Wallace Stegner: Crossing to Safety (1987)

The life of Wallace Stegner encompassed much of the Twentieth Century, the American Century. He was born in 1909 and so was part of a generation of writers whose work straddled the Second World War, but seemed peculiarly unaffected by the great trauma that war created. His work is either 1930s or 1950s in tone, strangely mid-century.

The novel Crossing to Safety tells the story of two couples whose lives are intertwined and for whom joint experience enriches all concerned. They are white, affluent, College types to differing degrees. They experience the Depression together, and the bounty of the United States. It is a story of open vistas, unspoiled woodland, ample food, large cars and New England privilege. The mastery of Wallace Stegner’s prose, however, is that it is also a story of struggle for academic excellence, illness, poverty and personal industry.

It is narrated by Larry Morgan, who begins life in the university world with no money, and only his wits. It describes his struggle, his love of his new wife Sally, her subsequent illness, and how they cope with it. The parallel lives of Sid and Charity Lang are one of privilege, New England money, generosity and contentment.

The novel follows the four lives until the special four-way friendship is broken by illness, ageing and eventual death. Stegner is superb at presenting snapshots of the characters in different situations and different times of life, all the reminiscence of Larry. It is not all apple pie and beers by the barbeque.

You end up knowing the characters well, and understanding their attitudes to life as it passes. Larry muses on ageing and is not bitter but frustrated at the limitations it puts in his way and in the way of his friends. I found myself wondering how much was based on the author’s own life experiences, and aside from some of the locations that he knew well, it seems that little is actually based on firm reality. It reveals that Stegner was a writer of many gifts, and the foremost among these was such attention to detail that you end up completely convinced by the characters.

Despite the many jumps between the 1930s and early 1970s, one thing that is inescapable is the full stop of death. Even in fiction, time waits for nobody. How Stegner handles this, and his reflection on terminal illness, whilst not the most cheerful reading, are masterful.

This is a book for people who ponder mortality, who are confused by the hand of cards that life deals for us all, and those who fear the end. It is apparent that Stegner did not.

George Harrison: Behind The Locked Door by Graeme Thomson

George Harrison: Behind the Locked Door, by Graeme Thomson; Omnibus Press

It is said that meeting your heroes is always a mistake, because they never quite measure up to your expectations. I am glad, after reading this book, that I did not meet George Harrison. He comes across as a much more prickly character than I had previously thought.

This biography suffers from appearing about the same time as Mark Lewisohn’s superb masterwork on all four of The Beatles, All These Years: Tune In. Although only one volume of a proposed three has appeared, Graeme Thomson’s book is thin by comparison. It also does not manage to do what Lewisohn has done in walking the fine line between exhaustive biography and hagiography. Whilst Lewisohn has pulled off the trick admirably, I was left with the impression that Thomson has come down a little too far on the negative side. It is a shame, because in digging deeply into some of the less glamorous and attractive parts of the life of George Harrison, he has done much to tarnish him.

George Harrison was a deeply complicated human being. He spent most of his adult life trying to distance himself from being a Beatle. In doing so, he cut a lot of people out of his life. In this biography, Graeme Thomson repeats this conclusion in every possible way. In doing so, he has also painted a picture of Harrison that is rather skewed. Certainly, he was a private man who guarded his privacy fiercely. But he was also a wonderful friend to many people in all walks of life. A little more reflection on this fact would have created a much more balanced picture of George.

I am suspicious of a biography that has many of the major characters missing. It is apparent from the credits and thanks at the end of the book that neither McCartney, Starr nor Yoko Ono consented to be interviewed. All their quotes are therefore second-hand and subject to editing and interpretation. It also seems that Patti Boyd did not speak to the author. It speaks of a writer having lots of doors closed to him.

There are interesting biographical details that are uncovered – the fact, for example, that the Beatle who comes out of this telling with the most credit is Ringo Starr. That when George Harrison’s time was coming to an end, he was given shelter in a private house in Los Angeles owned by McCartney, to avoid the prying eyes of the world. And the fact that it seems there is good evidence to suggest that George was unfaithful to both of his doting wives. This last piece of information reveals as much about Graeme Thomson’s agenda as about the life of Harrison himself.

There is some warmth. The contented Harrison, writing songs for fun at his Gothic Manor Friar Park. The loving father, who involved his son fully in his music-making. And the fabulous generosity of the man who funded many projects without any desire for recognition.

