Latest / Christians Reading Classics / Crossing to Safety by Wallace Stegner, with Matt Stewart

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Crossing to Safety by Wallace Stegner, with Matt Stewart · Christians Reading Classics

• 0:00
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• 1:29
  SPEAKER_00: How do you make a book that anyone will read out of lives as quiet as these?
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_00: Where are the things that novelists seize upon and readers expect?
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_00: Where is the high life, the conspicuous waste, the violence, the kinky sex, the death wish?
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_00: Where are the suburban infidelities, the promiscuities, the compulsive divorces, the alcohol, the drugs, the lost weekends?
• 1:57
  SPEAKER_00: Where are the hatreds, the political ambitions, the lust for power?
• 2:03
  SPEAKER_00: Where are speed, noise, ugliness, everything that makes us who we are and makes us recognize ourselves in fiction?
• 2:12
  SPEAKER_00: The people we are talking about are hangovers from a quieter time.
• 2:17
  SPEAKER_00: They have been able to buy quiet and distance themselves from industrial ugliness.
• 2:23
  SPEAKER_00: They live behind university walls part of the year and in a green garden the rest of it.
• 2:29
  SPEAKER_00: Their intelligence and their civilized tradition protect them from most of the temptations, indiscretions, vulgarities, and passionate errors that pester and perturb most of us.
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_00: They fascinate their children because they are so decent, so gracious, so compassionate and understanding and cultivated and well-meaning.
• 2:51
  SPEAKER_00: They baffle their children because, in spite of all they have and are, in spite of being to most eyes an ideal couple, they are remote, unreliable, even harsh.
• 3:03
  SPEAKER_00: And they have missed something and show it.
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_00: So wrote Wallace Stegner towards the end of his novel, Crossing to Safety.
• 3:12
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome to Christians Reading Classics, a podcast from Near Orthodoxy.
• 3:17
  SPEAKER_00: Today it is my delight to talk about Wallace Stegner and especially Crossing to Safety with Matt Stewart.
• 3:24
  SPEAKER_00: Matt holds a PhD in history from Syracuse University and is the author of The Most Beautiful Place on Earth, Wallace Stegner in California, published in 2022.
• 3:37
  SPEAKER_00: He teaches humanities at the Ambrose School in Meridian, Idaho.
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_00: And he is an editor from Front Proach Republic and FPR Books.
• 3:47
  SPEAKER_00: They are doing great work on both fronts.
• 3:49
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm very grateful for Matt's work on this.
• 3:52
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm especially grateful that he is joining me today.
• 3:55
  SPEAKER_00: So thank you for being here.
• 3:57
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, my pleasure.
• 3:58
  SPEAKER_02: It's a real honor to be on your show, Nadia.
• 4:00
  SPEAKER_02: Thank you.
• 4:02
  SPEAKER_00: So the first question I always ask, and you've been warned, is what is a classic?
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_02: Yes, yes, thank you.
• 4:12
  SPEAKER_02: I I it's been it's been fun to uh listen to some of the other answers that people have given.
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_02: And uh I'm not gonna go too far from those.
• 4:20
  SPEAKER_02: Um I was thinking maybe to try to add a few things, but uh yeah, I think the best way to think about a classic is is is is that it's a work that transcends time, and maybe if we're gonna be really strict, even place, and I think um maybe even language barriers.
• 4:38
  SPEAKER_02: Um, but I I I remember listening to an interview that Ken Myers did with Alan Jacobs a while ago on Mars Hill Audio, and um they were talking about uh the bridges of Madison County, and Alan Jacobs was trying to explain why he thought it was a a poor book, and he said that um he said that uh it it provoked emotions that couldn't sustain thought, and that you have these, you know, you you read the book or watch the movie and you get an emotional experience, um, but then when you actually subject that emotional experience to thought, it kind of dissipates and and fails.
• 5:23
  SPEAKER_02: And he he was arguing that uh a truly great book would grow in its meaning when sustained or when when um put under reflection by thought.
• 5:37
  SPEAKER_02: So so to me, I guess a truly great book would be one that provokes the emotional experience, but um that doesn't um wither away.
• 5:47
  SPEAKER_02: Um well what but where the emotional experience doesn't wither away when you think about it.
• 5:52
  SPEAKER_02: That that thinking about the emotional experience actually makes that experience stronger and more powerful.
• 5:58
  SPEAKER_02: So I I think that's probably the way that I would go with it is that it's a book that does that, and that does that for uh people across generations and uh maybe even across place and language.
• 6:14
  SPEAKER_00: That's really good.
• 6:16
  SPEAKER_00: Especially thinking um, you know, we we live in the age of vibes, and there's a good reason to criticize that, the idea that something that provokes an emotional response, the question is, what else is there?
• 6:28
  SPEAKER_00: If it's just an immediate react reaction, it makes you angry or it makes you cry or whatever else.
• 6:34
  SPEAKER_00: But then the question is, does it stay with you, or is it just something you consume and then you go and you never think of it again?
• 6:42
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah.
• 6:43
  SPEAKER_02: And I think, and I guess that's another uh well related way of thinking about it is it's a book that can sustain rereadings or a work that can sustain rereadings and that can be valuable uh for a person when they read it as a teen or a 20-year-old or a you know, 50 or 60 year year old, and and still be valuable across those rereadings.
• 7:03
  SPEAKER_00: So again, that depth that goes beyond sheer emotion.
• 7:08
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 7:09
  SPEAKER_02: And if you don't mind extending the conversation on it a little bit longer, I I really like the idea of the very great books, or sorry, the very good books.
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_02: Uh Mortimer, not it's not Mortimer rather, it's uh John Senior from the University of Kansas has his uh list of very good books.
• 7:26
  SPEAKER_02: I think it's a thousand on there or something like that.
• 7:28
  SPEAKER_02: But um, I really like the idea of making the distinction between the very good books and the classics because um it's a way of putting value on books that don't make it to the classical category and maybe a way of uh being more capacious.
