WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:02.620 Welcome back to the Deep Dive. Today we are pulling 00:00:02.620 --> 00:00:05.480 a specific thread that I think a lot of us might 00:00:05.480 --> 00:00:07.339 have touched on in high school English class, 00:00:07.480 --> 00:00:09.720 maybe briefly, but we probably didn't realize 00:00:09.720 --> 00:00:12.320 just how much tension was holding that thread 00:00:12.320 --> 00:00:14.740 together. We're talking about Willa Cather. Willa 00:00:14.740 --> 00:00:17.539 Cather, yeah. It is a name that for a lot of 00:00:17.539 --> 00:00:20.120 people conjures up a very specific, almost... 00:00:20.789 --> 00:00:23.390 dusty set of images. Dusty is a good word for 00:00:23.390 --> 00:00:26.149 it. Right. You think of swaying wheat fields, 00:00:26.390 --> 00:00:30.550 sunsets on the prairie, maybe a sense of quiet 00:00:30.550 --> 00:00:32.969 pioneer resilience. You might picture a woman 00:00:32.969 --> 00:00:35.289 in a long skirt looking wistfully at a plow. 00:00:35.509 --> 00:00:37.590 But if you actually dig into the source material, 00:00:37.710 --> 00:00:39.990 as we were going to do today, that quiet image 00:00:39.990 --> 00:00:43.090 gets very loud very quickly. Exactly. I think 00:00:43.090 --> 00:00:45.689 most people file her under classic author, put 00:00:45.689 --> 00:00:47.990 her on the shelf next to maybe Steinbeck or Laura 00:00:47.990 --> 00:00:50.189 Ingalls Wilder, who she's nothing like. the way 00:00:50.189 --> 00:00:52.909 and then just move on not at all like them no 00:00:53.229 --> 00:00:55.289 But looking at the stack of research we have 00:00:55.289 --> 00:00:57.969 here, I mean, we have biographies, we have letters 00:00:57.969 --> 00:01:00.829 that were hidden for decades, literary criticism 00:01:00.829 --> 00:01:03.829 ranging from the 1920s all the way to modern 00:01:03.829 --> 00:01:06.609 gender studies. Cather isn't just a writer of 00:01:06.609 --> 00:01:09.790 nice country stories. She is, and I don't think 00:01:09.790 --> 00:01:12.129 this is an overstatement, basically the architect 00:01:12.129 --> 00:01:14.549 of the American Midwestern identity. That is 00:01:14.549 --> 00:01:16.409 a very strong way to put it, and it's an accurate 00:01:16.409 --> 00:01:19.150 one. I mean, before Cather, the Midwest in literature 00:01:19.150 --> 00:01:21.489 was, well, it was largely seen as a cultural 00:01:21.489 --> 00:01:24.250 wasteland. or, you know, just a place you pass 00:01:24.250 --> 00:01:26.629 through to get to the gold rush. A flyover state 00:01:26.629 --> 00:01:29.489 before we had planes. Exactly. She was the one 00:01:29.489 --> 00:01:31.769 who turned it into a mythological landscape. 00:01:32.150 --> 00:01:35.209 She gave it a soul. And the kicker, she wasn't 00:01:35.209 --> 00:01:37.590 even a native Midwesterner. She was a transplant. 00:01:37.989 --> 00:01:40.430 Yet she is the one who defined how the entire 00:01:40.430 --> 00:01:43.640 world sees the Great Plains. So our mission today 00:01:43.640 --> 00:01:46.260 is to really unpack the life of this woman who 00:01:46.260 --> 00:01:48.340 somehow managed to bridge the gap between the 00:01:48.340 --> 00:01:51.159 wild rough and tumble frontier and high sophisticated 00:01:51.159 --> 00:01:54.310 literary art. And she did all of that. While 00:01:54.310 --> 00:01:57.349 fiercely guarding a private life, that scholars 00:01:57.349 --> 00:01:59.909 are still, I mean, they are still fighting about 00:01:59.909 --> 00:02:03.010 it today. There is so much mystery there. She 00:02:03.010 --> 00:02:06.409 burned her letters. She tried to erase her tracks. 00:02:06.670 --> 00:02:09.569 Oh, we've got it all today. We have got the tension 00:02:09.569 --> 00:02:11.770 between, you know, what we think of as nostalgia 00:02:11.770 --> 00:02:14.949 versus the brutal reality. We've got this recurring 00:02:14.949 --> 00:02:18.110 theme of exile, which makes so much sense once 00:02:18.110 --> 00:02:20.490 we get into her backstory. And we have a feud. 00:02:20.909 --> 00:02:23.150 I love a good literary feud. Oh, it's a great 00:02:23.150 --> 00:02:25.169 one. We're going to get to the aha moment where 00:02:25.169 --> 00:02:27.590 a Pulitzer Prize winner, Cather, gets accused 00:02:27.590 --> 00:02:31.430 of plagiarizing a war movie by none other than 00:02:31.430 --> 00:02:33.759 Ernest Hemingway. And that's such a fascinating 00:02:33.759 --> 00:02:36.120 conflict because it really exposes the shift 00:02:36.120 --> 00:02:40.020 in how Americans viewed war and reality itself 00:02:40.020 --> 00:02:42.919 in the 1920s. It wasn't just a petty squabble. 00:02:42.919 --> 00:02:45.180 It was, you could argue, a battle for the soul 00:02:45.180 --> 00:02:47.060 of American literature. Wow. But we're getting 00:02:47.060 --> 00:02:48.740 a little ahead of ourselves. Right, right. Let's 00:02:48.740 --> 00:02:50.319 rewind. Let's go all the way back to the beginning. 00:02:50.479 --> 00:02:52.460 Because to understand the prairie she wrote about, 00:02:52.560 --> 00:02:54.360 you have to understand where she came from first. 00:02:54.639 --> 00:02:57.860 Section one, the transplanted child. To really 00:02:57.860 --> 00:02:59.860 get Cather, you have to understand the shock 00:02:59.860 --> 00:03:03.240 of her childhood. She was not born in a sod house 00:03:03.240 --> 00:03:06.599 on the prairie. She was born in 1873 in the Bat 00:03:06.599 --> 00:03:09.099 Creek Valley of Virginia. OK, so paint the picture 00:03:09.099 --> 00:03:11.479 for me, because when I think of 1870s Virginia, 00:03:11.719 --> 00:03:14.939 I'm thinking post -Civil War, but still very, 00:03:15.020 --> 00:03:19.719 very settled, lush, green. Exactly. Think rolling 00:03:19.719 --> 00:03:22.960 hills, sheep grazing, a deep sense of history. 00:03:23.219 --> 00:03:25.319 Her family, the Cathers, had been there for a 00:03:25.319 --> 00:03:27.919 long time. They lived in a large Greek revival 00:03:27.919 --> 00:03:30.520 style home called Willow Shade. It was a very 00:03:30.520 --> 00:03:32.960 settled, very structured existence. You had fences. 00:03:33.180 --> 00:03:35.479 You had distinct roads. You had a sense of enclosure 00:03:35.479 --> 00:03:38.360 and safety. A known world. A completely known 00:03:38.360 --> 00:03:41.199 world. But in 1883, when Willa is just nine years 00:03:41.199 --> 00:03:43.840 old, everything changes. Her family decides to 00:03:43.840 --> 00:03:45.819 pack up and move to Webster County, Nebraska. 00:03:46.159 --> 00:03:49.280 Okay, stop. Why Nebraska? That seems like a massive 00:03:49.280 --> 00:03:52.419 and frankly dangerous jump in the 1880s. I mean, 00:03:52.439 --> 00:03:54.580 that's barely a decade after the area was really 00:03:54.580 --> 00:03:56.449 opened up for homesteading. Well, it was part 00:03:56.449 --> 00:03:58.650 of a trend. Her grandparents had actually moved 00:03:58.650 --> 00:04:01.430 out there a bit earlier seeking farmland. The 00:04:01.430 --> 00:04:03.949 soil in Virginia was getting exhausted and there 00:04:03.949 --> 00:04:06.370 was this promise of, you know, endless fertile 00:04:06.370 --> 00:04:09.550 land out west. There was also a desire to escape 00:04:09.550 --> 00:04:12.069 tuberculosis outbreaks, which were a real problem 00:04:12.069 --> 00:04:14.289 in Virginia at the time. So it's a mix of hope 00:04:14.289 --> 00:04:16.649 and fear driving them. Right. But for a nine 00:04:16.649 --> 00:04:19.410 year old girl. This wasn't an adventure. The 00:04:19.410 --> 00:04:21.790 way she later described it, it was an erasure. 00:04:22.009 --> 00:04:24.930 An erasure. That is a really heavy word for a 00:04:24.930 --> 00:04:27.370 moving day. Think about the sensory details. 00:04:27.649 --> 00:04:31.230 You are moving from the enclosed, green, rolling, 00:04:31.290 --> 00:04:34.769 very human -scale hills of Virginia to the Great 00:04:34.769 --> 00:04:37.790 Plains. In Cather's own writings and biographies, 00:04:37.850 --> 00:04:40.170 this transition is described as a genuine trauma. 00:04:40.589 --> 00:04:43.870 The prairie was vast, empty, and terrifyingly 00:04:43.870 --> 00:04:45.310 open. I was trying to picture it. There were 00:04:45.310 --> 00:04:47.389 no trees, right? Literally. Almost no trees. 