West of 98: Living and Writing the New American West - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0292726864 ISBN 13: 9780292726864

Publisher: University of Texas Press, 2011

Synopsis

What does it mean to be a westerner? With all the mythology that has grown up about the American West, is it even possible to describe "how it was, how it is, here, in the West—just that," in the words of Lynn Stegner? Starting with that challenge, Stegner and Russell Rowland invited several dozen members of the western literary tribe to write about living in the West and being a western writer in particular. West of 98 gathers sixty-six literary testimonies, in essays and poetry, from a stellar collection of writers who represent every state west of the 98th parallel—a kind of Greek chorus of the most prominent voices in western literature today, who seek to "characterize the West as each of us grew to know it, and, equally important, the West that is still becoming."

In West of 98, western writers speak to the ways in which the West imprints itself on the people who live there, as well as how the people of the West create the personality of the region. The writers explore the western landscape—how it has been revered and abused across centuries—and the inescapable limitations its aridity puts on all dreams of conquest and development. They dismantle the boosterism of manifest destiny and the cowboy and mountain man ethos of every-man-for-himself, and show instead how we must create new narratives of cooperation if we are to survive in this spare and beautiful country. The writers seek to define the essence of both actual and metaphoric wilderness as they journey toward a West that might honestly be called home.

A collective declaration not of our independence but of our interdependence with the land and with each other, West of 98 opens up a whole new panorama of the western experience.

About this title

About the Author

Lynn Stegner is the author of four works of fiction, three of them novels―Because a Fire Was in My Head (which won the Faulkner Award for Best Novel, was a Literary Ventures Selection, a Book Sense Pick, and a New York Times Editors’ Choice); Undertow; Fata Morgana; and the novella triptych, Pipers at the Gates of Dawn (Faulkner Society Gold Medal in the novella category).

Review

"One of the glories of this book is that it is host to 67 writers...Voices and viewpoints are left out, but that does not diminish the value and pleasure of West of 98." (Bloomsbury Review 2013-07-01)

About this edition

• Publisher: University of Texas Press
• Publication date: 2011
• ISBN 10: 0292726864
• ISBN 13: 9780292726864
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 392
• Editor: Stegner Lynn, Rowland Russell