• 7:47
  SPEAKER_02: It's just you know, a book can speak to a generation very powerfully, and we don't have to dismiss it because it's um, you know, it doesn't make it to the uh classic category.
• 7:58
  SPEAKER_02: Uh you know, it doesn't survive more than a generation or two.
• 8:02
  SPEAKER_02: Um, but there's still those are still really valuable and meaningful.
• 8:05
  SPEAKER_02: So I really like I like that distinction.
• 8:08
  SPEAKER_00: That is really good.
• 8:09
  SPEAKER_00: And I think a lot about how there's some element of accident, maybe with some of the classics.
• 8:15
  SPEAKER_00: We'd love to think that the best of the best stuff made it out of antiquity, for instance.
• 8:21
  SPEAKER_00: But um then you think like, well, the vast majority of Euripides' tragedies did not survive.
• 8:26
  SPEAKER_00: Does it mean they were garbage?
• 8:28
  SPEAKER_00: It's like, not exactly.
• 8:30
  SPEAKER_00: No.
• 8:30
  SPEAKER_00: Um and yet certain um certain things made it, and there's some method to the madness, maybe, but a lot of times it really is that element of sheer dumb luck.
• 8:41
  SPEAKER_00: Like which books caught the attention of readers at what moment and like went viral, you know, 500 BC style.
• 8:51
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah.
• 8:52
  SPEAKER_02: I read an article, I can't remember the author, but it was I think it was something like the slaughterhouse of literature.
• 8:56
  SPEAKER_02: And the author had um come to the it was a it was an academic article that was um attempting to sort out why Sherlock Holmes made it when so many other detectives didn't.
• 9:10
  SPEAKER_02: And he actually worked through this whole range of Victorian authors who created detectives that were Sherlock Holmes-like, and you know, and I think it was been it's been a while since I read it, but I think he even you know said that some of these were you know really great books, but no one reads them anymore.
• 9:26
  SPEAKER_02: They just can't survive.
• 9:26
  SPEAKER_02: You know, there's only room for one Sherlock Holmes, I guess.
• 9:30
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I read a similar book uh about Jane Austen recently, Rebecca Romney's Jane Austen's bookshelf, which I recommend.
• 9:39
  SPEAKER_00: Um, she is uh an antique book dealer, and she decided to start reading Jane Austen's bookshelf, like the books that Jane Austen mentions that she loved reading, and whether they were uh like any good.
• 9:52
  SPEAKER_00: Because we have this idea that, of course, Jane Austen is well, Jane Austen, the one we all know and read and love because she was the absolute best.
• 10:00
  SPEAKER_00: Um but Romney was surprised to find out as she started reading that a lot of these books, A, they influenced Jane Austen's novels, but B, a lot of them were really good.
• 10:11
  SPEAKER_00: And so that again raises that question, the accidents of who reads what.
• 10:16
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 10:17
  SPEAKER_02: Actually, uh, since you brought up Jane Austen, I it's her humor has been something that I've just been really impressed with and mystified by because you know, it's just I mean, I teach Jane Austen, I teach Pride and Prejudice every year, and I teach it to ninth graders.
• 10:36
  SPEAKER_02: And um I really ride the humor as hard as I can because I've I've found that that is uh one of the things that'll especially bring some of the skeptical ninth grade boys into the book.
• 10:46
  SPEAKER_02: And you know, and just the fact that ninth graders in Idaho in 2026 can so immediately grasp the humor of of a Mr.
• 10:56
  SPEAKER_02: Collins, I mean, it's just so impressive to me.
• 10:59
  SPEAKER_02: And I think uh like reading the Bronte sisters, for example, um that it's just you just don't see that there.
• 11:08
  SPEAKER_02: And I it's just really impressive to me that she's able to do that.
• 11:12
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 11:14
  SPEAKER_02: So maybe I I I guess I haven't read the book that you read, but I I think she she does have that special spark.
• 11:20
  SPEAKER_02: Maybe so.
• 11:23
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 11:24
  SPEAKER_00: Well, accidents of survival and the question of how some some books become classics or not is a good transition to bring us to Stegner because he really is a classic, I think a lot of us would agree, but he is slightly less well known today, perhaps, than others.
• 11:42
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I first heard of him as Wendell Berry's teacher, and that already is pretty impressive resume.
• 11:50
  SPEAKER_00: And in fact, there are a number of other um best-selling authors that Stegner had taught.
• 11:56
  SPEAKER_00: But of course, he was um a force of nature of his own, won the National Book Award uh for the spectator bird, which I'm almost done reading right now, and it's just a beautiful novel.
• 12:06
  SPEAKER_00: But our focus today is crossing to safety.
• 12:10
  SPEAKER_00: Um would you give us some background on Stegner?
• 12:14
  SPEAKER_00: Who was he?
• 12:15
  SPEAKER_00: How did he get into the writing life?
• 12:19
  SPEAKER_00: And what do we need to know about him before we talk about his work?
• 12:25
  SPEAKER_02: Yes.
• 12:26
  SPEAKER_02: Uh his his biography is pretty essential to his fiction.
• 12:31
  SPEAKER_02: So that uh most of the people that um that are moved by a Stegner book eventually kind of start to dig into his story a little bit because he he does write pretty close to home.
• 12:41
  SPEAKER_02: Um he al he he tended to get annoyed when people would just assume that he was his character, and and and I was I'm sympathetic to him on that, but the thing is that he did really write pretty close to home.
• 12:53
  SPEAKER_02: So it's it's not um, I don't think he can blame people for that necessarily.
• 12:57
  SPEAKER_02: But anyway, so he was born in 1909 um in Iowa, and he was born to parents who were um both very interesting, vivacious people, but at odds with each other, and and that's um, I think really sets a tone for most of his work, and that his um father is this uh really um just charismatic man who loves adventure and can't resist chasing the chasing the um well what do you call it his big rock candy mountain, he just always thinks that he's gonna strike it rich.
