WALLACE STEGNER'S SALT LAKE CITY, by Robert C. Steensma, University of Utah Press, 165 pages, $29.95
This splendid book pays fitting tribute to one of Salt Lake City's most illustrious residents, Wallace Stegner, prize-winning novelist (he wrote 12 novels and three short story collections) and historian and charismatic professor of creative writing.
Stegner spent 14 years in Salt Lake City and also taught at the University of Utah before going on to the University of Wisconsin, Harvard and then, finally, Stanford University, which claimed him until he was critically injured in an auto accident in 1993.
As a non-Mormon it could not have been easy for him to grow up in "Mormon Country" (the title of one
of his better books), but he apparently adjusted well (after living in Saskatchewan and Great Falls, Mont.)— because in his famous essay, "At Home in the Fields of the Lord," (included here), he said he had "selected" it as his hometown, partly due to its "comfortable, old-clothes feel."
He must have, because he used it as the setting for three of his novels, "Big Rock Candy Mountain," "Recapitulation" and "The Preacher and the Slave," the latter retitled "Joe Hill."
He also proclaimed that "what is a hometown if it is not a place you feel secure in? I feel secure in Salt Lake City." He graduated from East High and studied literature and creative writing at the U. A few of his fellow students were President Gordon B. Hinckley of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and philanthropist and businessman O.C. Tanner.
You wonder what he would think today of the massive changes being made in the city's downtown.
Robert Steensma, also former U. English professor, has written a delightful, short look at Stegner in his Salt Lake milieu through a series of essays — and included an archival look at the city through fascinating black-and-white pictures. It is Salt Lake City of the 1920s and 1930s and charts Stegner's youth and young adulthood.
Anyone who has had the good fortune of reading Stegner's books and essays or hearing him speak or teach will love this volume — especially the photos, which comprise half of the book. The photos depict Stegner and some of his friends; his attractive wife, Mary; his beloved U. English professors, including Vardis Fisher (also a novelist, who taught Stegner freshman English and "took a can-opener to his students' closed minds"), Sydney Angleman, Edward Chapman and Sherman Neff.
There are several photos of the U. campus; the first Stegner home, 1191 S. 700 East; the Deseret Gym; and the Salt Lake Public Library, then on State Street between South Temple and 100 South and later the site of the Hansen Planetarium.
A photo of the Hotel Heron, 138 E. 200 South, is included because it was the place where Stegner's criminal father, George, killed a mistress and then committed suicide in 1939. The David Keith Mansion, the Thomas Kearns Mansion, the Salt Lake Theatre, Keith O'Brien Department Store, Utah Woolen Mills and the Utah State Penitentiary round out the photos.
There are also some good aerial views of the city, the state Capitol, the LDS Temple, the Pantages Theater and the old Deseret News Building on the southwest corner of Main and South Temple streets.
E-mail: dennis@desnews.com