00:04:47.339 --> 00:04:50.220 trees, no hills to hide behind, just the wind 00:04:50.220 --> 00:04:53.259 which never stopped, and the grass, a sea of 00:04:53.259 --> 00:04:55.879 grass. She said later that she felt like she 00:04:55.879 --> 00:04:58.279 had been dropped at the end of the world. I can 00:04:58.279 --> 00:05:00.040 absolutely see that. It's like moving from a 00:05:00.040 --> 00:05:02.899 cozy, cluttered Victorian room to the surface 00:05:02.899 --> 00:05:05.779 of Mars. The scale of it must have been psychologically 00:05:05.779 --> 00:05:09.000 crushing. Precisely. And she famously said that 00:05:09.000 --> 00:05:11.040 the land itself seemed to want to swallow her 00:05:11.040 --> 00:05:13.420 up. She felt that there was, and this is her 00:05:13.420 --> 00:05:16.319 quote, nothing to hold on to and this is where 00:05:16.319 --> 00:05:18.899 we see the seed of that exile theme you mentioned 00:05:18.899 --> 00:05:21.819 at the top she was a transplant she didn't belong 00:05:21.819 --> 00:05:26.019 to land initially the land was this dynamic overwhelming 00:05:26.019 --> 00:05:28.579 presence that she had to wrestle with it wasn't 00:05:28.579 --> 00:05:32.480 just scenery for her oh no for cather the landscape 00:05:32.480 --> 00:05:34.959 was a character and it was a character that could 00:05:34.959 --> 00:05:37.879 either crush you or make you so The family gets 00:05:37.879 --> 00:05:39.660 there. I'm assuming they tried to farm. That 00:05:39.660 --> 00:05:41.660 was the whole point of moving. They did. Her 00:05:41.660 --> 00:05:45.040 father, Charles Cather, he tried his hand at 00:05:45.040 --> 00:05:47.420 farming for about 18 months. But frankly, he 00:05:47.420 --> 00:05:50.000 was a gentleman farmer from Virginia. He wasn't 00:05:50.000 --> 00:05:52.519 cut out for the brutal physical labor of breaking 00:05:52.519 --> 00:05:56.199 sod in Nebraska. It just didn't stick. So what 00:05:56.199 --> 00:05:58.600 did they do? They eventually gave up on the farmstead 00:05:58.600 --> 00:06:00.879 and moved into the nearby town of Red Cloud, 00:06:01.019 --> 00:06:04.290 Nebraska. Okay, Red Cloud. Now this is a name 00:06:04.290 --> 00:06:06.709 that comes up again and again. This becomes the 00:06:06.709 --> 00:06:09.430 setting. or the inspiration for the setting of 00:06:09.430 --> 00:06:11.529 almost all her famous books, right? It does. 00:06:11.610 --> 00:06:14.889 It becomes Black Hawk in My Antonia or Sweetwater 00:06:14.889 --> 00:06:19.029 in A Lost Lady. Red Cloud is The Crucible. And 00:06:19.029 --> 00:06:21.629 Living in Red Cloud is where the young Willa 00:06:21.629 --> 00:06:24.870 Cather really starts to forge her identity. And 00:06:24.870 --> 00:06:27.230 this is the part of the story that, when I first 00:06:27.230 --> 00:06:30.269 read it, just completely contradicted that prairie 00:06:30.269 --> 00:06:32.589 schoolmarm image. Oh, absolutely. We are now 00:06:32.589 --> 00:06:34.730 entering what I call the William phase. Yes, 00:06:34.769 --> 00:06:38.209 the William phase. so crucial to understanding 00:06:38.209 --> 00:06:41.209 her living in red cloud cather did not exactly 00:06:41.209 --> 00:06:43.189 conform to the victorian standards for young 00:06:43.189 --> 00:06:45.589 ladies not even a little bit not at all around 00:06:45.589 --> 00:06:48.389 age 13 to 14 she starts cutting her hair short 00:06:48.389 --> 00:06:51.269 very short like a boy's crop which was scandalous 00:06:51.269 --> 00:06:54.110 in the 1880s she started dressing in masculine 00:06:54.110 --> 00:06:57.290 clothing starched shirts ties and she actually 00:06:57.290 --> 00:06:59.490 signed her name as william in her books and even 00:06:59.490 --> 00:07:01.350 on official documents she could get her hands 00:07:01.350 --> 00:07:03.910 on william not will it not even will william 00:07:03.910 --> 00:07:06.420 william and sometimes get this william Cather, 00:07:06.500 --> 00:07:08.879 MD. Because she wasn't just playing dress -up. 00:07:08.939 --> 00:07:11.420 She was incredibly ambitious and scientifically 00:07:11.420 --> 00:07:14.319 minded. She was making house calls with a local 00:07:14.319 --> 00:07:17.379 physician in Red Cloud, a Dr. Damarel. Wait, 00:07:17.439 --> 00:07:19.879 hold on, pause. She was doing medical rounds. 00:07:20.480 --> 00:07:22.800 As a teenager. Yeah. The teenage girl in the 00:07:22.800 --> 00:07:25.720 1880s is going out on house calls. She was. She 00:07:25.720 --> 00:07:28.600 was fascinated by science. Her actual plan was 00:07:28.600 --> 00:07:31.420 to become a surgeon. She had access to a fantastic 00:07:31.420 --> 00:07:34.199 library owned by a Jewish couple in town, the 00:07:34.199 --> 00:07:36.660 Wieners, and she was reading everything anatomy, 00:07:36.879 --> 00:07:39.800 physiology. She was dissecting frogs in her attic. 00:07:39.939 --> 00:07:42.220 She was observing the harsh realities of the 00:07:42.220 --> 00:07:45.670 body birth, death, disease. That is so incredibly 00:07:45.670 --> 00:07:48.649 far from the image of the lady writer contemplating 00:07:48.649 --> 00:07:51.269 sunsets. She's dissecting frogs and going by 00:07:51.269 --> 00:07:53.589 William. What's the learner's takeaway here? 00:07:53.689 --> 00:07:55.670 Is this just a tomboy phase or is something much 00:07:55.670 --> 00:07:57.870 deeper happening? It is so much deeper. I think 00:07:57.870 --> 00:07:59.709 the takeaway is that she wasn't a passive observer 00:07:59.709 --> 00:08:02.290 of the frontier. She was actively pushing against 00:08:02.290 --> 00:08:04.209 every boundary she could find, gender boundaries, 00:08:04.350 --> 00:08:05.949 professional boundaries. She was looking at the 00:08:05.949 --> 00:08:08.129 world with a clinical, analytical eye. It almost 00:08:08.129 --> 00:08:10.689 feels like a survival strategy. Like she's trying 00:08:10.689 --> 00:08:13.290 to find a way to have agency in a world that 00:08:13.290 --> 00:08:15.480 gives her very little. I think that's exactly 00:08:15.480 --> 00:08:18.560 it. In that era, who had the power? Who had the 00:08:18.560 --> 00:08:22.339 freedom to move, to study, to cut, to cure, to 00:08:22.339 --> 00:08:25.439 travel? Men. So if you're a brilliant young girl 00:08:25.439 --> 00:08:28.040 who wants to be a surgeon, maybe you feel you 00:08:28.040 --> 00:08:30.500 have to be William to even imagine that future 00:08:30.500 --> 00:08:32.679 for yourself. And does this connect to her writing 00:08:32.679 --> 00:08:34.980 later on, that William persona? Oh, directly. 00:08:35.220 --> 00:08:38.259 It absolutely connects. That persona links to 00:08:38.259 --> 00:08:40.279 the scholarly debates today about her sexual 00:08:40.279 --> 00:08:42.639 identity, which we will definitely get to. But 00:08:42.639 --> 00:08:44.470 it also directly informs... forms her narrative 00:08:44.470 --> 00:08:47.009 voice. How so? In her most famous books, she 00:08:47.009 --> 00:08:49.750 often writes from a male perspective. Jim Burden 00:08:49.750 --> 00:08:52.610 in My Antonia is the narrator. He's a man looking 00:08:52.610 --> 00:08:54.750 back, telling the story of a woman. Catherine 00:08:54.750 --> 00:08:57.029 was comfortable in that masculine space because 00:08:57.029 --> 00:08:59.309 she had lived in it in a way during her most 00:08:59.309 --> 00:09:01.330 formative years. It was a lens she knew how to 00:09:01.330 --> 00:09:04.549 use. So she has this intense scientific ambition. 00:09:04.730 --> 00:09:06.669 She wants to be a doctor. She's hacking up frogs. 00:09:07.789 --> 00:09:09.789 But obviously, she doesn't stay in Red Cloud 00:09:09.789 --> 00:09:11.909 forever. No, she outgrows it pretty quickly. 00:09:12.029 --> 00:09:15.090 She's destined for bigger things. In 1890, she 00:09:15.090 --> 00:09:17.110 heads off to the University of Nebraska in Lincoln. 00:09:17.309 --> 00:09:19.929 Which brings us perfectly into section two, the 00:09:19.929 --> 00:09:22.970 hustle. Because the pivot from William the Surgeon 00:09:22.970 --> 00:09:26.059 to Will the Writer happens here. And it happens 00:09:26.059 --> 00:09:28.779 incredibly fast. It does. I mean, she enrolls 00:09:28.779 --> 00:09:31.159 in 1890 still with the full intention of being 00:09:31.159 --> 00:09:33.940 a woman of science. But then she writes an essay 00:09:33.940 --> 00:09:36.399 for an English class. It was an assignment on 00:09:36.399 --> 00:09:38.879 Thomas Carlyle, the Scottish philosopher. Just 00:09:38.879 --> 00:09:40.580 a standard homework assignment. Nothing special. 00:09:41.240 --> 00:09:44.019 Supposedly. But her professor was so impressed 00:09:44.019 --> 00:09:46.519 by it that without telling her, he submitted 00:09:46.519 --> 00:09:49.200 it to the Nebraska State Journal and they published 00:09:49.200 --> 00:09:51.559 it. Imagine opening the newspaper and seeing 00:09:51.559 --> 00:09:54.059 your homework, your thoughts printed for everyone 00:09:54.059 --> 00:09:56.379 to see. That must have been a rush. It was a 00:09:56.379 --> 00:09:58.779 massive rush. She described seeing her words 00:09:58.779 --> 00:10:01.559 in print as having a hypnotic effect. It was 00:10:01.559 --> 00:10:04.379 addictive. She later said the ink was the hook. 00:10:04.659 --> 00:10:07.559 That was the precise moment science lost her 00:10:07.559 --> 00:10:10.139 and literature gained her. She realized she had 00:10:10.139 --> 00:10:12.220 a voice and more importantly that people wanted 00:10:12.220 --> 00:10:15.259 to read it. And. She did not waste any time. 00:10:15.340 --> 00:10:17.200 She started grinding. This wasn't someone who 00:10:17.200 --> 00:10:19.600 sat around waiting for inspiration to strike. 