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Not all lost books are happy to be found

When lost books by well-known authors are found, it is usually an occasion for celebration. Not in the case of a non-fiction book about oil exploration written by Wallace Stegner, an award-winning novelist and creative writing professor who taught, among many others, people like Thomas McGuane, Ken Kesey, Larry McMurty, Raymond Carver, and Gordon Lish.

From the International Herald Tribune:

The owner of Selwa Press, Timothy Barger, is the son of the former president of a U.S. company that hired Stegner in 1956 to pen a promotional piece about its history. Stegner, who is known as the literary laureate of the American West, was treated to two weeks in Saudi Arabia and paid about $16,000 for his effort.

For reasons that now are a subject of dispute between Barger and the late author’s son, however, an edited version of Stegner’s manuscript was not published in the Arabian American Oil Co.’s in-house magazine until 1967. It was not available to the public until Vista, Calif.-based Selwa put out a trade edition of “Discovery!” in September without permission from Stegner’s estate.

“His particular version of the manuscript was one that was cut up by one of their PR people. It was never put up for sale,” said Carl Brandt, Stegner’s longtime literary agent. “If Wally had wanted to publish that edition, he would have been on the phone with me saying, ‘Let’s go, and get Viking to do it.’”

Barger has said that he secured the rights to the company-approved version from ARAMCO’s Saudi-run successor and that he did not need consent from Stegner’s heirs. Selwa’s edition was serialized in the company’s magazine in 1967 and later published in Beirut as a freebie paperback for employees.

Freebie paperbacks – now there’s a job perk we’d like to see come back into fashion.

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