Vardis Alvero Fisher (March 31, 1895 — July 9, 1968) was a well respected writer best known for historical novels of the old West and the monumental 12-volume Testament of Man series of novels, depicting the history of humans from cave to civilization.
Vardis Fisher's novel, Mountain Man (1965), was the basis for Sydney Pollack's film, Jeremiah Johnson, nominated for a Golden Palm award at the 1972 Cannes Film Festival. An American Saga of Courage told the story of the Donner Party tragedy. His historical novel, Children of God, tracing the history of the Mormons, won the 1939 Harper Prize in Fiction. Tale of Valor is a novel recounting the Lewis and Clark Expedition. God or Caesar? is his non-fiction book on how to write.
Vardis Fisher was born in Annis, Idaho, near present-day Rigby, of a Mormon family and descent. After graduating from the University of Utah in 1920, Vardis acquired a Master of Arts degree (1922) and a Ph.D. (1925) at the University of Chicago. Vardis was an assistant professor of English at the University of Utah (1925-1928) and at New York University (1928-1931), where he was friends with Thomas Wolfe. Vardis also taught as a summer professor at Montana State University (1932-1933). Between 1935 and 1939, he was the director of the Idaho Writer's Project of the WPA, writing several books about Idaho. He was also a newspaper columnist for the Idaho Statesman and Idaho Statewide (which later became the Intermountain Observer).
One of his hobbies was house construction, so much so he built his own home in the Thousand Springs area near Hagerman, Idaho. Vardis did the wiring, masonry, carpentry and plumbing himself. His father Joe, a hunter, had a working relationship with the Blackfeet Indians of the area.
Vardis Fisher had one child with his wife, Leona McMurtrey, who was born September 10, 1917 and died September 8, 1924. He married his second wife, Margaret Trusler, in 1928. They had two sons, Grant and T. Roberts. He married his third wife, Opal Laurel Holmes, in 1940, and she was his co-author on Gold Rushes and Mining Camps of the Early American West (1968). Opal Fisher died in 1995, leaving $237,000 from her estate to the University of Idaho for the creation of a humanities professorship.
To write the Testament of Man series, Vardis Fisher read over 2,000 books on anthropology, history, psychology, theology and comparative religion. When the series was reprinted by Pyramid Books as mass-market paperbacks in 1960, it had an influence on DC Comics editor Joe Orlando and the comic book Anthro, written and drawn by Howard Post and edited by Orlando.
Fisher died in 1968, at the age of 73, in Hagerman, Idaho.
Fisher seems to have chafed at comparisons between himself and the better known writers who were connected with Idaho, notably including Ernest Hemingway and Ezra Pound, but Fisher was, perhaps, the most significant twentieth century novelist who was both a native and longtime resident of Idaho. When he was appointed to head the Idaho branch of the Federal Writers Project under the WPA, Fisher quipped that he had been chosen because there were only three writers in Idaho, and he was the only one who was unemployed. The comparison to Hemingway is germane, however. Like Hemingway, Fisher often achieved a naturalistic, straightforward style. Frederick Manfred, who was among Fisher's staunchest literary champions, not only declared that Dark Bridwell (1931) was Fisher's best novel, but that Hemingway never wrote anything so good. Manfred gave as an example Fisher's portrait of Mrs. Bridwell who seemed to Manfred to be a more three-dimensional person than any of Hemingway's female characters.
With a few notable exceptions, most critics have been far harsher than Manfred. While they might regard a handful of Fisher's total of thirty-eight books as worth reading, many critics would not recommend the rest. His twelve-volume Testament of Man series to which Fisher devoted several decades of his life was, by and large, negatively received by the public as well as critics. A general consensus seems to be that Fisher's work is uneven: occasionally brilliant but more often workmanlike, promising in his early years but disappointing over all. Notwithstanding this general criticism, and as demonstrated by the 2000 collection of critical essays, “Rediscovering Vardis Fisher,” the author still draws praise as well as criticism for his work. (Notably the most sour note in this anthology was contributed by anthropologist Marilyn Trent Grunkemeyer who read no other work by Fisher besides the Testament of Man series.)
Fisher was always ambitious to become a mainstream novelist, but seems relegated to being a giant in regional Western literature. His Western novels are must reading for aficionados of that genre, and his fans include such Western writers as novelist Larry McMurtry and essayist Mick McAllister.
His newspaper columns, written for various local and regional publications over three decades and often dealing with then-topical national and local issues, still make for lively reading. Fisher did not have a good word to say about any U.S. president who served during Fisher's lifetime, regardless of political party. (Although he did not live beyond the primary season of the presidential election year of 1968, Fisher had already made his low opinion of Richard M. Nixon clear during Nixon's vice-presidency.) He was suspicious of all politicians and favored smaller, less-intrusive government. Initially willing to participate personally in the New Deal, his opinion soured and he became a staunch critic of President Franklin D. Roosevelt. Until the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor at the end of 1941, he favored an America First stance, preferring that the U.S. not enter World War II. Following the attack, however, he immediately accepted the inevitability of war. While Fisher might be regarded as a conservative, he was not interested in preserving traditional institutions for their own sake; he rejected religion, puritanical sexual morality, bigotry and prohibition. He was an outspoken critic of U.S. foreign policy in general and opposed U.S. involvement in Vietnam at least as early as the administration of John F. Kennedy.