00:10:19.759 --> 00:10:22.000 She was an absolute workhorse. She immediately 00:10:22.000 --> 00:10:24.080 became a regular contributor to the journal. 00:10:24.259 --> 00:10:26.759 She was also the main editor of the university 00:10:26.759 --> 00:10:29.960 student newspaper, The Hesperian. And she was 00:10:29.960 --> 00:10:34.019 writing columns for $1 a pop. $1? You have to 00:10:34.019 --> 00:10:36.220 write a lot of columns to pay the rent at that 00:10:36.220 --> 00:10:39.210 rate. Even back then. Oh, she was prolific. She 00:10:39.210 --> 00:10:41.389 was reviewing plays, writing opinion pieces, 00:10:41.710 --> 00:10:43.870 really sharpening her skills. And she became 00:10:43.870 --> 00:10:47.330 known as a meat cleaver critic. She was vicious. 00:10:47.590 --> 00:10:50.029 If a touring theater company came through Lincoln 00:10:50.029 --> 00:10:52.889 and the lead actress was bad, Willa Cather would 00:10:52.889 --> 00:10:55.190 absolutely destroy her in the morning paper. 00:10:55.350 --> 00:10:57.549 I love that. The meat tax of Lincoln. That's 00:10:57.549 --> 00:10:59.429 a great nickname. She did not pull her punches. 00:10:59.750 --> 00:11:02.710 But before we leave her university years. There's 00:11:02.710 --> 00:11:04.570 a fun fact in our notes that I honestly thought 00:11:04.570 --> 00:11:07.190 was a typo when I first read it. It sounds like 00:11:07.190 --> 00:11:10.350 a typo, but it is 100 % real. While she was at 00:11:10.350 --> 00:11:12.309 the university, she was taking math classes. 00:11:12.570 --> 00:11:15.009 And who was her math teacher? A young lieutenant 00:11:15.009 --> 00:11:17.309 who was stationed there as a military instructor. 00:11:17.769 --> 00:11:20.730 His name was John J. Pershing. John J. Pershing? 00:11:20.750 --> 00:11:23.309 Yes. As in Black Jack Pershing, the guy who would 00:11:23.309 --> 00:11:25.289 go on to lead the American Expeditionary Forces 00:11:25.289 --> 00:11:28.299 in World War I. The very same. Before he was 00:11:28.299 --> 00:11:30.759 a general of the armies, he was a ROTC instructor 00:11:30.759 --> 00:11:32.639 and math teacher at the University of Nebraska. 00:11:32.919 --> 00:11:35.980 That is just wild. So you have Willa Cather, 00:11:36.159 --> 00:11:39.340 future literary giant, sitting in a classroom 00:11:39.340 --> 00:11:41.980 learning algebra from Black Jack Pershing, future 00:11:41.980 --> 00:11:45.139 military giant. Did they get along? Surprisingly, 00:11:45.139 --> 00:11:48.039 yes. He was known for being incredibly strict, 00:11:48.200 --> 00:11:51.179 a real taskmaster, but Cather respected him. 00:11:51.360 --> 00:11:54.399 And here's an even crazier detail. Both of them 00:11:54.399 --> 00:11:57.200 would go on to win Pulitzer Prizes. No way. Yes. 00:11:57.639 --> 00:12:00.200 Pershing won for history, for his memoirs, and 00:12:00.200 --> 00:12:02.159 Cather, of course, for fiction. It's a small 00:12:02.159 --> 00:12:05.200 world in Lincoln, Nebraska in the 1890s. So she 00:12:05.200 --> 00:12:08.799 graduates. She has the writing bug. Bad. But 00:12:08.799 --> 00:12:10.600 to become the voice of the Midwest, she actually 00:12:10.600 --> 00:12:12.299 has to leave the Midwest, right? That seems to 00:12:12.299 --> 00:12:14.399 be the paradox. It's the great paradox of so 00:12:14.399 --> 00:12:17.259 many regional writers. To see the prairie clearly, 00:12:17.539 --> 00:12:20.659 she had to get some distance. So in 1896, she 00:12:20.659 --> 00:12:23.039 makes her next big move. She goes to Pittsburgh 00:12:23.039 --> 00:12:25.919 to work for a women's magazine called Home Monthly. 00:12:25.980 --> 00:12:28.059 I feel like every writer has this phase in their 00:12:28.059 --> 00:12:31.860 biography. I need a job, so I'll edit a terrible 00:12:31.860 --> 00:12:34.480 magazine phase. It was a grueling phase for her. 00:12:34.519 --> 00:12:36.639 She was working as a telegraph editor, a drama 00:12:36.639 --> 00:12:39.080 critic. And on top of that, she was teaching 00:12:39.080 --> 00:12:42.179 high school Latin and algebra just to make ends 00:12:42.179 --> 00:12:45.279 meet. She spent 10 years in Pittsburgh. It was 00:12:45.279 --> 00:12:47.580 her apprenticeship, her wilderness years in a 00:12:47.580 --> 00:12:49.240 way. And then eventually she gets the call to 00:12:49.240 --> 00:12:52.610 the big leagues. New York City. New York, 1906. 00:12:53.070 --> 00:12:56.169 She joins McClure's magazine. Now, for you listening, 00:12:56.269 --> 00:12:58.049 we really need to explain what McClure's was. 00:12:58.129 --> 00:13:00.789 This wasn't just some glossy magazine. In 1906, 00:13:00.889 --> 00:13:03.330 this was the headquarters of muckraking. Right, 00:13:03.429 --> 00:13:06.110 muckraking. It sounds dirty, but it was actually 00:13:06.110 --> 00:13:08.330 some of the most high -impact journalism of the 00:13:08.330 --> 00:13:11.529 era. Think of it as the WikiLeaks or the Twitter 00:13:11.529 --> 00:13:14.889 files of the early 1900s. These were journalists 00:13:14.889 --> 00:13:18.289 doing deep dive investigations. They were exposing 00:13:18.289 --> 00:13:20.730 corruption in Standard Oil, corruption in local 00:13:20.730 --> 00:13:24.509 governments, labor abuses. It was a high -pressure, 00:13:24.509 --> 00:13:27.649 fact -obsessed environment. And Cather was hired 00:13:27.649 --> 00:13:30.350 as a managing editor and writer right in the 00:13:30.350 --> 00:13:32.769 thick of it. But this is where we stumble onto 00:13:32.769 --> 00:13:35.230 a scandal, or I guess a secret that was kept 00:13:35.230 --> 00:13:37.970 for a very, very long time. The Mary Baker Eddy 00:13:37.970 --> 00:13:40.340 story. This one plays out like a conspiracy theory. 00:13:40.480 --> 00:13:43.419 This is such a fascinating detour in her career. 00:13:43.620 --> 00:13:46.419 So McClure's wanted to publish a massive expose 00:13:46.419 --> 00:13:49.200 on Mary Baker Eddy, who was the founder of Christian 00:13:49.200 --> 00:13:52.059 Science. And Christian Science was a major powerful 00:13:52.059 --> 00:13:54.860 force back then. Massive and very wealthy and 00:13:54.860 --> 00:13:57.379 very, very litigious. They protected their image 00:13:57.379 --> 00:13:59.889 fiercely. Now, the project was officially credited 00:13:59.889 --> 00:14:02.529 to a freelance journalist named Georgine Milmean. 00:14:02.909 --> 00:14:04.830 Milmean had done a ton of research. I mean, a 00:14:04.830 --> 00:14:07.009 mountain of it. She gathered all the data, court 00:14:07.009 --> 00:14:09.409 records, affidavits, but she couldn't pull the 00:14:09.409 --> 00:14:11.029 narrative together. So she was a researcher, 00:14:11.029 --> 00:14:13.529 not a writer. Exactly. She was a collector. The 00:14:13.529 --> 00:14:16.129 manuscript was apparently a complete mess. So 00:14:16.129 --> 00:14:18.610 McClure's is sitting on this pile of dynamite 00:14:18.610 --> 00:14:20.210 evidence, but they can't publish it because it 00:14:20.210 --> 00:14:22.230 reads like a phone book. So they call in the 00:14:22.230 --> 00:14:24.679 closer. They bring in Willa Cather. That's right. 00:14:24.779 --> 00:14:28.860 She spent a full year in Boston basically ghostwriting 00:14:28.860 --> 00:14:32.220 this entire massive biography. She verified all 00:14:32.220 --> 00:14:34.539 the facts, she organized the timeline, and she 00:14:34.539 --> 00:14:37.279 turned this raw data into a compelling, driving 00:14:37.279 --> 00:14:39.940 narrative. She made it a story. But here's the 00:14:39.940 --> 00:14:42.960 twist. When it was published, serialized over 00:14:42.960 --> 00:14:46.019 18 months in the magazine, a huge deal whose 00:14:46.019 --> 00:14:48.620 name was on it. Georgene Milne. Only Georgene 00:14:48.620 --> 00:14:51.429 Milne. So Cather does the heavy lifting, writes 00:14:51.429 --> 00:14:54.570 what we now know was 12 of the 14 parts, and 00:14:54.570 --> 00:14:57.490 gets zero public credit for it. Zero. Not a byline, 00:14:57.570 --> 00:14:59.490 not a mention. It was a ghostwriting gig from 00:14:59.490 --> 00:15:02.950 hell. It wasn't until 1993, I mean decades after 00:15:02.950 --> 00:15:05.210 everyone involved was dead, that a letter was 00:15:05.210 --> 00:15:07.330 discovered in the Christian Science Church archives 00:15:07.330 --> 00:15:09.669 that finally confirmed Cather wrote the vast 00:15:09.669 --> 00:15:11.769 majority of it. Why did she do it? Was it just 00:15:11.769 --> 00:15:14.429 for the paycheck? Or the experience? Well, it 00:15:14.429 --> 00:15:17.289 was the job. She was an editor at McCores. This 00:15:17.289 --> 00:15:19.419 was her assignment. But it taught her something 00:15:19.419 --> 00:15:21.919 crucial. It taught her how to handle massive 00:15:21.919 --> 00:15:24.179 amounts of research and structure, a long -form 00:15:24.179 --> 00:15:27.000 narrative. But it also completely burned her 00:15:27.000 --> 00:15:29.480 out. She was tired of journalism. She was tired 00:15:29.480 --> 00:15:32.039 of facts for facts' sake. She was tired of writing 00:15:32.039 --> 00:15:34.559 in other people's voices. So she has the skills. 