Willa Cather 8-12-21

Willa Cather gave me trouble during my stay in prison. I knew of her as a name.that I had her pegged as belonging to the Hemingway generation may have been the start of my problems. She is closer to Edith Wharton. I managed to read One of Ours and then  My Antonia. and Death Comes for the Archbishop.  My notes on those novels lay in your future - if I can find my notes.

One of Ours won the Pulitzer and left me wondering why as it seemed a rather quaint anti-war novel. This where my mentally aligning Cather with the Lost Generation probably hurt my understanding. Her style is not that of Hemingway or of Fitzgerald. She is a bit more plain-spoken, even quainter than those two. I preferred My Antonia with its tale of an immigrant family. I suspect Annie Proulx has read it. Death Comes for the Archbishop felt like a departure geographically - it is in New Mexico, not Nebraska as with the other novels -  and tts historical theme.

The Modern Novel site has an entry for Willa Cather. There you will find summaries of all three novels I have mentioned here. Reading the one on One of Ours, I  think I  may have not fully understood the novel (which happens often and is why this blog has its title).  

This stands out in the commentary on My Antonia.:

What makes this book stands out is, of course, the character of Ántonia. She undergoes many burdens – her father kills himself early in the book and she has to work hard all her life – but still manages to maintain her passion for life, despite her disappointments and suffering. Right at the end, surrounded by her demanding children and her solid but dull husband, she seems thoroughly content with her lot, even though she failed to break away and has not had an easy life. For Cather, the struggles of the farmers on the Nebraska prairie – struggles which she herself saw at first hand – are mirrored in Ántonia’s life.

My memory agree the Antonia character carries the novel.

The note on Death Comes for the Archbishop may have a clue why Cather is a bit neglected (although  I understand this changing):

Nevertheless, Cather tells a compelling story, whether you are Catholic or not or whether you are pro-Lamy or not. His close relationship with the tough Father Vailland, since the pair of them ran away to the seminary, his struggles in the difficult terrain of New Mexico and his love for the people of the area are all depicted with great feeling. Cather is clearly sympathetic to the pioneering spirit of Latour/Lamy and, as she shows in some of her other books, she feels that the West is what is because of men like this and is no longer what it was because the country no longer produces men of this calibre.

I would say just as we no longer respect the Western as a movie genre, so we have problems with writers who see anything good in the West. I do not sug. gest that this is a reason not to read Cather. Not in these days when so many talk of a Golden Past. America needs to hear its full story. The things of which Willa Cather wrote remain important to understanding America.

sch