• 13:36
  SPEAKER_02: And he's also someone where it's kind of I I think it's uh he he really wants to chase the boom and he's got you know a lot of talents that allow him to do that, and he's always like just barely makes it.
• 13:50
  SPEAKER_02: And then whether through bad luck or his own moral failings, he just kind of like, or actually, even sometimes his virtues.
• 13:58
  SPEAKER_02: There's one story where he he rescues someone, um, and that's kind of the reason he doesn't make it.
• 14:04
  SPEAKER_02: Uh he pulls someone out of a snow drift, and that's why he doesn't, you know, make the boom.
• 14:09
  SPEAKER_02: But this, yeah, so his father is is always chasing the boom and dragging his family from one boom to the next.
• 14:17
  SPEAKER_02: So they go from uh they they let they end up in Canada, they make it to Washington, they end up in Salt Lake City, and that's uh it's kind of a funny place because his father is basically a uh uh Prohibition rum runner in Salt Lake City, so it's kind of so his he's got this book recapitulation, they say is the Gatsby of of Salt Lake City, which is a funny thought.
• 14:39
  SPEAKER_02: Um but anyway, so he's he's chasing these boons, and all the meanwhile are meanwhile, he's dragging Stegner's mother um with him.
• 14:49
  SPEAKER_02: And Stegner's mother is initially very attracted to his father because of these, um, because of his adventurous and charismatic personality.
• 14:58
  SPEAKER_02: But then over time, um, she just really feels torn apart by this moving from place to place, and she you know makes friends in various places and then just has to leave because she's she she has to go with her husband, and she's loyal to him in a way that uh Stegner uh really admires and that actually helps him uh love his father more um because he just has you know, he's I think he says at one point that his father was um well, actually, yeah, Jane Austen.
• 15:30
  SPEAKER_02: Um he's a man who pleases a worthy of a woman worthy of being pleased, I guess, is the way that Elizabeth's uh uh described by Darcy.
• 15:40
  SPEAKER_02: So anyway, uh the this family legacy really impacts him because he's uh talented and ambitious like his father, but he loves place like his mother, and he he, you know, he ultimately sides with his mother um and and and is really just incredibly loyal to her and moved by her um example.
• 16:01
  SPEAKER_02: Um they do meet a tragic end.
• 16:03
  SPEAKER_02: Uh she died of breast cancer in Salt Lake City.
• 16:08
  SPEAKER_02: Uh and I can't remember how old she is off the top of my head.
• 16:11
  SPEAKER_02: It was um sorry, it's been a while.
• 16:13
  SPEAKER_02: The book came out a little while ago, and I don't uh I don't return to this as much as I should, but um she died uh I think in her 50s or so.
• 16:21
  SPEAKER_02: But um anyway, she died of breast cancer in Salt Lake City, and she had no real community to get her through this uh difficult process.
• 16:31
  SPEAKER_02: So uh to make matters worse, George, her husband, even though um she had stuck with him through all of his roaming, he just kind of can't take it.
• 16:41
  SPEAKER_02: Um, you know, he's heartbroken and frustrated, and he basically flees the uh sick room, leaving Wallace and a nurse with the mother, with his mother to you know make you know, guide her through her last days.
• 16:56
  SPEAKER_02: And so um that's the kind of tragic flaw or tragic ending to his mother's life.
• 17:03
  SPEAKER_02: And then his father basically kind of creams after that, and um, right around the time Wallace Stegner turned 30, his father shot himself and a prostitute in a hotel room in Salt Lake City, and that was the end of that.
• 17:17
  SPEAKER_02: So he dies in a murder suicide, and um Stegner had had one brother um who also died young.
• 17:27
  SPEAKER_02: So basically, at the age of 30, he has no immediate family.
• 17:30
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, he doesn't really have any longtime friendships or any kind of um extended family to rely on.
• 17:38
  SPEAKER_02: He doesn't even have artifacts of memory like uh mementos, he's basically just completely all alone.
• 17:44
  SPEAKER_02: The metaphor I like to use is that he's kind of like an astronaut who's just been cut off from the space shuttle shuttle and he has you know floating frictionless through space.
• 17:53
  SPEAKER_02: And uh that's I'd say that's kind of like the core of a lot of his work is this attempt to reconcile um those tensions.
• 18:02
  SPEAKER_02: But um the reason that we actually know who he is, you know, because you you think you know he's kind of from these very difficult circumstances, and he could have just been a person who uh kind of just barely makes it through a normal life, but he is just an incredibly talented and hardworking person.
• 18:21
  SPEAKER_02: And so he um starts to work really hard.
• 18:25
  SPEAKER_02: Um, he gains some mentors and some friends in high places, and and eventually is able to start publishing some books about his experiences that are incredibly moving.
• 18:34
  SPEAKER_02: Uh Big Rock Canyon Mountain is his first major novel, and that's the the one that's most directly connected to his upbringing.
• 18:42
  SPEAKER_02: And then he um he eventually also became the um head of the stand head of the uh creative writing program at Stanford, which is um right up there with I was one of the premier creative writing programs in the country, and he's he's the founder of it.
• 18:58
  SPEAKER_02: They still offer the Stegner Fellowship, so his uh name was on there.
• 19:03
  SPEAKER_02: And um, so he be that's where he met Barry.
• 19:06
  SPEAKER_02: And that that was also my first introduction to Stegner was through Barry's um appreciative essays about him.
• 19:12
  SPEAKER_02: But so he becomes pretty influential as a creative writing professor, and then he was also a uh conservationist in the early years of the conservation movement and um kind of into the transition from the conservation movement to the environmental movement.
• 19:30
  SPEAKER_02: So um that's basically kind of why I wrote my book about him, or at least one reason is that he was a writer of fiction who had a large historical footprint as someone that um he left the mark not through just through his fiction, but through the creative writing program and his conservation efforts.
