Another Look at Wallace Stegner

Susan Salter Reynolds did a balanced, thorough and commendable job of describing the complicated literary debt that Wallace Stegner owes to Mary Hallock Foote, and I am extremely grateful to Reynolds and The Times for bringing this important story to light (“Tangle of Repose,” March 23). But it is ironic that Reynolds did not acknowledge where she acquired much of the material that composed her article: the premise and arguments put forth in my play “Fair Use.”

In addition to a copy of the play, I handed Reynolds years of research that went into the writing of it: the Stegner letters, Foote letters and documents attached to the issue; salient quotes pulled from books and interviews about and with Stegner; work I had done tying Stegner’s work to Foote’s work; even introductions to the Foote family members whom she interviewed. While Reynolds describes the play, and recounts the history that went into its composition, at no point does she clarify these contributions to her thinking or to the article she composed. In an age when information can be downloaded and disseminated so easily, when words and images can be cut here and pasted there, ethics become all the more important.

Sands Hall

Via the Internet

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Reynolds’ article is written to appear as a discovery of new information about Stegner’s novel “Angle of Repose.” This controversy is covered in detail in Jackson J. Benson’s biography of Stegner, published in 1996. Claiming that Sands Hall “flushed the issue into the open” in her 2001 play, “Fair Use,” is incorrect.

Sherman N. Mullin

Oxnard

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I am appalled that Stegner would have copied pages of someone else’s work. The fact that he won a Pulitzer Prize for it is beyond belief. As a distinguished Stanford professor, Stegner should have realized that even he was not above the Stanford honor code. Students are expelled from universities for copying even a sentence from encyclopedias and the like without proper attribution.

Barbara Ritz

Coronado

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I have no particular insight as to the validity of the plagiarism charges against Stegner. However, it would be a very positive side effect of this controversy if it caused more people to read Stegner’s work in general, and “Angle of Repose” in particular. It is a magnificent piece of literature, irrespective of its provenance.

Edward G. Keating

Playa del Rey