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Originally published on April 10, 2016 By Clay Evans听
When author and journalist Timothy Egan went to Stanford University in 2009 for a centennial celebration of Wallace Stegner, he described the late writer as the 鈥渦ber-citizen of the West.鈥澨�
Stegner, who taught at Stanford and won both the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award, was a passionate advocate for conservation and wilderness.听
鈥淪omething will have gone out of us as a people if we ever let the remaining wilderness be destroyed,鈥� he wrote in his famous 1960 鈥淲ilderness Letter.鈥澨�
鈥淪tegner has always been a hero of mine,鈥� says Egan, a lifelong Westerner and Seattle native. 鈥溾�楢ngle of Repose鈥� is one of my favorite novels, but I鈥檓 also a big admirer of his early public-policy work. Stegner was a guy who got involved as a citizen. There are a lot of great American treasures around because he fought the good fight.鈥澨�
So Egan was stunned to learn that a century after Stegner鈥檚 birth, Stanford offered no courses on his work and the school鈥檚 prestigious Stegner fellows seemed to find him pass茅. Egan responded with a column for the New York Times 鈥� which had been mostly dismissive of Stegner throughout his life 鈥� advocating for the hardscrabble, blunt-spoken prose poet of Palo Alto.听
Seven years later, the University of Colorado鈥檚 Center of the American West has named Egan winner of its 2016 Wallace Stegner Award, which recognizes individuals who have made 鈥渁 sustained contribution to the cultural identity of the West.鈥� He will accept the award and participate in a public interview on April 13.听
鈥淚n widely read works, Egan has brought together history, the findings of environmental sciences and matters of governance and policy with an impact that seems to be a direct answer to Wallace Stegner鈥檚 hope that the West would someday be positioned to host a vigorous and productive internal dialogue,鈥� says Patty Limerick, professor of history and director of the Center of the American West.听
Egan鈥檚 latest book, 鈥淭he Immortal Irishman,鈥� is a biography of Thomas Francis Meagher, a former revolutionary who became the territorial governor of Montana and who was, prior to the rise of John F. Kennedy, the best-known Irish-American immigrant.听
Meagher was imprisoned by the British and sent into exile before coming to America, where he led the famous Irish Brigade for the Union during the Civil War.听
鈥淥n his back, you can go through the entire arc of Irish-American history, from the famine to the failed (Irish) uprising, his banishment to a penal colony in Tasmania, and coming to America,鈥� Egan says. 鈥淗e lived a great, wonderful, adventurous life, and really changed a lot of events on three continents.鈥澨�
Egan鈥檚 wide-ranging, weekly column for the Times has in recent months eviscerated Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump 鈥� whom he calls 鈥渁 lunatic show-biz narcissist鈥� 鈥� and the much-maligned, abortive 鈥渢akeover鈥� of the Malheur Wildlife Refuge in central Oregon by would-be sagebrush rebels led by the Bundy clan.听
鈥淭he great thing about Bundy was that it showed they have no support for their outlaw view of taking land all of us own to give back to 鈥榦riginal owners,'鈥� Egan says. 鈥淚t was great when a group of Paiutes showed up and said, 鈥楬ey, if you really want to give back to the original owners, here we are.'鈥澨�
Egan blames 鈥渢he craziest presidential campaign in history,鈥� as well as widespread misunderstanding of science and an easily swayed public, in part on the documented decline of the average American attention span, which one study literally 鈥� literally literally 鈥� found is less than that of a goldfish.听
鈥淭he lack of attention is a big part of the problem, and so is the fact that everyone can now create their own facts,鈥� he says. 鈥淓veryone can go to their own sites to find anything they want. In a post-empirical world, someone like Trump can just make up bulls**t as he鈥檚 going along.鈥澨�
But he鈥檚 cautiously optimistic that reality will ultimately trump ignorance.听
鈥淚f you see that the forest next to your house is going to burn because climate change means beetles can now winter over in warmer weather, it becomes a matter of self interest,鈥� he says. 鈥淲hen your little trophy home catches fire, it鈥檚 not some abstract reading from a Koch brothers policy paper.鈥澨