• 19:47
  SPEAKER_02: And and and given that I was in a history department, I uh I needed someone who left a footprint and left a pretty substantial amount of boxes in the archive.
• 19:58
  SPEAKER_02: So so he kind of allowed me to um explore fiction uh in the discipline of history, which is something I was really really grateful for.
• 20:09
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, historians like words.
• 20:11
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah, exactly and hoard papers.
• 20:15
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah.
• 20:16
  SPEAKER_02: I I I uh I think he has about uh 120 boxes or so at the University of Utah, and I have very fond memories of uh sorting through those boxes at the uh Marriott Library and the University of Utah.
• 20:28
  SPEAKER_02: It's a very very peaceful place.
• 20:31
  SPEAKER_02: The archivists there were great, so it was it was fun.
• 20:34
  SPEAKER_00: Wow.
• 20:35
  SPEAKER_00: See, I'm an ancient historian, all of my archives are on large pieces of rock or papyri that we're not allowed to touch.
• 20:44
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah.
• 20:45
  SPEAKER_00: That's okay.
• 20:46
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 20:49
  SPEAKER_00: So situate crossing to safety for us.
• 20:53
  SPEAKER_00: So, like as you were talking, I could already see some autobiographical elements that do um seep into this book as well, even if not as much as Big Rock Candy Mountain.
• 21:04
  SPEAKER_00: But tell us about crossing to safety in particular.
• 21:06
  SPEAKER_00: What should readers know before they open the book?
• 21:10
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, trying to um I hadn't thought about uh spoiler issues.
• 21:15
  SPEAKER_02: How do you deal with spoiler issues on your podcast?
• 21:17
  SPEAKER_02: I don't think I've maybe that issue.
• 21:19
  SPEAKER_00: Don't tell people the ending, but up until then, all is fair game, just kind of orient readers.
• 21:26
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 21:26
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, so um uh one one thing just off the bat that's really uh cool to note about Crossing and Safety is that he published it almost exactly 50 years after he published his first book.
• 21:38
  SPEAKER_02: So it's it's a pretty impressive feat um for a novelist, I think.
• 21:42
  SPEAKER_02: Um in part because um I think this is actually one of the books that is is most recognized by him.
• 21:53
  SPEAKER_02: So it's um, you know, real well, actually his first and his last book are are still up there as his kind of most noteworthy books.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_02: Um, I'd add angle of repose is kind of in the middle.
• 22:03
  SPEAKER_02: But so anyway, he he starts off well and ends well.
• 22:06
  SPEAKER_02: So that's that's just it's a real integrity to his um work and uh I think a testament to his work eth work ethic.
• 22:15
  SPEAKER_02: Um he just was an incredibly hard worker uh in a way that I I still admire.
• 22:20
  SPEAKER_02: But um the book is a uh it's basically a reflection on uh two friends that his wife and he had um over the course of their life, and they they this book, uh like I said, he he wrote very close to home in general, but this book I think he even said was the one that was maybe the most unvarnished of his books.
• 22:46
  SPEAKER_02: And he actually even wrote it um more out of personal necessity because uh this this couple that they're that he and his wife were friends with for their lives, uh the almost the majority of their adult lives, um, were just so meaningful to him, but also complex.
• 23:05
  SPEAKER_02: And so there's there's uh the the kind of the kernel of the story is that um this this couple that they meet, uh Sid and Charity Morgan, or sorry, Lang, um they they meet them in Madison, Wisconsin.
• 23:24
  SPEAKER_02: Um Sid and Charity are both from wealthy or um at least uh established backgrounds.
• 23:34
  SPEAKER_02: And uh the the characters that represent Stegner and his wife are uh coming from uh pretty close to where Stegner was coming from, where they they you know they're they're um not particularly wealthy.
• 23:48
  SPEAKER_02: Um they don't have very many family connections, they're they're kind of they have each other, and that's about it.
• 23:54
  SPEAKER_02: And Stid and Charity welcome them into their family and and into their um home and into their place, which is uh is most significantly a um a uh small community in Vermont that is the the uh summer home of a bunch of Ivy League professors.
• 24:17
  SPEAKER_02: So anyway, um Sid and Charity are just this really uh generous couple, but uh over the course of the novel we see that charity is also just very imperious, and she's uh uh in a way that's just really kind of sad and disturbing, is is very controlling of Sid and in a way that is just very difficult for them to watch.
• 24:44
  SPEAKER_02: And so it's it's Stegner um essentially working through that issue and trying to say like how what what does it mean to be friends with people like this?
• 24:54
  SPEAKER_02: How does how does our friendship intertwine with our own lives?
• 24:58
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and it's and it's just kind of this really powerful meditation on the gratitude that he has for them, uh, mixed with the perplexity at this uh challenge that they have in their relationship.
• 25:09
  SPEAKER_02: And um, so and so it's it's a very uh quiet, mature book, um, as you mentioned from the introductory reading.
• 25:18
  SPEAKER_02: It's um and it's just I I I it's it's a very moving book.
• 25:26
  SPEAKER_02: Uh I think a lot of people just have very strong attachments to it.
• 25:29
  SPEAKER_02: I I one of the things I really enjoyed about the archives is I read almost the entirety of his round run of fan mail, at least what he kept.
• 25:37
  SPEAKER_02: And and this book definitely was you know very powerful and moving to a lot of readers.
• 25:43
  SPEAKER_00: So it seems like there is this a stereotype, uh, and that's what I read that opening quote um passage.
• 25:51
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, this stereotype that novels need to be extra dramatic, right?
• 25:55
  SPEAKER_00: Like something really terrible needs to happen, people need to self-destroy um in spectacular ways.
• 26:02
  SPEAKER_00: And his point is like, well, you can actually have a really beautiful, meaningful life that seems quieter.
• 26:09
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, but a lot of this is still drama.
• 26:12
  SPEAKER_00: And this is in particular drama set in the context of academia.