00:15:34.559 --> 00:15:37.379 She has the work ethic. She's a machine. But 00:15:37.379 --> 00:15:39.340 there's no soul in her own writing yet. Correct. 00:15:39.799 --> 00:15:42.019 And that brings us to the most important meeting 00:15:42.019 --> 00:15:45.799 of her professional life, the mentor. She meets 00:15:45.799 --> 00:15:48.899 the writer Sarah Ornjot. Sarah Orne Jewett, for 00:15:48.899 --> 00:15:50.879 those who might not know, she was a very big 00:15:50.879 --> 00:15:52.799 deal in New England literature at the time, right? 00:15:52.860 --> 00:15:54.919 A huge deal. She was the master of what they 00:15:54.919 --> 00:15:57.559 called local color. She wrote these beautiful, 00:15:57.700 --> 00:16:01.080 subtle stories about Maine, the fishermen, the 00:16:01.080 --> 00:16:03.740 fading villages. She was older, established, 00:16:03.879 --> 00:16:06.879 and she took Cather under her wing. And she gave 00:16:06.879 --> 00:16:09.320 her a piece of advice that basically saved Willa 00:16:09.320 --> 00:16:12.500 Cather from being a mediocre Henry James copycat. 00:16:12.659 --> 00:16:14.700 I have the gist of the advice here in the notes. 00:16:14.899 --> 00:16:17.340 She basically told Cather to stop masquerading. 00:16:17.639 --> 00:16:19.899 Exactly. Catter had been trying to write these 00:16:19.899 --> 00:16:22.559 stories that imitated the styles of popular male 00:16:22.559 --> 00:16:25.279 authors, especially Henry James. Very sophisticated, 00:16:25.600 --> 00:16:27.799 very psychological, often set in drawing rooms 00:16:27.799 --> 00:16:30.539 in London or New York. Jute read them and said, 00:16:30.679 --> 00:16:33.460 essentially, you are pretending. This isn't you. 00:16:33.679 --> 00:16:35.759 You are writing from the outside in. You need 00:16:35.759 --> 00:16:38.200 to write about your own country. Write about 00:16:38.200 --> 00:16:41.049 your own country. And that meant Nebraska. It 00:16:41.049 --> 00:16:43.169 meant Nebraska. It meant the immigrants. It meant 00:16:43.169 --> 00:16:45.990 the wind and the grass. Gia gave her permission 00:16:45.990 --> 00:16:48.350 to believe that the wild, uncultured Midwest 00:16:48.350 --> 00:16:51.789 was a subject worthy of high art. She told her, 00:16:51.870 --> 00:16:54.370 and this is another great quote, the thing that 00:16:54.370 --> 00:16:56.850 teases the mind over and over again is the only 00:16:56.850 --> 00:16:59.570 thing worth writing about. For Cather, that thing 00:16:59.570 --> 00:17:01.990 was the prairie. And that one piece of advice 00:17:01.990 --> 00:17:05.029 directly birthed the Prairie Trilogy, which takes 00:17:05.029 --> 00:17:07.849 us perfectly into Section 3. This is where Willa 00:17:07.849 --> 00:17:10.170 Cather... becomes cather this is the breakthrough 00:17:10.170 --> 00:17:13.890 oh pioneers in 1913 the song of the lark in 1915 00:17:13.890 --> 00:17:17.349 and the big one my antonia in 1918 these three 00:17:17.349 --> 00:17:20.309 books back to back define the genre okay let's 00:17:20.309 --> 00:17:21.930 really dig into this because i want to list the 00:17:21.930 --> 00:17:25.089 titles what made these books so radically different 00:17:25.089 --> 00:17:27.329 because plenty of people were writing westerns 00:17:27.329 --> 00:17:29.819 back then Yeah, the cowboys, the shootouts, the 00:17:29.819 --> 00:17:32.420 whole Zane Gray sort of thing. Cather wasn't 00:17:32.420 --> 00:17:34.980 interested in cowboys, not at all. She wasn't 00:17:34.980 --> 00:17:38.160 interested in gunfights or gold rushes. She was 00:17:38.160 --> 00:17:41.480 interested in the farmers, the people who actually 00:17:41.480 --> 00:17:44.819 did the work of staying alive on the land. And 00:17:44.819 --> 00:17:46.960 specifically, she was interested in the immigrants. 00:17:47.099 --> 00:17:49.339 This is a critical distinction that we often 00:17:49.339 --> 00:17:51.559 miss today when we look back. Right, because 00:17:51.559 --> 00:17:54.660 today we think of Nebraska as this sort of homogenous 00:17:54.660 --> 00:17:58.079 heartland. But back then, it was a tower of Babel 00:17:58.079 --> 00:18:00.559 on the prairie. It was a melting pot on the plains. 00:18:01.180 --> 00:18:03.539 Katar was fascinated by these diverse cultures 00:18:03.539 --> 00:18:06.160 she grew up with. In Red Cloud, she had neighbors 00:18:06.160 --> 00:18:08.839 who were Bohemian, which is modern -day Czech, 00:18:09.000 --> 00:18:11.660 Scandinavian, German, French -Canadian. They 00:18:11.660 --> 00:18:13.700 all spoke different languages. They ate different 00:18:13.700 --> 00:18:15.779 foods. They had different religions and customs. 00:18:16.160 --> 00:18:18.660 Let's take My Antonia, for example. The title 00:18:18.660 --> 00:18:21.759 character, Antonia Shmurda, isn't a generic pioneer 00:18:21.759 --> 00:18:24.880 woman. She is specifically Bohemian. She is. 00:18:25.000 --> 00:18:27.359 And she's based on Cather's real -life childhood 00:18:27.359 --> 00:18:29.819 friend, a woman named Annie Sadelec Pavelka. 00:18:30.019 --> 00:18:32.579 And what Cather did that was so revolutionary 00:18:32.579 --> 00:18:35.759 was to give these immigrants a dignity that was 00:18:35.759 --> 00:18:39.400 incredibly rare in literature at the time. Can 00:18:39.400 --> 00:18:40.859 you expand on that? What was the usual depiction? 00:18:41.480 --> 00:18:43.440 Well, you have to remember the early 20th century 00:18:43.440 --> 00:18:46.480 in America was rife with xenophobia. There was 00:18:46.480 --> 00:18:49.940 a strong nativist movement. Immigrants from Eastern 00:18:49.940 --> 00:18:52.819 and Southern Europe were often portrayed as caricatures 00:18:52.819 --> 00:18:56.359 or as dirty or as un -American or as threats 00:18:56.359 --> 00:18:59.339 to the national identity. And Cather just flips 00:18:59.339 --> 00:19:02.059 that entire script. She makes Antonia the symbol 00:19:02.059 --> 00:19:05.019 of vitality and strength and endurance. Susan 00:19:05.019 --> 00:19:07.079 J. Rosowski, who was a prominent Cather scholar, 00:19:07.380 --> 00:19:10.099 argued that Cather was perhaps the first major 00:19:10.099 --> 00:19:12.539 American... author to grant immigrants a truly 00:19:12.539 --> 00:19:15.220 respectable position in our literature. She didn't 00:19:15.220 --> 00:19:17.559 erase their language or their customs to make 00:19:17.559 --> 00:19:20.160 them more palatable. She celebrated them. Their 00:19:20.160 --> 00:19:22.420 foreignness was part of their strength. But she 00:19:22.420 --> 00:19:24.720 doesn't romanticize it. She doesn't shy away 00:19:24.720 --> 00:19:26.400 from the incredible hardship of their lives. 00:19:26.559 --> 00:19:28.880 I remember reading my Antonia in school and being 00:19:28.880 --> 00:19:31.160 absolutely struck by the suicide of Mr. Shmurda. 00:19:31.240 --> 00:19:34.359 That is a pivotal scene, and it's based on a 00:19:34.359 --> 00:19:37.319 real event from her childhood. Mr. Shmurda, the 00:19:37.319 --> 00:19:39.819 father, is a cultivated man from the old country. 00:19:39.980 --> 00:19:43.700 He plays the violin. He's sensitive. And he simply 00:19:43.700 --> 00:19:46.700 cannot handle the harshness, the silence, the 00:19:46.700 --> 00:19:50.039 crushing cold and emptiness of Nebraska. He shoots 00:19:50.039 --> 00:19:52.220 himself. in the way she describes the aftermath. 00:19:52.539 --> 00:19:54.920 It's heartbreaking. The family is unable to bury 00:19:54.920 --> 00:19:57.019 him in the Catholic cemetery because he's a suicide, 00:19:57.160 --> 00:19:59.299 so they have to bury him at the corner of their 00:19:59.299 --> 00:20:02.240 property at the crossroads. And that lonely grave 00:20:02.240 --> 00:20:04.940 at the crossroads becomes this powerful symbol. 00:20:05.200 --> 00:20:07.539 She shows the incredible cost of the American 00:20:07.539 --> 00:20:10.240 dream. It wasn't just Little House on the Prairie. 