![]() ![]() Having never lost relevance, Cather needs no apologist, but there are groundbreaking aspects of her work I find relevant for contemporary writers. ![]() It’s these aspects of her biography that most captivated late 20th century critics and scholars. Joan Acocella’s delightful book Willa Cather and the Politics of Criticism goes some way in helping to sort through it all.Ĭather’s ambition, intelligence, and fierce will are well known, and in particular, her resistance to rigid gender norms (growing up in the little frontier town of Red Cloud Nebraska, where, in her early teenage years, she shaved her head, cross-dressed and called herself William Cather), and her defiance of sexual mores most notably living openly for 39 years with her longtime partner, Edith Lewis. She’s been reinscribed by such diverse critics over the years it’s sometimes hard to see how they can all be responding to the same writer. For a century, her reputation has rarely, if ever, waned. I’m too poor a student to claim any influence on my own fiction, but her work has always rewarded my efforts in rereading. Willa Cather is the writer whose work I most often return to for inspiration. ![]()
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