I keep trying to place Willa Cather into what I know of American literarture and I feel I fall short. Right now, I peg her as closer to Sinclair Lewis without his satirical bent and a better prose style. I read Lewis early on, during college, and then picked him up again in prison with Elmer Gantry and It Can't Happen Here. With him, I noticed that his prose style I found creaky, yet the more I read the more I got sucked in. When I read Cather I did not expect much, then I expected her to be more like Hemingway or F. Scott Fitzgerald, and only when I overcame my disappointment that she was neither did I settle into paying attention to what she wrote. I think she sneaks up on you. At the same time, I am not sure if all she has written will retain readers.
I admit the more I find out about Cather, the more interesting she becomes. I found the following documentary on YouTube. It may give you better reasons than I have given for reading her.
You will find what else I have written about Cather here.
sch 2/1
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