stegner's 100th

A nice op-ed memorial-type piece in the Times on one of my very favorite authors.

On his 100th birthday, it’s worth remembering another lesson of his life — to choose authenticity over artifice. “If you don’t know where you are,” he said, paraphrasing the writer Wendell Berry, “you don’t know who you are.”

It's nice that a nod to Wendell Berry, one of Stegner's students, was included in the piece. It's those two, amongst others (Abbey, Williams, Duncan), that taught me to love place, and now I feel emotionally lost without it.

Perhaps that's why I don't so much like traveling by plane...or being a passenger on a long road trip--the new lacks its connection with the already familiar, and I feel lost, disoriented, without place.

Anyway... God bless the saints of literature. Happy birthday, Stegner.

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If you haven't, and you're so inclined, start with this.