>Over at The New York Times, Timothy Egan takes the occasion of the centennial of Wallace Stegner’s birth to write about the fury felt by writers such as Stegner and Norman Maclean for being labeled as regional and ultimately marginalized by the powers that be.

Egan reports that Maclean would not forgive those who passed on his first novel, A River Runs Through It:

After the success of his first book, Maclean was approached in 1981 by an editor at Knopf publishing, which had rejected the novel but was eager to take on his next project. Maclean wrote back in compacted fury.

“If the situation ever arose when Alfred A. Knopf was the only publishing house remaining in the world and I were the sole surviving author,” Maclean wrote, “that would mark the end of the world of books.”

Now that’s what I call holding a grudge!

Though it may be hard to believe, beneath my serene exterior, I do occasionally harbor resentments. But I would never give any of those resentments the power to harm a story, either mine or anyone else’s, by preventing it from reaching the public.

Stephen King has written, “It is the tale, not he who tells it,” but I would extend that to put forth the proposition that it is also the tale, not he or she who publishes it.

The story, and its eventual readers, are all that matter.