Vardis Alvero Fisher (March 31, 1895 – July 9, 1968) was an American writer from Idaho who wrote popular historical novels of the Old West. After studying at the University of Utah and the University of Chicago, Fisher taught English at the University of Utah and then at the Washington Square College of New York University until 1931. He worked with the Federal Writers' Project to write the Works Project Administration The Idaho Guide, which was published in 1937. In 1939, Fisher wrote Children of God, a historical novel concerning the early Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church); which won the Harper Prize.
Fisher returned to his home state of Idaho in 1940 and relocated to Hagerman, where he spent the next twenty years writing the 12-volume Testament of Man (1943–1960) series of novels, depicting the history of humans from cavemen to civilization. His novel Mountain Man (1965) was adapted into the 1972 film Jeremiah Johnson, starring Robert Redford.
Fisher is often grouped with disaffected Mormon writers in Mormon fiction. Leonard Arrington and his graduate student John Haupt wrote that Fisher was sympathetic towards Mormonism, an idea that Fisher's widow, Opal Laurel Holmes, repudiated strongly. A more recent paper by Michael Austin suggests that Fisher's work was influenced by residual "scars" of his family heritage and Mormon upbringing and that these scars resulted in his incorporating into many of his novels the theme of a religious unbeliever trying to find ways to live within a religious community.
Born on March 31, 1895, in Annis, Idaho, near Rigby, Fisher's family relocated to an isolated home in 1905. Fisher saw livestock raising firsthand, including de-horning cattle and butchering. He read many books in the Rigby library. His family was "nominally Mormon," according to Louie Attebery, professor at the College of Idaho, in A Literary History of the American West, but in Mormons and Popular Culture, Mormon literature scholar Michael Austin states that Fisher was raised by "strict Mormon parents," though the remoteness of the Fisher home prevented contact with a Mormon community. Fisher was not officially baptized into the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints until he was 20 years old, and he abandoned the church for good soon afterward, though his mother, sister, and children all remained Mormon. "Vardis Fisher was a religious unbeliever," Austin writes, "but Mormonism was the religion that he didn't believe in."
Vardis and his brother Vivian lived with their aunt for one year while attending school in Annis. Vardis and Vivian, at ages thirteen and ten, transferred to a school in Poplar, Idaho the next year, where they lived on their own for half of the school year. They attended high school in Rigby, living in a hut built by their father. They lived off of fish and other wildlife. One of Fisher's classmates described them as wearing old-fashioned clothes and being social outcasts. Fisher graduated from Rigby High School in 1915 and began studies at the University of Utah in the same year. He married Leona McMurtrey in 1917 and often spent all his free time studying and reading. He published his first short story, "Whose Mother?" in the University of Utah student literary magazine, The University Pen, in December 1916. He published several more works in the magazine between 1916 and 1923. Fisher signed up to join the Air Force in the spring of 1918 and attended cadet school in Berkeley, California. He lost motivation when he found out that he might become a non-commissioned officer, and resigned in early summer, returning to Idaho Falls. Fisher's mother had been ordered by her doctor to relocate from Fisher Bottom to a place with a milder climate, so she moved to Idaho Falls. Fisher's father, Joe Fisher, went to auto mechanic's school in Portland, Oregon, and started an automotive shop in Idaho Falls with his brother. Fisher worked with his father and uncle in their automotive shop, and stayed there while Leona went to live with her parents in Antelope while their baby was born.
Fisher's brother, Vivian, was drafted into the army and Fisher joined him. The war ended before they were sent abroad. Fisher's military service, including his earlier air force training, was less than four months. During his last year at the University of Utah, in 1920, he wrote several plays. One of his teachers felt the plays were promising and offered him a teaching job. Fisher spent the summer studying at the University of Chicago in order to qualify for teaching at the University of Utah that fall. He found the University of Chicago intensely stimulating, writing that the library contained "all the lordly wealth of wisdom". In September 1921, Fisher returned to the University of Chicago for his MA, this time bringing his wife and child with him. One of his teachers called him a "book drunkard" and he read so much that he temporarily could not read. Leona read to him until his eyes recovered and he could afford new eyeglasses. In 1922, Fisher wrote his thesis on Daniel Defoe and graduated with his MA. He continued studying at the University of Chicago for a doctoral degree, writing his dissertation on George Meredith. Fisher received his Ph.D. magna cum laude from the University of Chicago in 1925.
Fisher started teaching at the University of Utah in 1925. He was initially nervous and insecure. He inspired a few students, including Wallace Stegner during freshman English in 1926. Stegner later wrote that Fisher "put a can opener on my head and opened up my brains." The professor was frank with students about his lack of religious belief and contempt for Mormon theology. He did not have friends among the other faculty members, and even made enemies with a few. At the time, University of Utah felt a heavy Mormon influence from faculty and administrators who were Mormon. Since he tended to stare at others, he sometimes wore dark glasses to hide the direction of his gaze. His later wife Trusler started teaching at the University of Utah in 1926. Fisher resigned from the University of Utah after accepting a position at Washington Square College of New York University, feeling that he would have been asked to resign soon anyway. He married Trusler in 1929 after they moved to New York City for his new appointment. He taught English at Washington Square College of New York University until 1931, and he became friends with Thomas Wolfe during his stay there.
Fisher began as a regionalist. His knowledge of his region's history, folkways, and dialect made him an inspiring writer, according to Attebery at the College of Idaho. Toilers of the Hills (1928) was successful, with critics calling it the first important fiction coming from the Rocky Mountain region. It was compared to Caldwell, Garland, and Cather. It was based on the life of Fisher's uncle. Frederick Manfred cited Dark Bridwall (1931) as one of the ten great novels in American literature. While it was a commercial failure, reviewers cautiously praised its "power" and "sheer living interest of humanity." The novel was compared with Thomas Hardy and William Faulkner. He taught for the summers of 1931 and 1932 at the University of Montana out of economic necessity; he was not asked to return after his second summer teaching there.
Work at and during the Federal Writers' Project
In Tragic Life, the first of Fisher's autobiographical tetralogy, had many favorable reviews, and a second printing was issued by Doubleday and Caxton Press in 1933. The next two books, published in 1934 and 1935, were divisive, with critics receiving them as "sternly beautiful" or "erotic tripe." In Tragic Life sold fewer than 2000 copies, but its attention from Eastern literary critics helped Caxton establish itself as a prominent publisher of Western literature.
In 1935 Fisher accepted a job with the Federal Writers' Project, part of the Works Progress Administration, and wrote most of The Idaho Guide. There were few other writers in Idaho who could help him with the project and his superiors were surprisingly ignorant of Idaho's features and at one point ordered him to remove all photos of potatoes, Idaho's best-known crop. Fisher received help from high school students, who provided obscure information about remote locations. Fisher was determined to be the first state writer's project director to publish his state's guide, figuring that the first guide would receive the most review space in newspapers. His guide, published in January 1937, was the first from the Federal Writers' Project to be published. Even Alsberg, the project's director who had tried to delay the book's release, used it as a model for other state directors. Fisher saw the government as wasting resources in bureaucracy, and felt that the eastern United States saw the West as a source of wealth to be exploited. Fisher published two more books in his position as project director and resigned from the Federal Writers' Project in 1939.