Largely, though, this is a negative book about a man who gave so much in his fifty-eight years. It dwells too much on the paradoxes in Harrison’s life when there was a great opportunity to dig much more deeply into the spiritual side of his existence. After his death, when his friends met to celebrate his life, they all assumed that they were his best friend. This says far more about him than Graeme Thomson managed. He forgot to mention it.

Distant Neighbors - Gary Snyder and Wendell Berry

Distant Neighbors: The Letters of Gary Snyder and Wendell Berry

Edited by Chad Wriglesworth, Counterpoint Press

This is a book for serious students of mid-century American writing. It is a collection of letters between the two men from the mid 1970s until the Twenty-First Century. It is a dry and rather academic document, but one full of insight.

Gary Snyder began life as a backwoodsman and logger, and is now a Man of Letters. His impressive gifts have taken him from the stump-farm on which he was raised, first to University, then to an association with the Beat Movement, to Japan, and latterly to a homestead on the San Juan Ridge in the Yuba watershed in California. He is a godfather of the American environmental movement and a considerable figure in anthropological circles. His is an impressive CV which is fleshed out considerably through the letters he has written and received from Berry.

Wendell Berry is a Kentucky tobacco farmer who studied in New York City, and returned to the farm that had been the home of his family for four generations. As much as Snyder he firmly believes in the importance of being rooted in place. It is only if we know, love and respect our environment that we can begin to take responsibility for it is his claim. There is no responsibility from people only passing through. Berry, like Snyder, has received the Pulitzer prize for literature.

The letters are a strange mix of the academic and fraternal. The editor has chosen a broad range of letters from each man (slightly more were written by Berry) that illustrate their literary aspirations and pursuits, their concern about farming and logging, and their growing friendship.

The letters at the beginning of the book are the most charming. As a friendship begins there are many small politenesses that are evident. As familiarity builds you can sense the warmth between the two men and their families. Both maintain a cordial air, especially when signing off.

The research is thorough, and there are copious footnotes to accompany the text. What is lacking perhaps is some biographical detail. It is almost as if the editor did not wish to enter the more private areas of the lives of the two men. An example of this is when Snyder’s beloved wife Carole passed away early in the new century. When Wendell Berry makes a passing comment to Snyder’s loss, there is a simple footnote and no more. At that point a biography of Carole would have been fitting. The same is true when Snyder lost his sister.

It is perhaps partly due to the fact that both are private men. Snyder knew celebrity in the 1950s in California and his 1972 Pulitzer Prize for ‘Turtle Island’ thrust him back into the spotlight. In the intervening years he has retreated somewhat and spoken through his writing.

Knowledge of the writing of the two men is necessary to add meaning to much of the book. The Gary Snyder Reader is a good companion to have, and many of the letters caused me to look again at his writing. I know Berry’s work less, and it has prompted me to look deeper, especially into his fiction.

Much of the detail that can be gleaned from the letters relates to the number of appearances the two men have made over the decades; speaking to land institutes, academic audiences and literary enthusiasts. It reveals that a career writing is not easy, and involves many airports and departure lounges, even for those most grounded in the soil. It is a particular paradox to think of Gary Snyder boarding a business flight to New York, or answering an e-mail. The latter is something that Wendell Berry has refused to do: he still writes long-hand, true to his piece in the 1980s about his reluctance to buy a personal computer.

There is a long exchange of letters about belief. Berry is of a Southern Christian upbringing, and Snyder is a Buddhist. The interest lies in the way that the two bounce ideas off each other and the mutual respect that they show. There are few other places in his writing where Snyder comments so sensitively – and expertly – about Christianity.

A lifetime of letters (the first are from a time when both men had turned forty) reveal how lives change as people age. The first letters are full of action and the later ones predictably begin to contain medical reports. More delightfully, the later letters also contain details of expanding families, grandchildren, and the love that both men feel for their families.

This book is a tribute to a great friendship that has blossomed over forty years. It is apparent that both men owe a debt of friendship, too, to Jack Shoemaker, who has been a great champion of the writing of Snyder in particular. If it is an insight into Snyder as a man that you are looking for, his letters to Allen Ginsberg is a better choice. However, this book is full of detail about Snyder and Berry and what great servants of the Earth they have been. Now both in their eighties, it is a great tribute to two men who have done so much to open our eyes to the realities of our planet.