• 26:17
  unknown: Yeah.
• 26:18
  SPEAKER_00: What do we make of this?
• 26:20
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I I've been wondering.
• 26:22
  SPEAKER_02: Um, it's it's a thesis I haven't really been able to pursue too much, but it's uh I I am kind of wondering how far someone will get through the book if they don't have at least some experience of academia, because it is just so much of an academic uh setting.
• 26:38
  SPEAKER_02: Um I I think it is it sells well enough, or it's it's continued to sell.
• 26:42
  SPEAKER_02: So I think it's uh angle repose and crossing safety.
• 26:46
  SPEAKER_02: Last time I checked were the ones that have the highest ratings still, um, at least Amazon ratings.
• 26:53
  SPEAKER_02: Um but yeah, so it has to be um moving to people that are outside of academia.
• 26:59
  SPEAKER_02: But yeah, it's it is just so much um an academic book.
• 27:04
  SPEAKER_02: You know, you you you have this tension with the contemplative life that you know a lot of people are drawn to academia because they want to be essentially paid to read during daylight hours and to talk about books with people for their career.
• 27:19
  SPEAKER_02: Um but then you kind of have the tension of like the fact that you just need to uh you need to publish to get your recognition, and that that takes you outside of the place that you're trying to work.
• 27:31
  SPEAKER_02: And you know, it's it's just such a tension.
• 27:33
  SPEAKER_02: And that, sorry, I forgot I didn't preface that with that.
• 27:35
  SPEAKER_02: That's basically um Sid, the uh the husband of the couple that their friend that um Stegner's representative couple is is is friends with.
• 27:47
  SPEAKER_02: Um he wants to be a poet and he wants to live the more contemplative life.
• 27:53
  SPEAKER_02: But uh one of the things that uh drives the tension in the relationship with his wife, charity, is that she wants him to be an established academic because that's uh you know, her she comes from a long line of Ivy League professors, and and he resents the fact that she won't let him write the poetry, even though they are you know well off financial and he could totally just be in the woods and write poetry.
• 28:14
  SPEAKER_02: But she wants the the you know the kind of the prestige of the uh publications and the and the uh status of the position.
• 28:24
  SPEAKER_02: So yeah, I that that academic side is uh is almost is pretty integral to the plot.
• 28:30
  SPEAKER_00: And it raises questions that I think are uh good to consider beyond the realm of academia.
• 28:37
  SPEAKER_00: We all have dreams, you know, as when we're um in high school, college, as we're dreaming of what our adult lives will look like.
• 28:45
  SPEAKER_00: We have ideas um that we'd love to see come to fruition, and real life happens.
• 28:53
  SPEAKER_02: Yes.
• 28:54
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, there's that line in the book where um yeah, they they go on a hike and it's just this beautifully described hike into the uh ver wilds of Vermont, and uh uh it's they they're they go as couples, and then at one point in the hike, uh Sid and Larry, who is the guy that is closest to Segner, they go off and hike and they find this just beautiful spot with waterfalls and they go swimming, and it's like you know, it's just can life get better?
• 29:24
  SPEAKER_02: You know, it's just as beautiful as beautiful can be.
• 29:26
  SPEAKER_02: And um the chapter ends with uh this reflection by Larry that you know they they were on the verge of catastrophe, and the catastrophe, and and this is not a spoiler, is that um uh Larry's wife, Sally, is is about to contract polio, and and she actually they have to, you know, do something of an emergency rescue to get her out of the hike, um, because she's kind of coming down with it as they're on this uh separate excursion.
• 29:56
  SPEAKER_02: But they have he has a uh metaphor for uh it's the uh slug who is dissolving into foam by getting hit by the salt, and you don't and then he says, like the slug doesn't see it coming even as it's on its way.
• 30:11
  SPEAKER_02: You know, and um he has a line that he keeps coming back to, and this is a line I think it might be his most quoted line in all of his writing is uh is from Henry Adams, is uh chaos is the law of nature and order is the dream of man.
• 30:29
  SPEAKER_02: And and he has this reflection, you know, we have our dreams of order, but but chaos intervenes.
• 30:36
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 30:37
  SPEAKER_00: Well, and I think how much of Barry's writing also is on these themes, just um the dream of a life, a quiet life, um, but also contemplative and thoughtful and meaningful life.
• 30:50
  SPEAKER_00: Um intervene well, modernity intervenes into that and the dreams that we have for our lives that are inspired by modernity.
• 30:59
  SPEAKER_00: So the whole idea, even of like wanting to become a distinguished professor, uh chasing that dream as opposed to something else simply because one of these is a recognized dream and the other seems kind of too, I don't know, dreamy.
• 31:15
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah.
• 31:16
  SPEAKER_02: Well, actually, there's a really interesting exchange that Stegner had with Barry on that very issue.
• 31:21
  SPEAKER_02: And um uh again, the timing is a little hazy, but uh Stegner thought he was actually opposed to Barry going back to Kentucky.
• 31:32
  SPEAKER_02: So Barry had gone to Stanford and studied with Stegner at Stanford and you know was um making his name in California.
• 31:41
  SPEAKER_02: Um and then I think he did uh a year in New York and then he did a fellowship in Italy, and so he's you know making his way around, but then you know the Kentucky just draws him back, and and Stegner actually tried to convince him to come back to Stanford.
• 31:57
  SPEAKER_02: So he he offered him a job at Stanford and wanted to come out there, and Barry said no.
• 32:03
  SPEAKER_02: And then um this interesting element here too, and I I think Stegner might have recommended him for one of the the MacArthur Genius Awards, or at least he he turned it down.
• 32:14
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and I can't remember exactly the details of how it all happened, but uh Stegner was basically trying to pull Barry out of Kentucky for uh a few years at least.
• 32:23
  SPEAKER_02: Um, but then later, uh, once Barry, you know, had continued to uh write well and and actually, you know, live out that uh that kind of seemingly unattainable option of uh the contemplative life without kind of falling off the radar.