00:20:10.400 --> 00:20:12.980 It was survival of the fittest, and some people 00:20:12.980 --> 00:20:15.240 didn't survive. So let's talk about the style 00:20:15.240 --> 00:20:17.680 she used to tell these stories. Because you mentioned 00:20:17.680 --> 00:20:19.740 earlier that she wasn't writing like the modernists 00:20:19.740 --> 00:20:21.680 like... Joyce or Virginia Woolf doing Stream 00:20:21.680 --> 00:20:24.460 of Consciousness. But she also wasn't doing the 00:20:24.460 --> 00:20:27.000 overstuffed journalism thing from her McClure's 00:20:27.000 --> 00:20:29.700 days anymore. She developed this concept she 00:20:29.700 --> 00:20:32.200 called the unfurnished novel. The unfurnished 00:20:32.200 --> 00:20:35.819 novel. Yes. This is her great contribution to 00:20:35.819 --> 00:20:38.240 literary theory, and it came directly from her 00:20:38.240 --> 00:20:41.039 burnout with journalism. She read a famous essay 00:20:41.039 --> 00:20:44.000 about this. She felt that traditional novels, 00:20:44.180 --> 00:20:46.440 especially the ones by the European realists 00:20:46.440 --> 00:20:50.450 like Balzac. were cluttered. Cluttered how? Too 00:20:50.450 --> 00:20:53.589 many details. Exactly. They described every chair 00:20:53.589 --> 00:20:55.990 in the room, every button on a character's coat, 00:20:56.150 --> 00:20:58.329 every pattern on the wallpaper. She said that 00:20:58.329 --> 00:21:00.309 wasn't art. That was just journalism. It was 00:21:00.309 --> 00:21:03.009 just listing facts. She wanted to throw all the 00:21:03.009 --> 00:21:05.509 furniture out of the window. She did. She believed 00:21:05.509 --> 00:21:08.289 that the higher processes of art are all about 00:21:08.289 --> 00:21:11.549 simplification, about selection. It's about finding 00:21:11.549 --> 00:21:14.170 the one or two details that imply the whole scene, 00:21:14.289 --> 00:21:16.269 the whole emotion. Can you give us an analogy? 00:21:16.390 --> 00:21:18.569 How does this actually work for the reader? How 00:21:18.569 --> 00:21:20.819 does it feel different? Think about the difference 00:21:20.819 --> 00:21:23.500 between a cluttered Victorian parlor and a Japanese 00:21:23.500 --> 00:21:25.980 ink painting. In the ink painting, you might 00:21:25.980 --> 00:21:28.099 just have one swift brushstroke that suggests 00:21:28.099 --> 00:21:30.500 mountain and another that suggests the mist. 00:21:30.900 --> 00:21:34.200 Your mind fills in the rest. Cather wanted her 00:21:34.200 --> 00:21:36.579 prose to be like that brushstroke. So instead 00:21:36.579 --> 00:21:38.500 of describing the prairie grass for three pages, 00:21:38.720 --> 00:21:41.420 listing every species, she just gives you one 00:21:41.420 --> 00:21:44.940 powerful sensory hit. Precisely. In My Antonia, 00:21:45.039 --> 00:21:46.960 there's this famous simple description of the 00:21:46.960 --> 00:21:49.730 sunset. She writes, The whole circle of the world 00:21:49.730 --> 00:21:52.750 was just the empty sky and the red grass. She 00:21:52.750 --> 00:21:54.990 doesn't list the types of clouds. She focuses 00:21:54.990 --> 00:21:57.990 on two things, the color red and the feeling 00:21:57.990 --> 00:22:00.769 of emptiness. It's incredibly lucid and objective, 00:22:00.970 --> 00:22:04.049 but it's also deeply emotional. Your own memories 00:22:04.049 --> 00:22:06.690 of sunsets fill in the gaps. It feels like she's 00:22:06.690 --> 00:22:08.549 trying to capture the quality of a memory rather 00:22:08.549 --> 00:22:10.890 than a photograph. That is a beautiful way to 00:22:10.890 --> 00:22:13.460 put it. That's exactly it. It has the emotional 00:22:13.460 --> 00:22:16.380 resonance of a vivid memory. She famously said, 00:22:16.460 --> 00:22:18.859 I will not paint the matter, but the emotion 00:22:18.859 --> 00:22:21.420 of the matter. And that style, that middle ground 00:22:21.420 --> 00:22:24.140 she carved out between facts and feelings, it 00:22:24.140 --> 00:22:26.519 resonated with people. She became hugely successful. 00:22:26.859 --> 00:22:29.420 Which brings us to section four, success, the 00:22:29.420 --> 00:22:31.619 Pulitzer and the Hemingway feud. Because now 00:22:31.619 --> 00:22:34.119 we're in the 1920s. Cather is a big deal. She's 00:22:34.119 --> 00:22:36.740 a literary star. She's on the cover of Time magazine 00:22:36.740 --> 00:22:39.809 eventually. She is fully established, and she's 00:22:39.809 --> 00:22:42.410 also becoming a very savvy businesswoman. By 00:22:42.410 --> 00:22:45.269 1920, she is completely fed up with her publisher, 00:22:45.490 --> 00:22:47.529 Houghton Mifflin. What was the beef there? What 00:22:47.529 --> 00:22:49.730 were they doing wrong? They were cheap. They 00:22:49.730 --> 00:22:52.250 used cheap paper, the bindings were flimsy, and 00:22:52.250 --> 00:22:53.890 they didn't spend enough money on advertising. 00:22:54.450 --> 00:22:56.450 Cather knew her worth by this point. She knew 00:22:56.450 --> 00:22:58.329 she was building a legacy, and she wanted her 00:22:58.329 --> 00:23:01.569 books to be beautiful, lasting objects. So she 00:23:01.569 --> 00:23:04.009 walked. She switched to a young, up -and -coming 00:23:04.009 --> 00:23:07.549 publisher named Alfred A. Knopf. Nuff is a legendary 00:23:07.549 --> 00:23:10.869 name in publishing now. The Borzoi dog logo is 00:23:10.869 --> 00:23:13.269 iconic. And Willa Cather helped make that happen. 00:23:13.549 --> 00:23:16.349 She loved Nuff because he cared about book design. 00:23:16.589 --> 00:23:18.650 He believed a book should be a work of art in 00:23:18.650 --> 00:23:20.990 itself. She liked the look of his book so much 00:23:20.990 --> 00:23:22.930 that she actually put it in her contract that 00:23:22.930 --> 00:23:24.809 all her subsequent books had to match a specific 00:23:24.809 --> 00:23:27.789 design he used. If you look at a shelf of vintage 00:23:27.789 --> 00:23:31.170 Cather first editions, they have a uniform, elegant 00:23:31.170 --> 00:23:34.809 look. green cloth, specific typography. That 00:23:34.809 --> 00:23:36.509 was all her doing. She was branding herself. 00:23:36.869 --> 00:23:39.670 That's incredibly smart. So she has the look. 00:23:39.710 --> 00:23:41.690 She has the publisher. And then comes the peak. 00:23:41.829 --> 00:23:45.430 In 1923, she wins the Pulitzer Prize for her 00:23:45.430 --> 00:23:48.009 novel, One of Ours. One of Ours. This is the 00:23:48.009 --> 00:23:50.089 book that really started the fight. It's a departure 00:23:50.089 --> 00:23:53.130 for her. It's set during World War I. It's about 00:23:53.130 --> 00:23:56.069 a Nebraska farm boy named Claude Wheeler who 00:23:56.069 --> 00:23:59.130 feels stifled and purposeless on the farm. And 00:23:59.130 --> 00:24:01.720 he goes off to fight in France. So she takes 00:24:01.720 --> 00:24:04.339 her classic Nebraska pioneer theme and moves 00:24:04.339 --> 00:24:07.579 it to the trenches of World War I. Correct. And 00:24:07.579 --> 00:24:09.700 the public absolutely loved it. It was a massive 00:24:09.700 --> 00:24:11.539 bestseller. The Pulitzer Committee loved it. 00:24:11.619 --> 00:24:15.599 But the critics and specifically the other writers 00:24:15.599 --> 00:24:18.140 of her generation, they had their knives out. 00:24:18.259 --> 00:24:20.240 Enter Ernest Hemingway. Enter Hemingway. Now 00:24:20.240 --> 00:24:22.400 we have to set the stage here. Hemingway is young. 00:24:22.400 --> 00:24:24.480 He's ambitious. He's part of the lost generation. 00:24:24.960 --> 00:24:27.319 And crucially, he had actually been in the war. 00:24:27.759 --> 00:24:29.960 He drove an ambulance in Italy. He was wounded. 00:24:30.119 --> 00:24:32.980 He had seen the grit, the mud, the chaos, the 00:24:32.980 --> 00:24:35.599 senselessness of it all. And Cather. Cather was 00:24:35.599 --> 00:24:39.200 a woman in her late 40s who had obviously not 00:24:39.200 --> 00:24:41.740 been in the trenches. She did her research. She 00:24:41.740 --> 00:24:44.220 interviewed veterans. But she wasn't there. She 00:24:44.220 --> 00:24:46.299 didn't have that firsthand experience. And Hemingway 00:24:46.299 --> 00:24:48.579 did not hold back. What exactly did he say? It 00:24:48.579 --> 00:24:50.480 was in a letter, right? It was in a private letter 00:24:50.480 --> 00:24:54.380 to the critic Edmund Wilson in 1923. It's become 00:24:54.380 --> 00:24:58.759 infamous. He just savaged one of ours. He specifically 00:24:58.759 --> 00:25:01.779 went after the battle scenes. He wrote, and I'm 00:25:01.779 --> 00:25:03.019 paraphrasing here. Do you know where that came 00:25:03.019 --> 00:25:05.119 from? The battle scene in Birth of a Nation. 