As Lisa Leff reports for the AP some people have attempted to muddy Selwa Press’s right to publish Discovery! by disparaging me as well as Mr. Stegner’s remarkable work of narrative history. While it is interesting to speculate about the various editions of the text and what might or might not have been the late author’s motives there are a few facts that interfere with the negative chatter of these detractors.

Between 1955 and 1971 Wallace Stegner created three different works for Aramco and was paid for each of them. First he was commisioned to write a history of Aramco’s early years entitled, “The Story of Aramco and Its Pioneers.” He delivered his draft manuscript in 1956. In 1958 Mr. Stegner was paid again to rework the manuscript into its final form. At this point, for reasons that no one will ever know with absolute certainty, this project was abandoned and the book was never released.

Nine years later Stegner agreed to create a serialized version called “Discovery! The Story of Aramco Then,”  for Aramco World magazine. Every chapter of this abridgement was vetted, revised and personally approved by Stegner himself. He was satisfied enough with the results to write an introduction to the 1971 compilation known as “Discovery! The Search for Arabian Oil.” This version is listed with the Library of Congress and is copyrighted in Aramco’s name.

In 1958 when the initial rewrite was being discussed Stegner wrote a very frank letter to Aramco’s VP of Public Relations and closed with the following, “I do feel the obligation to finish what I started, if you want me to and if the terms can be worked out, as I am sure they can. But I would not want my name on it unless  I could feel that what I sign is really what I can believe in.” 

Stegner believed in Discovery! so much that he put his name on it - and who are any of us to disagree? Certainly not me. I’m glad that I have had a chance to reprint this work and finally produce it with the proper endpapers, front matter, annotations and illustrations that a work by a writer of Wallace Stegner’s stature deserves.

Though Discovery! may not be a major title within Stegner’s body of work, it is his only non-fiction work set overseas and has been considered a classic account of early Saudi Arabia by Middle Eastern specialists for three decades. It is also a testament to a very talented writer whose foresight was 20-20. As The Atlantic wrote. “It might be a stretch to call this lost work a “classic,”  … but “prescient” would be something like criminal understatement.” There are many reasons to enjoy Discovery! and I hope that this recent “controversy” won’t dissuade anyone from reading Stegner’s words. As Nick Owchar at the Los Angeles Times wrote, ” If any PR work was worth a writer’s time, it surely was this. At its core, “Discovery!” is a grand adventure story.”

I believe that Discovery! is much more astute than a PR piece, but do agree that it is a sweeping, intelligent account of a world that last existed 60 years ago and a venture that forever changed global economics. I trust that you, the reader, will make up your own mind.

Tim Barger, Publisher Selwa Press