• 32:45
  SPEAKER_02: Um Stegner just wrote about how much respect he had for his integrity and for you know resisting his opinion that he should stick to Stan or you know come back to Stanford.
• 32:56
  SPEAKER_02: So it's I I think Barry is one of the rare people who who can actually kind of do both.
• 33:02
  SPEAKER_02: Um it's not really an option for most of us, probably.
• 33:07
  SPEAKER_00: No, just as not buying a computer is not an option for most of us either.
• 33:13
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah.
• 33:15
  SPEAKER_02: Still glad that there are people that can pull it off, though.
• 33:18
  SPEAKER_00: Absolutely, yes.
• 33:19
  unknown: Yeah.
• 33:20
  SPEAKER_00: So so this is a novel about academia, but really career and dreams.
• 33:24
  SPEAKER_00: But most of all, it's about marriage and family.
• 33:28
  SPEAKER_00: And it's an unusual novel of marriage and family in this regard.
• 33:33
  SPEAKER_00: Um usually to pull off the drama, there has to be something really unsavory and unpleasant.
• 33:40
  SPEAKER_00: And instead, here you have two happy marriages.
• 33:45
  SPEAKER_00: Even if, as you noted, uh Sid and Charity have a really kind of unhealthy dynamic at times.
• 33:52
  SPEAKER_00: So, what do we make of this?
• 33:53
  SPEAKER_00: A novel that is just about married people.
• 34:00
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, well, um, I mentioned that part of the reason I wrote about Stegner is because he left an historical footprint, but um in that, and that was kind of uh just a bare fact that needed to be there for me to do it in a history department.
• 34:13
  SPEAKER_02: Um this was uh my dissertation work.
• 34:16
  SPEAKER_02: But umatically, that was really what attracted me to Stegner the most.
• 34:20
  SPEAKER_02: And uh one of the reasons that I most wanted to uh work on him was that um he he was doing something that seems to be different from what most of the great artists of the 20th century were doing, and that is he's writing about um sticking or he's writing about commitment.
• 34:41
  SPEAKER_02: Um, you know, there's the kind of whole thread of books, and I and I kind of think of like JD Salinger and Catherine the Rye as like the uh kind of the one of the you know major examples of this, but it's that these that they're about characters who are stuck and um forced into an identity that they don't want, and so they have to escape.
• 35:04
  SPEAKER_02: And so um Barry has a great essay about that theme in Huck Finn and how Huck is kind of the archetypal American character and that he's got a um light out for the territory, and that there's no real way to imagine a satisfying adult life in American fiction.
• 35:24
  SPEAKER_02: And I think that is overstated.
• 35:28
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, I think they're when I was when I was really thinking about this theme, as you know, um Hallmark movies are basically all about that theme.
• 35:37
  SPEAKER_02: And so it's it's something that we still explore, but but but obviously Hallmark movies are not um winning literary awards.
• 35:46
  SPEAKER_02: So um it's kind of rare to explore that theme in a work that is really trying to aspire to some of the um complexities of of of great literature or literature that can be, you know, can handle sustained readings.
• 36:03
  SPEAKER_02: So I think that's that's one of the themes in Stegner's work as a whole, you know, this this uh commitment to a marriage, you know, through the challenges of it.
• 36:12
  SPEAKER_02: Um but you know, but that extends to commitment to places or to traditions.
• 36:18
  SPEAKER_02: You know, he's he's not someone that's um unaware of the fact that problems exist.
• 36:24
  SPEAKER_02: You know, he's not like he's just simply a uh um, you know, looks at he's not he's not insisting, oh, everything's fine, just get over it.
• 36:34
  SPEAKER_02: You know, he can he can be honest about problems, but he's also just really sensitive to the uh the value of sticking with people and sticking with places.
• 36:44
  SPEAKER_02: And and I I found that very moving and worthy of pointing out as as a as a theme and as uh a worthwhile effort.
• 36:54
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 36:55
  SPEAKER_00: Well, so if I may ask you a personal question.
• 36:58
  SPEAKER_00: So when you started writing this dissertation, obviously you were a few years younger.
• 37:03
  SPEAKER_00: Um you maybe you were already married and had kids, but how did your how does this rereading affect as you think about these novels now that you're um a husband, a dad, a teacher?
• 37:18
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, well, I um yeah, I've been married for 15 years now and uh four kids.
• 37:24
  SPEAKER_02: And uh yeah, it's uh my wife um has has enjoyed reading Stegner, you know, she doesn't always always enjoy uh me insisting on her reading my latest draft, as as uh many people might imagine.
• 37:39
  SPEAKER_02: But um, yeah, it's been it was it was a really uh I guess just moving thing to see someone like Stegner uh praise these things.
• 37:52
  SPEAKER_02: And it and I I I just you know um the academic life is full of its own challenges, but one of the things I was just really grateful to spend time with a writer in the way that I did, you know, I read all of his books and spent time with his personal effects.
• 38:10
  SPEAKER_02: It's it's a really weird thing to be in the archive with uh with one person that way.
• 38:16
  SPEAKER_02: It's like there were moments when I was walking.
• 38:18
  SPEAKER_02: I I really like to walk a lot when I'm doing my archival work and uh just thinking about um who Stegner was and the fact that I'm kind of spying on all of his stuff.
• 38:29
  SPEAKER_02: It's just really weird.
• 38:31
  SPEAKER_02: But I was just very moved by his example because he he did have a really strong marriage to his wife, and that that's one thing that uh I think made him such a good friend to Barry is that they were both um people that had strong enduring marriages um that uh that were, you know, I'm just grateful for their example in my life.
• 38:53
  SPEAKER_02: It's it was uh it was fun to see.
• 38:56
  SPEAKER_02: Um I will say that um he did actually play a role in um one life decision, which is that I when we moved to Idaho, um, which is where my wife is from, is part of the reason that we wanted to move here, is that senior her family, but uh we moved out for uh for one job that didn't work out.
