Willa Cather

Long an Apprentice, She Is Now a Brilliant Technician

The personality of Willa Cather is characterized chiefly by firmness. She is positive, determined, a trifle withdrawn. Her charm is undeniable, yet it has the air of being at times carefully reserved for a greater occasion. She has no great interest in the small affairs of the world, yet she is gracious and her opinions, when vouchsafed, are well considered and delivered with positiveness. She would find folly a difficult companion. This precision of thought a.nd character illuminates her writing. It is, perhaps, what makes My Antonia and A Lost Lady the works of art which they are.

Miss Cather, born in Virginia, spent most of her early life in Nebraska, where she was graduated from the State University in 1895. She has been both journalist and teacher. For a time she was an associate editor of McClure's Magazine. Then, quite deliberately, she began her career of writing, after many years of apprenticeship, and has, as deliberately, progressed.

I saw her last Summer in the Vermont mountains. She was to deliver a series of addresses on the craft of writing. She spent days in careful thought and preparation. She walked alone in the woods and fields. Her talks are said to have been superb. The students literally worshipped her. It was this tremendous force of hers, breaking through an equally tremendous reserve, that made her lectures so inspiring.

My enthusiasm for her latest book is unqualified. One of Ours, her story of the War, which was awarded one of the Pulitzer Prizes last year, I did not care for. It is not nearly so wise a book as Edith Wharton's poignant A Son at the Front or Thomas Boyd's Through the Wheat. A Lost Lady, however, is a character study of strength and beauty. The story of a highstrung, attractive, weak woman, told as she is reflected in the lives of her various lovers,: is superbly wrought. I can think of no other picture of broken idealism so striking as that of young Neil confronted with the truth about his idol, Marian Forrester. The background of the Middle West of the last century seems thoroughly inconsequential. The story is that of Marian Forrester. Here, surely, is writing one of the most brilliant technicians in American letters!