In the ethereal realm of literary modernism, Willa Cather stands tall, her pen a beacon of innovation and insight. Yet, this visionary writer has often been relegated to the margins, her work dismissed as regional or feminine. But Janis P. Stout, in her book Cather Among the Moderns, challenges this conventional wisdom about Cather, asserting that Cather was a true modernist, one who embraced the radical spirit of the age.
In Cather Among the Moderns, Stout shows how Cather’s writing combines traditional and modernist elements. She draws on the traditions of the American novel, but she also experiments with new forms and techniques.
Cather was a complex and contradictory figure, but she was also a brilliant writer. Cather Among the Moderns is a must-read for anyone who wants to understand her work and her place in American literature. Originally published in 2019, Cather Among the Moderns is now available for the first time in paperback format.
Willa Cather standing in front of a tent in 1920 while doing research in France for One of Ours. The pointed-top shape of this tent that Cather used in France recalls the shape of the pup tent she used in Jaffrey, New Hampshire, while working on My Ántonia, the pointed ceiling of her bedroom in Red Cloud, much earlier, and the attic room where she liked to work at the Shattuck Inn in Jaffrey. Both of these indoor structural “tents” had windows that, like the openings of the tents, enabled her to feel both indoors and outdoors at the same time. University of Nebraska Archives and Special Collections.
Cather Among the Moderns is a masterful study by a preeminent scholar that situates Cather as a visionary practitioner of literary modernism.
Excerpt: The Flat Woman by Vanessa Saunders