• 39:18
  SPEAKER_02: And um, you know, in the academic world, um could have very easily just tried to search for the next job, but uh we stuck in Idaho, um, and that was in part because Stegner's example.
• 39:30
  SPEAKER_02: And it's been a really rewarding thing, and um, we you know, we've been here since 2018, um and and felt the the value of having friendships that that stick around and that that are you know more than a few years old.
• 39:49
  SPEAKER_02: And uh both my wife and I have moved a lot, so I'm I can't claim to have uh you know be a you know you know pure example of sticking.
• 39:57
  SPEAKER_02: Um but and and I and I think that people do need to move.
• 40:01
  SPEAKER_02: So I I don't want to just say that um I think it's uh wrong to hold out this example that you know you can never move because obviously there are circumstances where um you know God calls us to things and we need to obey that call.
• 40:14
  SPEAKER_02: But uh but I do think Stegner offers a really good um example to say, you know, that um you know it's worth it to uh have the benefit of time um in relationship, that that you there's certain things that you just don't get when um when you don't have that kind of just bare fact of time.
• 40:36
  SPEAKER_02: And and I think um I really like the idea of quantity time over quality time.
• 40:41
  SPEAKER_02: You know, there's just we kind of fool ourselves into thinking that, oh, well, you know, we can spend quality time with people and that, and then and then that's all that matters.
• 40:50
  SPEAKER_02: But no, you know, quantity time is its own quality time, you know, that it it builds quality in the intangible ways that you just don't know uh about until you experience it.
• 41:00
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 41:01
  SPEAKER_00: Years ago, um when our church at the time was uh launching a new round of small groups, uh, read an article that talked about the hundred-hour threshold, that your relationships with people deepen if you've spent um a hundred hours together, just kind of existing together, which with most people you don't really reach.
• 41:24
  SPEAKER_00: And the article did say work, uh work hours don't count.
• 41:27
  SPEAKER_00: That somehow doesn't, that relationship, like relationships with colleagues, spending a hundred hours together at work is not gonna lead to that.
• 41:35
  SPEAKER_00: But specifically with friendships and building kind of commitments for uh really deep connections, conversations that will go beyond the surface, that 100-hour threshold.
• 41:47
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah, I really I I I haven't heard that term, but I I I have a lot of sympathy with it just from what you said.
• 41:53
  SPEAKER_02: But yeah, my wife and I have had this conversation a few times where um, you know, people will come to our church and and we've been there since 2018 now, but um, you know, and they'll uh kind of maybe be dismissive of you know, small talk around the coffee uh station or something like that.
• 42:14
  SPEAKER_02: And and it's kind of like, I want to have deep conversations, or um, and then and then there's also the dynamic where people will just kind of uh go somewhere else without assuming that people will miss them.
• 42:26
  SPEAKER_02: And it's kind of like, well, we, you know, you know, maybe we only talked around the coffee uh station, but we, you know, we still want to know where you are, and we'll, you know, we're gonna you're gonna be missed.
• 42:37
  SPEAKER_02: But uh I I think it is one of those things that we kind of tend to devalue is just like the neighborly interaction um that might not get too far, but that's just you know, that's just the foundation.
• 42:50
  SPEAKER_02: And and if you never have those small talk moments, then you you you don't really have as much of a hope for those longer, uh more meaningful conversations.
• 42:59
  SPEAKER_02: And you know, sometimes we hit it off with people right away, and it's like you've known each other your whole lives already.
• 43:04
  SPEAKER_02: But you know, sometimes you just need to have that time to build, and though, and those friendships can be really meaningful um eventually.
• 43:11
  SPEAKER_00: And that's what I really appreciated with crossing to safety, the idea, the story of these decades-long friendships of those two couples, that they've really grown together precisely because they invested in their friendship for two like um I think over four decades at that point, or three decades.
• 43:31
  SPEAKER_00: I think they're in their 50s at the end of the book.
• 43:34
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 43:35
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah.
• 43:35
  SPEAKER_02: And and and like I said, I mean, this is pretty close to the actual reality of their friendship and and the ups and downs.
• 43:42
  SPEAKER_02: You know, there's uh they're not always as close as they are at certain moments, but you know, they they stick it out and they they write letters and they see each other in different locations.
• 43:53
  SPEAKER_02: And um, and and it's just you know, really well, at at one point in the book he says, I can't write about.
• 44:00
  SPEAKER_02: them without writing about our our relationship with them.
• 44:04
  SPEAKER_02: So it's like they're just really intertwined by the end in in in a meaningful way.
• 44:10
  SPEAKER_00: So one question I wanted to ask you has to do with Stegner's faith.
• 44:15
  SPEAKER_00: Because the book does seem in some ways Christ haunted.
• 44:18
  SPEAKER_00: And even the chapter headings, like the chapter where um Sally is diagnosed with polio is uh titled something like Snake in Eden.
• 44:28
  SPEAKER_00: So what was Stegner's view?
• 44:33
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah he he's had a he it's it's interesting.
• 44:36
  SPEAKER_02: Um I I'm kind of hesitant to be too definitive about it because he he was uh he was interested in that he wrote a lot of books that were really close to home but that he was a fairly reticent person in other ways.
• 44:50
  SPEAKER_02: And I think that was especially true of his um religious beliefs.
• 44:54
  SPEAKER_02: And so there are a few hints here and there where um he as a young professor during the Depression was asked to sign a statement of faith at Augustana College in Illinois, I think is where it is but uh he they were they asked him to sign um to sign an affirmation of belief in the Augsburg Confession and he was just utterly repulsed by that idea.
