Frank Bergon
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Frank Bergon (born 1943) is an American writer whose novels, essays, anthologies, and literary criticism focus primarily on the American West.


Biography

Frank Bergon was born in
Ely, Nevada Ely (, ) is the largest city and county seat of White Pine County, Nevada, United States. Ely was founded as a stagecoach station along the Pony Express and Central Overland Route. In 1906 copper was discovered. Ely's mining boom came later tha ...
, and grew up on a ranch in Madera County in California's San Joaquin Valley. After attending elementary school at St. Joachim in
Madera, California Madera (Spanish language, Spanish for "Lumber") is a city in and the county seat of Madera County, California, Madera County, located in the San Joaquin Valley of California. Founded in 1876 as a timber town at the terminus of a major logging f ...
and high school at
Bellarmine College Preparatory Bellarmine College Preparatory is an all-boys, Jesuit, private secondary school located in San Jose, California. Founded on May 8, 1851, it is the oldest Jesuit secondary school in California and the second-oldest west of the Mississippi River. ...
in San Jose, he received a B.A. in English at
Boston College Boston College (BC) is a private university, private Catholic Jesuits, Jesuit research university in Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts, United States. Founded in 1863 by the Society of Jesus, a Catholic Religious order (Catholic), religious order, t ...
, attended
Stanford University Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University, is a Private university, private research university in Stanford, California, United States. It was founded in 1885 by railroad magnate Leland Stanford (the eighth ...
as a Wallace Stegner Fellow, and completed a Ph.D. in English and American Literature at
Harvard University Harvard University is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Founded in 1636 and named for its first benefactor, the History of the Puritans in North America, Puritan clergyma ...
.


Writing career

Bergon has published twelve books—four novels, a critical study of
Stephen Crane Stephen Crane (November 1, 1871 – June 5, 1900) was an American poet, novelist, and short story writer. Prolific throughout his short life, he wrote notable works in the Realist tradition as well as early examples of American Naturalism an ...
, five edited collections and anthologies, and most recently two books of essays. A major concern of his work is with the lives of Basque Americans in the West. His writing about Native Americans ranges from the Shoshone of Nevada to the Maya of Chiapas, Mexico. His Nevada trilogy consists of three novels spanning a century from the Shoshone massacre of 1911 (''Shoshone Mike''), to the shooting of Fish and Game officers by the self-styled mountain man Claude Dallas (''Wild Game''), to the current battle over nuclear waste in the Nevada desert (''The Temptations of St. Ed & Brother S''). Bergon's California trilogy, consisting of, ''Jesse's Ghost'', ''Two-Buck Chuck & The Marlboro Man: The New Old West'' and ''The Toughest Kid We Knew: The Old New West: A Personal History,'' all focus on the San Joaquin Valley, and his Basque-Béarnais heritage. His writing was the subject of a 2019 conference and 2020 book by scholars and writers from the U.S. and the Basque Country: ''Visions of a Basque American Western: International Perspectives on the Writings of Frank Bergon''. The trilogy also draws attention to today's sons and daughters of the California Okies portrayed in
Steinbeck John Ernst Steinbeck ( ; February 27, 1902 – December 20, 1968) was an American writer. He won the 1962 Nobel Prize in Literature "for his realistic and imaginative writings, combining as they do sympathetic humor and keen social percep ...
's ''
The Grapes of Wrath ''The Grapes of Wrath'' is an American realist novel written by John Steinbeck and published in 1939. The book won the National Book Award and Pulitzer Prize for fiction, and it was cited prominently when Steinbeck was awarded the Nobel Prize ...
''. ''Jesse's Ghost'' was selected in 2024 for The New York Times "Best Books About California." He also writes about the natural history and environment of the American West in both fiction and non-fiction, such as in ''The Journals of
Lewis and Clark Lewis may refer to: Names * Lewis (given name), including a list of people with the given name * Lewis (surname), including a list of people with the surname Music * Lewis (musician), Canadian singer * " Lewis (Mistreated)", a song by Radiohe ...
''. With his wife, Holly St. John Bergon, he has published translations of the Spanish poets Antonio Gamaneda, José Ovejero, Xavier Queipo, and Violeta C. Rangel in ''New European Poets'' and ''The European Constitution in Verse''. Bergon has taught at the University of Washington and for many years at
Vassar College Vassar College ( ) is a private liberal arts college in Poughkeepsie, New York, United States. Founded in 1861 by Matthew Vassar, it was the second degree-granting institution of higher education for women in the United States. The college be ...
, where he is Professor Emeritus of English. In 1998, Bergon was inducted into the Nevada Writers Hall of Fame. In 2024, he was included into the Bellarmine Hall of Fame.


Books

* ''The Toughest Kid We Knew: The Old New West: A Personal History'' (2020) * ''Two-Buck Chuck & The Marlboro Man: The New Old West'' (2019) * ''Jesse's Ghost'' (2011) * ''Wild Game'' (1995) * ''The Temptations of St. Ed & Brother S'' (1993) * ''The Journals of Lewis and Clark'', editor (1989) * ''Shoshone Mike'' (1987) * ''A Sharp Lookout: Selected Nature Essays of John Burroughs, editor'' (1987) * ''The Wilderness Reader'', editor (1980) * ''The Western Writings of Stephen Crane'', editor (1979) * ''Looking Far West: The Search for the American West in History, Myth, and Literature'', coeditor with Zeese Papanikolas (1978) * ''Stephen Crane's Artistry'' (1975)


Essays and Articles

''Guns and Grammar, or How to Read the Second Amendment'' published in The Los Angeles Review of Books humorously but devastatingly makes that case that an incorrect textual reading of the Second Amendment by Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia starts, and continues to cause, disastrous rulings on U.S. gun laws. ''I Understand Thee, and Can Speak Thy Tongue: California Unlocks Shakespeare's Gibberish'' published in the Los Angeles Review of Books links what has been regarded as gibberish in Shakespeare to the Basque language.


References


External links


Frank Bergon's website

Frank Bergon in Online Nevada Encyclopedia



David Rio on Frank Bergon's Shoshone Mike

Shoshone Mike 100th Anniversary

Shoshone Mike in the Basque Country

Frank Bergon, The New Western Writer

Frank Bergon's books on Amazon

Reviews in the New Yorker

Frank Bergon at Washington College

Frank Bergon interview in the Basque Country
{{DEFAULTSORT:Bergon, Frank 1943 births Living people 20th-century American male writers 20th-century American non-fiction writers 20th-century American novelists 21st-century American male writers 21st-century American non-fiction writers 21st-century American novelists American fiction writers American frontier American male non-fiction writers American male novelists American people of Basque descent Bellarmine College Preparatory alumni Harvard Graduate School of Arts and Sciences alumni Morrissey College of Arts & Sciences alumni People from Ely, Nevada People from Madera, California Stegner Fellows Vassar College faculty