A thoroughly American author
Iwatch southern Idaho roll past the passenger window of our pickup. The first green whiskers of spring beard the hills, but the higher peaks stand out white against the sky, scrubbed blue except for a few cottony wisps by last night’s storm. Cows lounge in the morning sun as the frost vanishes. The scene reminds me of the vivid novels of a favorite American author, Willa Cather.
She was christened Wilella Cather, but her family called her Willa or Willy. She disliked the feminization of masculine names and sometimes in her childhood, even signed her name “William.” She once wrote that had she known she was to be famous, she would have changed her name to Jane, or Janet or Mary. She even wore her hair in short layers and dressed in mannish clothes sometimes during her college years in the late 19th century.
Willa Cather had wanted to be a doctor. She began her career at the University of Nebraska majoring in science. But she began to have almost instant success in her writing. She contributed regularly to magazines and newspapers and won notice from well-known editors almost accidentally. She changed her major to English.
She soon was respected as a talented journalist and editor. She was so frank and thoroughly honest as a theater critic that she struck fear into traveling companies and earned the reputation of being a “meat ax.”
After multiple highlevel editing jobs and winning acclaim as a writer, she took time off to teach high school English and to write. Her first creative work published was a book of poetry, followed by a collection of short stories.
Yet Cather had fallen in love with the Nebraska home of her teen years. She loved to visit the immigrant communities and came to know their struggles, triumphs and woes. Her novel “My Antonia” brings Cather’s young Bohemian friend to our acquaintance. Though the novel is constructed almost like a journal, unfolding naturally as events occur, the naturalness itself is high art as a multitude of literary devices subtly compel the reader forward.
I’m glad that I first met the work of Willa Cather when I finished my bachelor’s degree in English in my mid-40s. My own understanding had ripened since my teenage freshman year like a good, strong cheese. Not that there’s anything shocking in the content of her novels, but if I had met them in my own naive youth, I could not have fully understood or identified with them.
I experienced vicariously the vastness of the Nebraska frontier prairie and the pitiless arch of the uninterrupted summer sky. The smells of the farm and the tastes of the Bohemian food seemed to linger in my nose and mouth as the wind and sun burn our cheeks.
Cather’s characters are painted with the same brilliant honesty. It seems impossible that any of them could be merely products of a keen imagination. Whether it’s a kindly Catholic archbishop with genuine human foibles in the untamed wilds of New Mexico or a young woman finding a way to happiness despite poverty and heartache, each character seems to be a living, breathing friend.
From her writing, I assumed that Cather spent her life in the wide prairie, writing what she saw. In truth, Cather spent most of her adult life in New York City. “My Antonia” was nominated for the first ever Pulitzer Prize. She didn’t win it for “My Antonia,” but a later novel, “One of Our Own,” considered a lesser work, did win the Pulitzer Prize.
Willa Cather was sometimes discouraged and angry when postWorld War I critics called her “out of touch,” and accused her of not living in modern times. But even as critics gave her some of her own medicine, her books continued to be best-sellers.
Now, no college American Literature class is complete without some of the work of Willa Cather. Her simple, truthful style resonates again with those who want to understand and embrace the richness and the warmth of our cultures and country.
Only in America. God bless it.