On the divide : the many lives of Willa Cather
Author(s)
Bibliographic Information
On the divide : the many lives of Willa Cather
University of Nebraska Press, c2008
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Note
Includes bibliographical references and index
Description and Table of Contents
Description
Willa Cather's fiction frequently plays out on "the divide," the high prairie land of Nebraska, where the author herself lived as a child. This book suggests that Cather's own life played out on a divide as well, deliberately measured out between different roles and personae that made their way into her writing. On the Divide analyzes the iconic image that Cather helped develop for herself, in contrast to the anonymous face she adopted for promotional activities and the very different private self she shared only with friends and family. Delving into Cather's correspondence and the little-known promotional material she produced anonymously, David Porter provides new insight into the extent-and direction-of her control. He also considers the contrasting influences of Mary Baker Eddy, whose biography Cather ghostwrote, and Sarah Orne Jewett on the author's emerging artistic persona. The study goes on to explore the many ways in which these "divides" in Cather's life found expression in her writing. Extending from Cather's early stories to her final novel, Porter's book documents the degree to which Cather's understanding of her own different and often conflicting sides, and of her penchant for playing diverse roles, enabled her as a novelist to create characters so torn, so complex, and so profoundly human.
Table of Contents
Introduction: On the Divide
Section I: Cather on Cather - Introduction
Chapter 1: Three Autobiographies and an (Auto)interview
Chapter 2: Dust Jacket Copy
Section II: Entering the Kingdom of Art - Introduction
Chapter 3: The Quest to Excel: 1890-1906
Chapter 4: Cather Caught in the Eddy
Chapter 5: Two Alter-Egos
Section III: At Home on the Divide - Introduction
Chapter 6: O Pioneers! and My Autobiography
Chapter 7: The Song of the Lark
Chapter 8: My Antonia
Section IV: Confronting Medusa - Introduction
Chapter 9: "Hard and Dry"
Chapter 10: Youth and the Bright Medusa
Chapter 11: One of Ours
Section V: "The Seeming Original Injustice - Introduction
Chapter 12: A Lost Lady
Chapter 13: The Best Stories of Sarah Orne Jewett
Chapter 14: The Professor's House
Chapter 15: My Mortal Enemy
Section VI: Recapitulation - Introduction
Chapter 16: Conversations: Cather Talks with Cather
Section VII: "In the End is My Beginning" - Introduction
Chapter 17: Death Comes for the Archbishop
Chapter 18: Fiction of the 1930s
Chatper 19: Cather, Jewett, and Not Under Forty
Chapter 20: Sapphira and the Slave Girl
Notes
Works Cited
Index
by "Nielsen BookData"