00:25:05.380 --> 00:25:09.640 Whoa. He accused her of plagiarizing D .W. Griffith's 00:25:09.640 --> 00:25:12.099 silent movie. He claimed she ripped off the movie 00:25:12.099 --> 00:25:13.799 because she didn't know what war really looked 00:25:13.799 --> 00:25:15.640 like. He coined a term for it. He called her 00:25:15.640 --> 00:25:18.660 writing catharized. Catharized. That is a sick 00:25:18.660 --> 00:25:21.640 burn. He's basically saying her version of war 00:25:21.640 --> 00:25:25.059 was a Hollywood production. a sanitized, romanticized 00:25:25.059 --> 00:25:27.079 version of the real thing. That's exactly what 00:25:27.079 --> 00:25:29.400 he was saying. He was accusing her of romanticizing 00:25:29.400 --> 00:25:33.019 the war. He said sneeringly, poor woman, she 00:25:33.019 --> 00:25:35.480 had to get her war experience somewhere. It was 00:25:35.480 --> 00:25:37.599 incredibly dismissive, and frankly, it was deeply 00:25:37.599 --> 00:25:40.700 sexist. But it did highlight a real fundamental 00:25:40.700 --> 00:25:43.259 philosophical divide. Let's unpack that divide. 00:25:43.519 --> 00:25:45.819 Yeah. Because it's not just Hemingway was mean 00:25:45.819 --> 00:25:48.180 to Cather. It's about two completely different 00:25:48.180 --> 00:25:50.720 ways of seeing the world and the purpose of literature. 00:25:51.059 --> 00:25:54.400 Exactly. Cather was what you might call a romantic 00:25:54.400 --> 00:25:57.759 realist. In one of ours, her protagonist, Claude, 00:25:57.759 --> 00:25:59.720 actually finds a sense of purpose in the war. 00:25:59.880 --> 00:26:03.660 He finds beauty and ideals worth dying for. It's 00:26:03.660 --> 00:26:06.799 tragic, yes, but it's also noble and chivalric. 00:26:06.880 --> 00:26:09.819 And Hemingway and his cohort. The modernists, 00:26:09.960 --> 00:26:12.140 the lost generation, they saw that as an obscene 00:26:12.140 --> 00:26:14.920 lie. They saw war as a meaningless industrial 00:26:14.920 --> 00:26:17.900 meat grinder. They believed there was no purpose, 00:26:18.079 --> 00:26:21.299 only death and disillusionment. For them, Cather's 00:26:21.299 --> 00:26:23.400 attempt to give the war meaning and beauty was 00:26:23.400 --> 00:26:25.660 offensive. It was a betrayal of the truth of 00:26:25.660 --> 00:26:28.079 their experience. So you have this massive split. 00:26:28.720 --> 00:26:31.400 Cather represents the old guard, a belief in 00:26:31.400 --> 00:26:34.640 values, ideals, meaning. And Hemingway represents 00:26:34.640 --> 00:26:38.130 the new guard cynicism. Grit, fragmentation, 00:26:38.309 --> 00:26:40.829 and a brutal kind of truth. And even though she 00:26:40.829 --> 00:26:43.269 won the Pulitzer, the critical tide was turning 00:26:43.269 --> 00:26:45.789 towards Hemingway's way of thinking. The cool 00:26:45.789 --> 00:26:48.049 kids in the literary world were starting to see 00:26:48.049 --> 00:26:50.170 Cather as old -fashioned. And that critical turn 00:26:50.170 --> 00:26:52.589 gets even sharper in the 1930s, which brings 00:26:52.589 --> 00:26:55.970 us to Section 5. The Great Depression hits. The 00:26:55.970 --> 00:26:58.720 world changes overnight. The roaring 20s were 00:26:58.720 --> 00:27:01.980 about abundance and art for art's sake. The 1930s 00:27:01.980 --> 00:27:04.339 were about survival and social struggle. And 00:27:04.339 --> 00:27:06.599 suddenly, Willa Cather's beautiful, timeless 00:27:06.599 --> 00:27:09.019 stories about the past, about pioneers and French 00:27:09.019 --> 00:27:11.720 archbishops, they started to look to some influential 00:27:11.720 --> 00:27:14.519 critics like escapism. They accused her of romantic 00:27:14.519 --> 00:27:17.640 nostalgia, of burying her head in the sand. Critics 00:27:17.640 --> 00:27:19.940 like Granville Hicks and Edmund Wilson really 00:27:19.940 --> 00:27:22.160 turned on her. They were politically motivated, 00:27:22.420 --> 00:27:25.660 mostly left -leaning. And they argued that because 00:27:25.660 --> 00:27:27.529 she wasn't writing novels about about bread lines 00:27:27.529 --> 00:27:30.730 or labor strikes or the immediate social problems 00:27:30.730 --> 00:27:34.210 of 1932, she was irrelevant. They basically said 00:27:34.210 --> 00:27:36.329 she was a lady writer hiding in the past. Her 00:27:36.329 --> 00:27:38.069 own politics didn't help her case with that crap. 00:27:38.150 --> 00:27:40.009 No, they certainly didn't. She was a registered 00:27:40.009 --> 00:27:42.589 Republican. She was skeptical of the New Deal 00:27:42.589 --> 00:27:45.309 and big government programs. She was very conservative 00:27:45.309 --> 00:27:48.589 in her personal views. That absolutely alienated 00:27:48.589 --> 00:27:50.769 the left -leaning critics who dominated the literary 00:27:50.769 --> 00:27:53.950 scene in the 30s. They wanted art to be a weapon 00:27:53.950 --> 00:27:56.250 for social change. And Cather just fundamentally... 00:27:56.200 --> 00:27:59.019 believed art should be art. But I want to push 00:27:59.019 --> 00:28:02.380 back on this escapist label for a second. Was 00:28:02.380 --> 00:28:04.460 she actually ignoring the suffering around her? 00:28:04.539 --> 00:28:06.319 I mean, was she just sitting in her fancy Park 00:28:06.319 --> 00:28:08.880 Avenue apartment, oblivious? That is the great 00:28:08.880 --> 00:28:11.819 irony. Publicly, she did seem detached. She refused 00:28:11.819 --> 00:28:14.180 to sign petitions or join political committees. 00:28:14.299 --> 00:28:17.579 But privately, she was deeply involved in helping 00:28:17.579 --> 00:28:20.180 people. She was sending a steady stream of money 00:28:20.180 --> 00:28:23.779 back to Nebraska. To who? To organizations? No, 00:28:23.839 --> 00:28:26.039 directly to people. to the farmers she knew, 00:28:26.200 --> 00:28:29.200 to the Annie Pavelka family, the real -life Antonia 00:28:29.200 --> 00:28:31.180 who were suffering greatly during the Dust Bowl 00:28:31.180 --> 00:28:34.000 and the Depression. The banks were foreclosing 00:28:34.000 --> 00:28:37.000 on everyone. Willa Cather was personally bankrolling 00:28:37.000 --> 00:28:39.200 her old friends to keep them from losing their 00:28:39.200 --> 00:28:41.869 land. She was quietly keeping people afloat. 00:28:41.869 --> 00:28:44.269 She just didn't write novels about it. So she 00:28:44.269 --> 00:28:46.130 separated her art from her charity, from her 00:28:46.130 --> 00:28:48.569 politics. She believed art shouldn't be propaganda. 00:28:48.829 --> 00:28:51.670 She believed art should be timeless. Her argument 00:28:51.670 --> 00:28:53.750 was, if you write about the specific political 00:28:53.750 --> 00:28:56.730 issue of 1932, your book might be completely 00:28:56.730 --> 00:28:59.490 irrelevant by 1940. She wanted to write about 00:28:59.490 --> 00:29:02.529 the eternal things, the human soul, our connection 00:29:02.529 --> 00:29:05.009 to the land. She said something like, economics 00:29:05.009 --> 00:29:07.710 are temporary. The land and the people are eternal. 00:29:08.430 --> 00:29:10.769 But she did care deeply about how her work was 00:29:10.769 --> 00:29:13.130 presented and adapted. We have to talk about 00:29:13.130 --> 00:29:15.569 the Lost Lady film. This story explains why we 00:29:15.569 --> 00:29:17.470 don't see a new Willa Cather movie on Netflix 00:29:17.470 --> 00:29:19.890 every year. Oh, this is a very sore spot in her 00:29:19.890 --> 00:29:23.170 biography. In 1934, Hollywood made a film version 00:29:23.170 --> 00:29:25.789 of her novel, A Lost Lady. Starring Barbara Stanwyck, 00:29:25.789 --> 00:29:29.210 I believe. A huge star. Yes. And Cather hated 00:29:29.210 --> 00:29:31.839 it. She absolutely loathed it. Critics hated 00:29:31.839 --> 00:29:34.779 it, too. By all accounts, it bore little resemblance 00:29:34.779 --> 00:29:37.400 to her book. They took this subtle, complex, 00:29:37.539 --> 00:29:40.079 psychological portrait of a woman's moral decline 00:29:40.079 --> 00:29:43.589 and turned it into a cheap Typical Hollywood 00:29:43.589 --> 00:29:46.589 melodrama. So she pulled the plug on any future 00:29:46.589 --> 00:29:49.910 adaptation. A slant down, hard. She put strict 00:29:49.910 --> 00:29:52.250 prohibitions in her will against the dramatization 00:29:52.250 --> 00:29:55.710 of her works. No more movies, no plays. She didn't 00:29:55.710 --> 00:29:57.670 want Hollywood messing with her vision ever again. 00:29:57.789 --> 00:30:00.549 She chose artistic integrity over a lot of money. 