La Farge, Oliver (lä färzh) [key], 1901–63, American writer and anthropologist, b. New York City, grad. Harvard (B.A., 1924; M.A., 1929). He conducted three archaeological expeditions to Arizona and also ethnological expeditions to Guatemala and Mexico. La Farge used his field experience to authenticate his reflective stories of Native American habit and character. Laughing Boy (1929), a novel of Navajo life, won him the Pulitzer Prize in 1930. Other works are The Sparks Fly Upward (1931), The Enemy Gods (1937), and the stories All the Young Men (1935). Santa Fe recounts the history of that city.
See his autobiographical Raw Material (1945); biographies by E. Gillis (1967), D. McNickle (1971), and T. M. Pearce (1972).
