Becoming Willa Cather : creation and career / Daryl W. Palmer.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Palmer, Daryl W., author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Nebraska--Biography.

Nebraska.

Cather, Willa, 1873-1947--Childhood and youth.

Cather, Willa.

Cather, Willa, 1873-1947--Criticism and interpretation.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (210 pages)

Place of Publication:

Reno ; Las Vegas : University of Nevada Press, [2019]

Summary:

"Willa Cather has long been admired for O Pioneers! (1913), Song of the Lark (1915), and My Ántonia (1918), the so-called "prairie novels" that launched her career; but the author's admirers have struggled to explain how a writer growing up in a small town in Nebraska in the late nineteenth century could have transformed what she remembered into literary greatness. To Cather's first critics, men such as Carl Van Doren and T. K. Whipple, her success had something to do with her native Nebraska. But what, exactly? Van Doren praised Cather for confronting the "clumsy towns, obese vulgarity, the uniform of monotonous standardization." In Whipple's view, Cather had managed to "triumph over Nebraska." A century later, scholars acknowledge Cather's place in the canon of American literature and continue to explore her relationship with the West, while often remaining puzzled by, even suspicious of, the author's Nebraskan roots. How could Cather's deep attachment to the region produce such impressive fiction? Drawing on original archival research and paying unprecedented attention to the author's early short stories, Daryl W. Palmer offers a ground-breaking account of Cather's evolution as a writer, demonstrating that her relationship with Nebraska in the years leading up to O Pioneers! is more dynamic than critics and scholars have supposed. Imbued with what the author calls an older "territorial imagination," the Nebraska of Cather's youth was a kind of laboratory for the future author, who delighted in reading, townmaking, newspapering, notoriety, make-believe, masculine attire, elocution, cycling, and even the occasional dissection. Readers will encounter a surprisingly adventurous young author, embracing a predilection for experimentation--in life and art--that resulted in her emergence as a major novelist intent on reimagining the American West"-- Provided by publisher.

Notes:

Description based on print version record.

Includes bibliographical references (pages 190-198) and index.

ISBN:

9781948908283

194890828X

OCLC:

1105737298