• 45:18
  SPEAKER_02: So he was very much opposed to any kind of um uh sectarianism um I I would say that my if I were to you know have to make a really you know just make a guess it seemed like he was kind of like a um mainline Protestant liberal who had kind of uh a really strong appreciation for the aesthetics of Christianity um and for uh charity I mean he's actually he's got a uh a essay that is grounded in a speech he gave for the opening of the Marriott Library where his papers are now in at the University of Utah and he talks about uh the necessity of charity as you know it's kind of like love is the foundational virtue and so I think he truly believed that and and there's a lot of evidence for that in his work but um yeah he he I I think he um kind of had this I I think Christ haunted is a good word is that he wanted that to be true in a way that was um that he could not fully believe so it's kind of like he it's like love is there it's real but I don't know where it comes from and and I think he ultimately believed in in more of like uh just the kind of the the geological movement of time you know time with the capital T.
• 46:42
  SPEAKER_02: Uh and I think kind of like Robert Frost who who's the uh poet who gave the title Crossing to Safety it's from a Robert Frost poem.
• 46:52
  SPEAKER_02: And I think ultimately he was kind of like one of those um 20th century modernists who uh desperately wanted to believe in in something like the Christian order of the universe but that intellectually had rejected the foundation of it.
• 47:08
  SPEAKER_02: And so that's kind of where I have him I'm not I'm not totally positive that that's true because um he didn't always write directly about it.
• 47:17
  SPEAKER_00: And that's okay.
• 47:18
  SPEAKER_00: I think in our social media age we just expect that everybody's gonna tell us everything about themselves.
• 47:24
  SPEAKER_00: And it's it's appropriate to be reminded that some people did not.
• 47:30
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah yeah and I actually I I could add one more thing about his religious beliefs is that he um he's beloved in Utah uh partly because he wrote wrote about Utah but he also he had a strong affection for um Mormons and um in part because when he was in his youth he's he's um bumping around in all these mountain towns chasing the boom with his father and and he's kind of lost and you know he had this desire for kind of a deeper sense of place like his mother but uh when they finally make it to Salt Lake City um they end up staying in Salt Lake City uh they move around within Salt Lake City many times so he's not actually in any one neighborhood for a long time but he's befriended by a a family who's Mormon and um and they provide him with stability and friendship and he had this uh kind of lifelong affection for um people who are committed to a place um in part because of religious reasons like like the Mormons and he had this sense like that I I think he probably seemed to understand like the part of the reason that they have a strong sense of place is because they share their faith together.
• 48:42
  SPEAKER_02: And um I don't think he was blind to some of the uh faults of the Mormon community but um but he did have a a pretty strong respect for them and and he's and he's really beloved by a lot of Utah's especially so today I think those are some of his uh kind of longtime fans so to get back to the classics question do you think he is a classic we can still appreciate today like is Wallace Stegner in his novels true classics yeah that's uh I I think I based on the way that I was trying to find earlier I I I have a feeling that I don't think he's gonna quite make it to that category of classic where he's gonna be read um for too many more generations or and you know I don't know if he I I he he's been translated into other languages for sure but I don't know that he's really quite made it across the uh international border either but um I think he is uh you know he's ex he's exactly what what I would call uh you know he's uh he's contributed his his golden thread in the tapestry of human thought is a line from Cross into Safety.
• 49:55
  SPEAKER_02: He contributed his thread and he wrote of you know very good books for decades and and and books that were very meaningful to people in several generations uh of the West of the American West um and then in in America as a whole so I I have you know a lot of respect for that and um you know maybe he'll make it maybe he won't I don't know I think I think he's just you know he's done he's done a a good service to people in his time and place and you know that that's worthy of praise I think.
• 50:31
  SPEAKER_00: I would agree.
• 50:32
  SPEAKER_00: And for whatever my recommendation is worth after finishing crossing to safety I immediately placed a hole in the library on everything else they had by him.
• 50:42
  SPEAKER_02: So wow okay yeah that's cool yeah so what well um if I if you don't mind me asking what what have you read so far besides crossing safety or you say you just finished spectator bird or about I'm finishing spectator bird bird and the next one up is going to be angle of repose oh yeah that's yeah I think um for the historians in your audience I think that's a really great book for historians to read especially it's just um well for one thing the main character or well one of the main characters because there's kind of two stories in the book um is a historian and so it's kind of fun to have the historian be the protagonist and and he's not just an historian but a Bancroft winning historian so he's a he's he's up there.
• 51:22
  SPEAKER_02: So okay noted yeah yes well Matt this is delightful and we're gonna finish with our usual final question which is what classic do you wish you had written and why yeah well I I knew that you were gonna ask that question I've and it's been really fun to go back and hear some other people responding to that question.
• 51:47
  SPEAKER_02: It's a very intimidating question.
• 51:49
  SPEAKER_02: But I I think I would choose uh probably first I maybe would choose uh Mere Christianity by C.S.
• 51:55
  SPEAKER_02: Lewis and partly that's because um well actually I it going back to my arguments about rereadings is that I I tried to read it as a high school student and for some reason at the time I don't know what my problem was but I didn't actually like it that much at that point.
• 52:15
  SPEAKER_02: It didn't take and then I read it again at at Geneva college where where I did my undergraduate degree with um professor named Bob Frazier and um he taught a whole class on C.S.
• 52:27
  SPEAKER_02: Lewis works and reading mere Christianity at that time was just incredibly meaningful to me and and uh and I'm it's it that whole series of uh books and in that time of reading them with uh Dr.
• 52:41
  SPEAKER_02: Frazier was just a really valuable moment for me in general.
• 52:45
  SPEAKER_02: Um so I have a great affection for it and I've returned to it many times but then also just seeing how how much it's meant to so many people and the you know the generosity and spirit there and uh you know it's just to write a book that's been meaningful to so many people um would be really rewarding.
• 53:06
  SPEAKER_00: So well that's a C.S.
• 53:08
  SPEAKER_00: Lewis is always a good answer.
• 53:09
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah yeah can't go wrong there.
• 53:11
  SPEAKER_02: Thank you so much Matt Yeah it's my pleasure thank you again