploration of the “Western type”, taking as his launchpad the letters of Crevecoeur and sweeping through literature and art in search of this figure of myth, a search that takes him from The Virginian down to Ansel Adams, not without a side nod to the likes of native insiders like Louise Erdrich and lost outsiders like the nebbishy Malamud. It brings to a fine close this highly readable, even entertaining, little volume.

The lure of that romantic West is what drew me to buy this book off a Tirana pavement stall back in 2017, that and the improbable name of Stegner in Hoxhaland. (I had not heard of this title before). Besides deconstructing the romance, it’s good to get a necessary environmental, ecological perspective from one who was as deeply engaged and committed to the West as Wallace Stegner was.

[Reid Nelson · Rating 5 out of 5]

I quite enjoyed this little lecture. Wallace does a good job, as he says, of providing an overview of Western culture. He dives deeply into the constant aridity of the West, which he defines as the 11 public lands states, and Man's historic effort to survive in such a unproviding climate. He talks about hydraulics and irrigation extensively, arguing the inextricable link between these tools and Western life. And he is always alluding to larger concepts. He talks about our universal wish for freedom and space, especially in the modern day. And what space represents and creates. A favorite quote of mine, and the one that inspired me to read the book, is: "It should not be denied, either, that being footloose has always exhilarated us. It is associated in our minds with escape from history and oppression and law and irksome obligation, with absolute freedom, and the road has always led west." A great book about American character.

[Hannah]

What a prescient little book. A friend of mine told me to read this awhile ago and I finally checked it out from the library this year. I think my favorite chapter was the one about how people in the West tamed water by damming rivers to try to make the desert habitable. How this destroys the landscape and the fish stocks of the West is by now well known, but he is sending out alarm bells in 1987. Just as interesting is his final chapter, on the mythic Western cowboy stereotype and why, long after he has disappeared, we still adore the character in our books and films. Here he is talking about the central character in the Virginian, a novel by Owen Wister. "With his knightly sense of honor and his capacity to outviolence the violent, he remains an irresistible model for romantic adolescents of any age, and he transfers readily from the cowboy setting to more modern ones."

[Chloe Morscheck · Rating 3 out of 5]

Wallace Stegner does a beautiful job connecting the people of the west to the place, understanding the mechanisms by which we have come to live here. He typifies the west in many beautiful ways, but also unfortunately in the ugly as well. Stegner's lack of analysis on race and the way he wields Native Americans not to recognize their place in the West, but to use their persecution to illustrate his points, indicates an insufficiency that I hope other writers have been able to rectify. That being said, this book was well paced, a perfect balance of soul and intellect, a miniature portrait of the west.

[JP · Rating 4 out of 5]

What a great little book. The West is arid. Aridity creates space. Space requires motion. Motion through all that space created a certain kind of vibe, among the people who lived there, but attempts to make the West something other than what it is are just hacks to temporarily exploit a region for a short time. Dense, interesting, prescient.

[Bryce Johnston · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very enjoyable and well written novella on the idea of the 'West'. Not particularly profound from today's viewpoint, but he weaves together ecology, philosophy, and culture very well in the short 90 pages.

[Sara · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great book! It's divided into three sections, each exploring the concept of the West from various perspectives. Among many things, it also made me curious about hydrological features and crises across the western US. It was an important reading that I could enjoy more deeply as I've lived in the West for the past two years!

[Nathan · Rating 5 out of 5]

An excellent little book, providing a short introduction to the West.

Water, myths, and world class wordsmithing.

[Carole · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is an articulate personal explanation of the cultural conflicts that are reflected on and caused by the geography of the West. The three lectures convert almost flawlessly to written essay form.

[Dan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Water. Aridity. Space. Hubris. Loved it. A Stegner primer and mandatory reader if you live in the west.

[Ian Billick · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great perspective from someone who thought a lot about the west.

[Joel · Rating 5 out of 5]

Stegner was a prize-winning novelist, also an amateur historian, an outdoorsman, and quite savvy about ecology. These powerful essays (quite readably adapted from some lectures he’d given at the U. of Michigan Law School) bring together a lot of information and take a deeply considered look at humanity in the natural settings of the largely arid western U.S. He makes plain people’s expectations, foibles, contradictions — not to mention hopes — during the last 150 years.

[John · Rating 4 out of 5]

“The Frog does not drink up the pond in which he lives.” A Native American Proverb I recently found inscribed on a drinking fountain in Boulder, Colorado and which poignantly emphasizes Stegner’s position. He decries the not so current trend in the American West to misuse the land with particular emphasis on the flagrant depletion and misappropriation of its meager water resources. The American East, I would suggest, fares no better when you consider books like “The Late Great Lakes” by William Ashworth or more recently “The Great Lakes Water Wars by Peter Annin. Authoritarian and centralized political systems gathered around western rivers known as “hydraulic societies” endeavor to transform the aridity of the desert biome into verdant Ohio pastures or build grandiose castles amidst cushy lawns and sweeping green subdivisions and golf courses. Inexorably, this mind set pushes beyond the sustainability of any particular resource especially water and results in a federal government presence as Stegner painfully points out “that should be recognized for what it is. A reaction against our profligacy and wastefulness.”

This book was good but way too short!!!

[Jenn · Rating 3 out of 5]

As a native Tucsonan I fully understand the message Stegner is striving for. As Americans we generally feel that we control nature and that the earth's resources are at our disposal. The book points to the realization that we simply cannot continue along this path. We must work toward a sustainable society in which conservation is part of our daily existence.

Part of the problem is in our language. We commonly refer to the condition of the desert in which we reside as experiencing a "drought." Well, it is a desert! Why would we think in a million years that we could build such lavish oasis (pl. sp?) and that everything would be ok? While hind sight is 20/20, we still must do today what is beneficial for mankind and the planet.

Ok, I will step off my soapbox now, thank you.

[Tattered Cover Book Store]

This book was recomended by award winning journalist Michelle Nijhuis as part of the Rocky Mountain Land Library's "A Reading List For the President Elect: A Western Primer for the Next Administration."

[Judy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Yes! People need to learn to live with the land instead of consuming it at prodigious rates. Here are Stegner's opening lines:
"The West is a region of extraordinary variety within its abiding unity, ... The most splendid part of the American habitat, it is also the most fragile."

[Reema · Rating 4 out of 5]

line i like so far: "for culture is a pyramid to which each of us brings a stone."

[Raven · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed this set of essays about the West.

[Eric North · Rating 4 out of 5]

An enjoyable sweeping survey of Wallace Stegner's thoughts on the West.