00:30:00.690 --> 00:30:03.490 She was fiercely protective, which is a perfect 00:30:03.490 --> 00:30:06.630 segue to section six. The private life of Willa 00:30:06.630 --> 00:30:08.589 Cather. Because if she was protective of her 00:30:08.589 --> 00:30:10.690 books, she was Fort Knox about her personal life. 00:30:10.849 --> 00:30:12.890 This is the part of her story that has really 00:30:12.890 --> 00:30:15.390 exploded in scholarship in recent years. For 00:30:15.390 --> 00:30:17.970 a long, long time, the official narrative was 00:30:17.970 --> 00:30:20.069 that Cather was a spinster who was dedicated 00:30:20.069 --> 00:30:23.289 solely to her art, a sort of none of American 00:30:23.289 --> 00:30:25.630 literature. Married to her work. Right. But the 00:30:25.630 --> 00:30:27.710 reality is much more complex and much more human. 00:30:27.849 --> 00:30:29.630 And on the center of that reality is a woman 00:30:29.630 --> 00:30:32.170 named Edith Lewis. Edith Lewis. Tell us about 00:30:32.170 --> 00:30:35.190 her. Edith Lewis was a magazine editor, a professional 00:30:35.190 --> 00:30:37.789 woman, very smart, very capable. And she was 00:30:37.789 --> 00:30:39.930 Willa Cather's domestic partner for the last 00:30:39.930 --> 00:30:44.210 39 years of her life. 39 years. That is a marriage. 00:30:44.779 --> 00:30:47.019 by any other name it was a life partnership they 00:30:47.019 --> 00:30:48.819 lived together first in greenwich village then 00:30:48.819 --> 00:30:51.559 on park avenue and lewis wasn't just a roommate 00:30:51.559 --> 00:30:54.819 she was a literary trustee she typed the manuscripts 00:30:54.819 --> 00:30:58.059 she edited the drafts she was cather's first 00:30:58.059 --> 00:31:00.779 reader and most trusted critic they traveled 00:31:00.779 --> 00:31:03.259 together to the southwest for research they built 00:31:03.259 --> 00:31:06.000 a life together so this brings us to the big 00:31:06.000 --> 00:31:08.400 question and i know scholars argue about the 00:31:08.400 --> 00:31:11.740 terminology was she a lesbian Can we use that 00:31:11.740 --> 00:31:14.880 word? It is a subject of intense debate. Some 00:31:14.880 --> 00:31:17.279 scholars argue it's anachronistic to apply the 00:31:17.279 --> 00:31:19.559 modern word lesbian to a woman of her time because 00:31:19.559 --> 00:31:21.740 Cather wouldn't have used it for herself. She 00:31:21.740 --> 00:31:23.660 came from a Victorian background where women 00:31:23.660 --> 00:31:26.579 often had these very intense, passionate, romantic 00:31:26.579 --> 00:31:28.599 friendships that were to some degree socially 00:31:28.599 --> 00:31:31.259 accepted. But looking at the evidence through 00:31:31.259 --> 00:31:34.390 a modern lens. The evidence leans heavily towards 00:31:34.390 --> 00:31:38.069 yes. She had a series of intense, romantic, and 00:31:38.069 --> 00:31:40.069 emotionally central relationships with women 00:31:40.069 --> 00:31:43.470 throughout her entire life. Louise Pound in college, 00:31:43.730 --> 00:31:46.890 Isabel McClung in Pittsburgh. That was a huge 00:31:46.890 --> 00:31:49.730 life -altering relationship. And it was a terrible 00:31:49.730 --> 00:31:51.609 heartbreak for Cather when Isabel got married. 00:31:51.750 --> 00:31:54.849 And then the stable 39 -year life partnership 00:31:54.849 --> 00:31:57.809 with Edith Lewis. But Cather herself tried to 00:31:57.809 --> 00:32:00.019 cover her tracks. This is the burning part of 00:32:00.019 --> 00:32:02.359 the story. She did. She was a resolutely private 00:32:02.359 --> 00:32:05.400 person. As she got older, she became obsessed 00:32:05.400 --> 00:32:07.880 with controlling her legacy. She started writing 00:32:07.880 --> 00:32:09.660 to her friends and asking them to return her 00:32:09.660 --> 00:32:11.960 letters, and then she burned them. She destroyed 00:32:11.960 --> 00:32:14.680 many drafts of her novels. She wanted to be judged 00:32:14.680 --> 00:32:17.240 only by her finished published art, not by her 00:32:17.240 --> 00:32:19.359 private life. Not everyone burned the letters, 00:32:19.440 --> 00:32:21.980 did they? Exactly. People are hoarders, thankfully, 00:32:22.119 --> 00:32:24.539 for history. Her friends and family held on to 00:32:24.539 --> 00:32:27.750 some of them. In 2013, against the wishes expressed 00:32:27.750 --> 00:32:30.250 in her will, a collection called The Selected 00:32:30.250 --> 00:32:32.349 Letters of Willa Cather was finally published. 00:32:32.609 --> 00:32:35.109 It was a revelation. What was in them? Was it 00:32:35.109 --> 00:32:37.430 scandalous? Were there love letters? It wasn't 00:32:37.430 --> 00:32:40.309 scandalous in a graphic, explicit sense. There 00:32:40.309 --> 00:32:42.990 was no smoking gun detailing physical intimacy. 00:32:43.470 --> 00:32:45.930 But what it revealed was the emotional intensity. 00:32:46.909 --> 00:32:49.509 The way she wrote to Edith Lewis, the way she 00:32:49.509 --> 00:32:51.869 wrote about her heartbreak over Isabel McClung, 00:32:51.890 --> 00:32:55.609 it showed a person whose entire emotional world 00:32:55.609 --> 00:32:58.190 was centered on women. There's a quote from a 00:32:58.190 --> 00:33:00.690 scholar, Melissa Homestead, who wrote a great 00:33:00.690 --> 00:33:02.970 book about Catherine Lewis. She basically asks, 00:33:03.250 --> 00:33:05.890 you know, what evidence do you need? Photos of 00:33:05.890 --> 00:33:08.529 them in bed. The fact that she lived with a woman 00:33:08.529 --> 00:33:10.730 for 40 years and that woman was the executor 00:33:10.730 --> 00:33:13.829 of her literary estate. That says a lot. It says 00:33:13.829 --> 00:33:16.089 almost everything. And knowing this completely 00:33:16.089 --> 00:33:18.369 reframes how you can read her work. When you 00:33:18.369 --> 00:33:20.509 read My Antonia Now, knowing she was writing 00:33:20.509 --> 00:33:22.769 from a male perspective, the narrator Jim Burden, 00:33:22.829 --> 00:33:25.769 looking at this powerful, beautiful woman, Antonia, 00:33:25.829 --> 00:33:28.329 with such love and admiration, it adds a whole 00:33:28.329 --> 00:33:31.089 new layer of queer coding. Was Jim Burden just 00:33:31.089 --> 00:33:33.809 a mask for Willa herself? Many scholars think 00:33:33.809 --> 00:33:36.880 so. The mask of Jim allowed her to express her 00:33:36.880 --> 00:33:39.400 deep love and admiration for women in a way that 00:33:39.400 --> 00:33:42.180 was socially acceptable at the time. It connects 00:33:42.180 --> 00:33:45.180 all the way back to the William phase. The masculine 00:33:45.180 --> 00:33:47.779 mask allowed her to be the observer, the lover, 00:33:47.900 --> 00:33:50.259 the doctor, the traveler, the one with agency. 00:33:50.660 --> 00:33:52.880 And speaking of masks and getting away from it 00:33:52.880 --> 00:33:56.250 all, we have to mention their retreat. Because 00:33:56.250 --> 00:33:58.950 living on Park Avenue sounds nice, but Catherine 00:33:58.950 --> 00:34:01.269 needed to escape the city. Oh, she needed it 00:34:01.269 --> 00:34:03.609 desperately. They had a cottage on Grand Manon 00:34:03.609 --> 00:34:06.309 Island in New Brunswick, Canada. It was way off 00:34:06.309 --> 00:34:08.769 the grid. How off the grid are we talking? We're 00:34:08.769 --> 00:34:11.030 talking primitive. No plumbing, no electricity, 00:34:11.369 --> 00:34:13.510 a little cottage at a place called Whale Cove. 00:34:13.510 --> 00:34:15.809 This was where she went to escape the noise of 00:34:15.809 --> 00:34:17.690 New York and the critics and the social obligations. 00:34:18.150 --> 00:34:20.369 She and Edith Lewis would go there for the summers. 00:34:21.079 --> 00:34:23.599 It was in that profound isolation that she wrote 00:34:23.599 --> 00:34:26.519 some of her later books like Lucy Gayheart. She 00:34:26.519 --> 00:34:29.239 needed that silence to hear the voice of her 00:34:29.239 --> 00:34:31.840 fiction. I just love that image. The famous, 00:34:31.940 --> 00:34:34.190 sophisticated Pulitzer Prize winner. chopping 00:34:34.190 --> 00:34:36.230 wood and lighting kerosene lamps just to get 00:34:36.230 --> 00:34:38.389 some peace and quiet to write. It speaks to that 00:34:38.389 --> 00:34:40.070 central tension we talked about at the beginning. 00:34:40.210 --> 00:34:42.349 She was a sophisticated, wealthy, successful 00:34:42.349 --> 00:34:45.510 woman, but her soul was still seeking that wild 00:34:45.510 --> 00:34:48.269 space, that connection to the elements she first 00:34:48.269 --> 00:34:50.670 encountered and was terrified by in Nebraska. 00:34:51.250 --> 00:34:53.769 So let's go to the final chapter, Section 7, 00:34:53.969 --> 00:34:57.449 the final years and posthumous mysteries. We're 00:34:57.449 --> 00:35:00.409 in the 1940s now. The world is at war again. 