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Rating: 
Summary: The American west.
Review: "Easterners are constantly being surprised and somehow offended that California's summer hills are gold, not green. We are creatures shaped by our experiences; we like what we know, more than we know what we like. ... Sagebrush is an acquired taste."
Stegner taught writing at the University of Wisconsin and at Harvard, but he had a strong sense of place and his place was the West. He accepted a position at Stanford University where he spent many years, and became, what many consider to be, 'the dean of Western writing' (by which we do not mean that he wrote "Westerns"). In this volume, Stegner sacks the Hollywood myths, and addresses the far more fascinating realities of the West. Featured here is a studied and caring investigation of what lies between the 98th meridian and the Pacific Ocean; of the land's great beauty and vulnerability to human foolishness. The compilation of essays also includes the author's reflections on his own life and work in the West, and examines critically the work of several significant literary "witnesses" of the American West. He reminds the reader of what criticism is: "A critic ... is not a synthesizer but an analyzer. He picks apart, he lifts a few cells onto a slide and puts a coverglass over them... His is a useful function and done well, ... may even give the reader the illusion of understanding both the product and the process. But ... whatever they can analyze has to be dead before it can be dissected ... critical analysis explains everything but the mystery of literary creation."
If you enjoy the works of John Steinbeck or Norman Maclean, or the powerful but fragile beauty of western lands, the essays collected in the Lemonade Springs are highly recommended.
Rating: 
Summary: Too romantic and exclusive a view of the West
Review: I have the utmost respect for Wallace Stegner as a writer, but this collection of essays takes provincialism to far greater lengths than even his great works of local fiction. Stegner's definition of the West is based on an almost arbitrary measurement of rainfall--less than 20 inches per year. Any area that gets more than that (like Seattle) isn't the West. And that's not all. Cities don't count either, for the cities are just the East brought west in the form of middle-class America. So, the West for this author is the unspoiled, unsettled arid West, which dramatically excludes huge portions of the region that properly belong to it. If Spokane isn't the West, what is it?I love the region, so I appreciate this author's attempts to capture its essence. But I can't get passed the overly romantic and exceptionally patronizing attitiude of the writer. It's as if he's saying: I understand the West. You don't, so I'm going to tell you. I'm a Westerner. You're not, so quit pretending. I live in the West. You don't, so stay the hell out. The whole thing comes off as reverent, but also xenophobic.
Rating:
Summary: Too romantic and exclusive a view of the West
Review: I have the utmost respect for Wallace Stegner as a writer, but this collection of essays takes provincialism to far greater lengths than even his great works of local fiction. Stegner's definition of the West is based on an almost arbitrary measurement of rainfall--less than 20 inches per year. Any area that gets more than that (like Seattle) isn't the West. And that's not all. Cities don't count either, for the cities are just the East brought west in the form of middle-class America. So, the West for this author is the unspoiled, unsettled arid West, which dramatically excludes huge portions of the region that properly belong to it. If Spokane isn't the West, what is it? I love the region, so I appreciate this author's attempts to capture its essence. But I can't get passed the overly romantic and exceptionally patronizing attitiude of the writer. It's as if he's saying: I understand the West. You don't, so I'm going to tell you. I'm a Westerner. You're not, so quit pretending. I live in the West. You don't, so stay the hell out. The whole thing comes off as reverent, but also xenophobic.
Rating:
Summary: Beautiful
Review: Stegner has a way with words, and this collection of excerpts and essays shows them off. In fact, reading Stegner in these discrete chunks may be the best way to appreciate him - especially if you read it out loud, letting the cadences of his writing drive the tempo. This is true for the fiction, non-fiction, and even the literary analyses he includes here. This was the book that got me excited about reading Stegner.
Rating:
Summary: Beautiful
Review: Stegner has a way with words, and this collection of excerpts and essays shows them off. In fact, reading Stegner in these discrete chunks may be the best way to appreciate him - especially if you read it out loud, letting the cadences of his writing drive the tempo. This is true for the fiction, non-fiction, and even the literary analyses he includes here. This was the book that got me excited about reading Stegner.
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