I came to author George Stewart via Wallace Stegner. For several decades, Stegner has been among my favorite authors, although he doesn’t quite meet the standard of my wife Paula’s quip about my preferred writers, “They generally have to be dead for at least fifty years.” (Stegner died in 1993.) Of course, Stegner’s birthplace – Lake Mills, Iowa – helps offset his more recent demise.
This column isn’t really about Stegner, however, it’s about Stewart. They were friends. Stewart urged Stegner to write environmental history, which characterized much of Stegner’s later output. Stegner authored a lyrical introduction to Stewart’s book, “Names on the Land”, work republished in a compilation of Stegner essays, “Where the Bluebird Sings to the Lemonade Springs”. This essay’s first sentence: “Of George Stewart’s twenty-eight books, I find that I have seventeen on my shelves.”
Of Stegner’s thirty books, we have fifteen on our shelves. I counted. Prompted by Stegner’s warm praise for Stewart, I picked up what I knew would be a challenging book, “Ordeal by Hunger,” about the Donner party, and stashed it in my backpack before a recent trip. This was a rare “group travel” excursion, something we don’t do often since Paula likes trip-planning. But group travel offers rewards too, including new friendships and new places otherwise inaccessible.
A few words of background. The Donner party, which eventually numbered eighty-nine men, women, and children, set out from the Midwest for California in 1846, the same year Iowa became a state. Only about half the participants survived until the conclusion of their tragic nine-month journey. Reading “Ordeal” while traveling, with occasional wearying bus rides and irregular meal schedules, adds valuable perspective. Remember, “Ordeal” chronicles an ill-fated Donner party… not an unpleasant dinner party!
After reading “Ordeal”, I searched for insightful commentary about the book, both recent and contemporaneous with its 1936 publication. Several revelations jumped out. First, from a literary / environmental blogger, writing in 2013. “I believe George R. Stewart’s “Ordeal by Hunger” was the most important book of the twentieth century.” A remarkably bold statement.
This blogger contends Stewart happened upon several epiphanies. As Stewart notes, “It should be obvious to the reader that I consider the land to be a character in the work.” (paraphrasing) This statement reveals a breakthrough in western thought: that Earth and its ecosystems are principal players in all human drama. This belief underlies one of the twentieth century’s paradigm shifts; an ecological world view is both fundamental and foundational. This blogger also notes (again, paraphrasing), Stewart assumes an innovative look at geography, from the perspective of space, describing features identifiable only from above, several decades before anyone gained access to this particular vantage point. Here, Stewart foreshadows a “Whole Earth” concept, when “we began to see ourselves as a raft of life on a special place in the universe.”
Another striking observation comes from a book review in the New York Times, April, 1936. “As horrors pile upon horrors… the reader’s mind sickens and turns away. But the story is not all like that. There are many splendid episodes that reveal human nature rising to its finest peaks of generosity, chivalrous sacrifice, devotion to others. This story is worth reading because it shows human beings rising, falling, rising again through the whole scale of human conduct, from lowest to highest of possibilities, a document of such keen, intense, dramatic interest that it holds the reader in absorbed fascination, although he may have to put the book down now and again, unable at the moment to read more.”
Repeatedly, my reading gravitated to uplifting moments and noble actions marbled throughout the Donner story. Every group includes those who, when facing the worst, confront these challenges as best they can. Viewed from this angle, “Ordeal by Hunger” focuses on human resilience. We often need reminders of people’s ability to rise, fall, then rise again. This is the enduring strength of Stewart’s powerful book.
Iowa Writers’ Collaborative Columnists
Laura Belin: Iowa Politics with Laura Belin, Windsor Heights
Doug Burns: The Iowa Mercury, Carroll
Dave Busiek: Dave Busiek on Media, Des Moines
Art Cullen: Art Cullen’s Notebook, Storm Lake
Suzanna de Baca Dispatches from the Heartland, Huxley
Debra Engle: A Whole New World, Madison County
Julie Gammack: Julie Gammack’s Iowa Potluck, Des Moines and Okoboji
Joe Geha: Fern and Joe, Ames
Jody Gifford: Benign Inspiration, West Des Moines
Nik Heftman, The Seven Times, Iowa and California
Beth Hoffman: In the Dirt, Lovilla
Dana James: New Black Iowa, Des Moines
Pat Kinney: View from Cedar Valley, Waterloo
Fern Kupfer: Fern and Joe, Ames
Robert Leonard: Deep Midwest: Politics and Culture, Bussey
Tar Macias: Hola Iowa, Iowa
Kurt Meyer, Showing Up, St. Ansgar
Kyle Munson, Kyle Munson’s Main Street, Des Moines
Jane Nguyen, The Asian Iowan, West Des Moines
John Naughton: My Life, in Color, Des Moines
Chuck Offenburger: Iowa Boy Chuck Offenburger, Jefferson and Des Moines
Barry Piatt: Piatt on Politics Behind the Curtain, Washington, D.C.
Macy Spensley, The Midwestern Creative, Davenport/Des Moines
Mary Swander: Mary Swander’s Buggy Land, Kalona
Mary Swander: Mary Swander’s Emerging Voices, Kalona
Cheryl Tevis: Unfinished Business, Boone County
Ed Tibbetts: Along the Mississippi, Davenport
Teresa Zilk: Talking Good, Des Moines
To receive a weekly roundup of all Iowa Writers’ Collaborative columnists, sign up here (free): ROUNDUP COLUMN
We are proud to have an alliance with Iowa Capital Dispatch.