00:35:00.610 --> 00:35:04.010 And the tone of her work changes again. In 1940, 00:35:04.269 --> 00:35:06.809 she publishes what would be her last completed 00:35:06.809 --> 00:35:09.679 novel, Sapphira and the Slave Girl. This one 00:35:09.679 --> 00:35:11.360 is set in Virginia, right? So she's going all 00:35:11.360 --> 00:35:13.260 the way back to her roots. It is. It goes back 00:35:13.260 --> 00:35:15.559 to her pre -Nebraska childhood, to that world 00:35:15.559 --> 00:35:18.880 of willow shade. And it is a dark book. It deals 00:35:18.880 --> 00:35:21.659 with slavery, with jealousy, with deep moral 00:35:21.659 --> 00:35:24.920 ambiguity. The central plot involves a white 00:35:24.920 --> 00:35:27.619 mistress, Sapphira, who becomes so jealous of 00:35:27.619 --> 00:35:30.179 a beautiful, young, enslaved girl that she plots 00:35:30.179 --> 00:35:32.500 to have her own nephew rape the girl to ruin 00:35:32.500 --> 00:35:35.420 her. Yikes. That is a long, long way from the 00:35:35.420 --> 00:35:38.539 heroic pioneers of O 'Pioneers. It is. It's un 00:35:38.539 --> 00:35:40.960 - Unsettling. It shows a writer in her later 00:35:40.960 --> 00:35:43.260 years grappling with the darker side of human 00:35:43.260 --> 00:35:46.079 nature and specifically with the complicated, 00:35:46.139 --> 00:35:48.940 ugly history of her own family and her own region 00:35:48.940 --> 00:35:52.219 in the South. It was a critical success, but 00:35:52.219 --> 00:35:54.260 it surprised a lot of her readers. And she was 00:35:54.260 --> 00:35:56.360 working on something else when she died. A mystery 00:35:56.360 --> 00:35:58.599 project that I am completely obsessed with. The 00:35:58.599 --> 00:36:01.460 unfinished novel. It was titled Hard Punishments. 00:36:01.619 --> 00:36:03.719 That's a heavy title. Hard Punishments. What 00:36:03.719 --> 00:36:05.909 was it about? The setting is the most surprising 00:36:05.909 --> 00:36:08.090 part. It wasn't Nebraska. It wasn't Virginia. 00:36:08.289 --> 00:36:11.610 It was set in 14th century Avignon, France, during 00:36:11.610 --> 00:36:13.869 the time of the Avignon papacy. Medieval France. 00:36:13.949 --> 00:36:16.369 That's a huge leap from the prairie. It shows 00:36:16.369 --> 00:36:18.969 her incredible range and her lifelong fascination 00:36:18.969 --> 00:36:21.889 with French culture. but hard punishments. We 00:36:21.889 --> 00:36:23.650 will never know exactly what it was. Because 00:36:23.650 --> 00:36:26.050 of the pack. Because of her will. Willa Cather 00:36:26.050 --> 00:36:30.349 died on April 24th, 1947 of a cerebral hemorrhage. 00:36:30.449 --> 00:36:33.070 And following her strict, explicit instructions, 00:36:33.510 --> 00:36:35.889 Edith Lewis destroyed the manuscript of hard 00:36:35.889 --> 00:36:39.190 punishments. That hurts. As a reader, that physically 00:36:39.190 --> 00:36:41.829 hurts me. To think of those pages, that story 00:36:41.829 --> 00:36:44.730 going into the fire. It's a great loss to literature. 00:36:45.280 --> 00:36:48.039 But as a partner, as a friend, Edith was loyal 00:36:48.039 --> 00:36:51.260 to the absolute end. She protected Cather's wishes 00:36:51.260 --> 00:36:54.739 above the world's curiosity. It just raises this 00:36:54.739 --> 00:36:58.260 fascinating what if. What would a Willa Cather 00:36:58.260 --> 00:37:00.179 medieval novel have looked like? How would it 00:37:00.179 --> 00:37:02.559 have changed her legacy? We can only speculate. 00:37:02.860 --> 00:37:05.719 So she passes away. And where is she buried? 00:37:05.860 --> 00:37:08.960 Not in Virginia. Not back home in Nebraska. She's 00:37:08.960 --> 00:37:10.760 buried in Jaffrey, New Hampshire. New Hampshire? 00:37:10.860 --> 00:37:12.739 Why New Hampshire? It was a place she had visited 00:37:12.739 --> 00:37:15.199 often with Isabel McClung and her husband. She 00:37:15.199 --> 00:37:17.880 loved the quiet of it. She loved the iconic mountain 00:37:17.880 --> 00:37:20.440 there, Mountain Adnock. And crucially, Edith 00:37:20.440 --> 00:37:23.139 Lewis is buried right there alongside her. In 00:37:23.139 --> 00:37:25.780 the end, they're together. They are. Just simply 00:37:25.780 --> 00:37:28.179 together in a quiet corner of New England. So 00:37:28.179 --> 00:37:30.000 let's zoom out. We've unpacked this incredible 00:37:30.000 --> 00:37:32.940 life from the tomboy William dissecting frogs 00:37:32.940 --> 00:37:35.960 on the plains to the Park Avenue Pulitzer winner 00:37:35.960 --> 00:37:38.719 who summered in a shack in Canada. What is the 00:37:38.719 --> 00:37:41.110 lasting legacy here? I think her primary legacy 00:37:41.110 --> 00:37:43.429 is that she validated the American immigrant 00:37:43.429 --> 00:37:46.110 story before it was popular or fashionable to 00:37:46.110 --> 00:37:48.469 do so. She took the people who were considered 00:37:48.469 --> 00:37:50.949 others, the bohemians, the struggling farmers, 00:37:51.170 --> 00:37:53.610 the people speaking broken English, and she gave 00:37:53.610 --> 00:37:56.469 them the status of epic heroes. She made their 00:37:56.469 --> 00:37:59.130 story as important as the story of Odysseus or 00:37:59.130 --> 00:38:02.309 Aeneas. She made the Midwest mystical. She gave 00:38:02.309 --> 00:38:04.289 it a soul when others thought it was just empty 00:38:04.289 --> 00:38:07.250 space. She absolutely did. And she did it by 00:38:07.250 --> 00:38:10.269 forging that unique middle ground style. She 00:38:10.269 --> 00:38:12.829 managed to stand midway between the dry, cluttered 00:38:12.829 --> 00:38:15.329 facts of journalism and the chaotic, subjective 00:38:15.329 --> 00:38:18.190 stream of consciousness of the modernists. She 00:38:18.190 --> 00:38:20.730 created a style that was lucid, clear, and yet 00:38:20.730 --> 00:38:23.170 deeply emotional. She proved that what you leave 00:38:23.170 --> 00:38:25.269 out of a story is just as important as what you 00:38:25.269 --> 00:38:27.570 put in. So here's the so what for the listener. 00:38:27.710 --> 00:38:31.289 Why does Willa Cather matter today in 2026? I 00:38:31.289 --> 00:38:33.710 think she matters because she reminds us that 00:38:33.710 --> 00:38:37.980 place shapes who we are profoundly. In a world 00:38:37.980 --> 00:38:40.739 where we're all increasingly online and everything 00:38:40.739 --> 00:38:43.539 feels the same, where every coffee shop and airport 00:38:43.539 --> 00:38:46.920 looks identical, Cather reminds us that the specific 00:38:46.920 --> 00:38:49.739 light on a specific hill, the sound of the wind 00:38:49.739 --> 00:38:52.440 in a specific valley, creates a specific kind 00:38:52.440 --> 00:38:57.059 of human soul. She champions the local in a world 00:38:57.059 --> 00:38:59.199 that is obsessed with the global. And here's 00:38:59.199 --> 00:39:00.760 the provocative thought I want to leave everyone 00:39:00.760 --> 00:39:03.219 with, building on that. We spent a lot of this 00:39:03.219 --> 00:39:05.829 deep dive talking about her private life. about 00:39:05.829 --> 00:39:08.429 Edith Lewis, the letters, the sexuality debate. 00:39:09.170 --> 00:39:11.349 Cather fought so hard to control that narrative. 00:39:11.550 --> 00:39:14.090 She burned the letters. She put a ban on the 00:39:14.090 --> 00:39:15.809 publication of her correspondence in her will. 00:39:15.889 --> 00:39:17.750 She wanted the art to stand alone. She wanted 00:39:17.750 --> 00:39:19.869 you to read the book, not the biography. Exactly. 00:39:19.989 --> 00:39:22.489 Yet in 2013, we published the letters anyway. 00:39:22.730 --> 00:39:25.769 We are right now obsessively analyzing her sexuality. 00:39:26.190 --> 00:39:28.639 So the question is this. Does our modern desire 00:39:28.639 --> 00:39:30.880 to know the author, to categorize their identity, 00:39:31.019 --> 00:39:33.320 to solve the mystery of their private life, actually 00:39:33.320 --> 00:39:35.860 violate the very art they tried to create? That 00:39:35.860 --> 00:39:38.280 is the ultimate tension, isn't it? By digging 00:39:38.280 --> 00:39:41.739 into her private life, are we finding the real 00:39:41.739 --> 00:39:45.300 Willa Cather? Or are we losing that middle ground 00:39:45.300 --> 00:39:48.360 she worked so hard to establish? Are we cluttering 00:39:48.360 --> 00:39:51.579 her unfurnished novel back up with all the furniture 00:39:51.579 --> 00:39:54.320 of her biography? Are we just dragging all the 00:39:54.320 --> 00:39:55.880 furniture she threw out the window right back 00:39:55.880 --> 00:39:59.260 into the room? We might be. A very real possibility. 00:39:59.880 --> 00:40:01.340 It's something to think about the next time you 00:40:01.340 --> 00:40:03.739 pick up my Antonia. Maybe it's better to just 00:40:03.739 --> 00:40:05.760 let the wind blow through the red grass and not 00:40:05.760 --> 00:40:07.340 ask too many questions about who was holding 00:40:07.340 --> 00:40:10.679 the pen. Perhaps. Read the book, feel the wind, 00:40:10.719 --> 00:40:13.300 and let the rest be mystery. Thanks for diving 00:40:13.300 --> 00:40:15.659 in with us. We will catch you on the next one.