A duet between John Darnielle and Tobias Wolff

Via GalleyCat, here’s video of John Darnielle singing a song from Get Lonely with Tobias Wolff (who has just been awarded the Story Prize, and $20,000, for his collection Our Story Begins) providing backing vocals on the choruses. I don’t know if Wolff is likely to be joining the Mountain Goats on tour anytime soon, but this is beautiful little performance all the same.

Wallace Stegner at 100

Wednesday marked the 100th anniversary of Wallace Stegner’s birth, and Timothy Egan has written a New York Times blog post about Stegner’s lifelong struggle for acceptance by East Coast literary elites. Even after winning a Pulitzer and a National Book Award for his work, Stegner was frequently dismissed as a regionalist writer, and thus far beneath the concern of the New York Times. Egan mounts a vigorous defense of the importance of Stegner’s literary output, and also discusses his legacy as an environmentalist and as a mentor for other writers (including Tobias Wolff, who Egan interviewed for the piece).