What do you think of this?

In the book Stealing Glances: Three Interviews with Wallace Stegner by James R. Hepworth, Wallace described his wife as central to his life and success.

"She has had no role in my life except to keep me sane, fed, housed, amused, and protected from unwanted telephone calls, also to restrain me fairly frequently from making a horse's ass of myself in public, to force me to attend to books and ideas from which she knows I will learn something, also to mend my wounds when I am misused by the world, to implant ideas in my head and stir the soil around them, to keep me from falling into a comfortable torpor, to agitate my sleeping hours with problems that I would not otherwise attend to; also to remind me constatnly (not by precept but by example) how fortunate I have been to live for fifty-three years with a woman that bright, alert, charming, and supportive."

I am awe-struck by this statement, and envious, too. And just so you know, Wallace Stegner said this of his wife, Mary, during her lifetime. Of course, he could not say it after her death. She outlived him by 19 years, dying at age 99.

I have probably written here before of Wallace Stegner. I loved him, love his novels and appreciate his non-fiction writing, all of which I find instructive and spell-binding. I don't have to agree 100% with his political views to appreciate him. His death in 1993, soon after a terrible automobile accident, left me sad and sorry. 

If you have never read Angle of Repose, his Pulitzer Prize winner, read it. Then you could read Crossing to Safety; All the Little Live Things; Spectator Bird; Big Rock Candy Mountain. And so on. But if you read only one of his novels, make it Angle of Repose.