Willa Cather Books

I decided to sample Willa Cather after watching a PBS show on her that that said she was a Pulitzer Prize winning author and one of the best writers of the 20th century. I thought some short stories would be a good place to start. I was curious because she is a female writer, and one that I was unfamiliar with; I didn't want to miss out on some good literature.

I discovered that Cather's stories give out hints of promise of things to come, though I would not put them in the same class as other short stories by Twain, Henry James, James Joyce, and Dostoyevsky, all of which stand on their own as works of literature, at least the ones I've read. Her stories came across to me as exercises for something bigger, with the exception of 'Paul's Case', which I did think stood on its own, and was a bit edgy (which I like). The stories were generally simple, sentimental tales involving only a handful of characters, usually in a mid-West rural setting, in which a moral or way of life is being tested. She sort of strolls through the stories taking a lot of time to look around at the characters, the relationships, the places, what the places mean, the philosophies and what they mean. There are some beautiful glimmers of insight into the characters and places that give a luster to the stories; and that is what kept me reading. The stories themselves are fairly static and not a lot happens, a little like slow-paced early television plays; the journey is what seems to count to her.

I look forward to reading her Pulitzer Prize winning book `One of Ours' for better things, and have no doubt I will find it there.

This book is awful! I am being forced to read it because of school and it is pure torture! HELP! I have not learned anything from it, and men cannot write the way Willa Cather portrays Jim to think! HELP ME! THIS SHOULD BE ILLEGAL!

I think if your gonna write a book it should be decent. This book hardly meets this critia. It goes into too much depth, and has too many "hidden" items that most people don't care about. You can waste your time on it if you like to read boring and wanna-be romantic books.

I thought My Antonia was an easy read. It was short, and although it could get a little boring at times and the ending wasn't as great as it could have been, it was entertaining. It's point was to give an account of nineteenth-century farm life while still being entertaining. It achieves both. It seems like man of the people critiquing this novel didn't actually read it.

This book was so awful. I was supposed to read it for one of my classes and I have a quiz on this book today, but I fell asleep.I couldn't help it. That's how boring it was! Nothing interesting happens. I'm about halfway through it as of right now, but I don't think I want to continue.

I thought the book had a lot of charm. It showed how much strength mankind had to form this great land. The trusting and helpful ways to each other in order to survive. The strength and struggles for freedom: to have a piece of the American dream. The comforts we take so much for granted are driven home, how very spoiled and soft we have become. It also helped me to appreciate our farmers of today they must still face the same challenges while we just go to the store in our cars and get what we want.

I had to stop listening to this recording, as the narrator consistently mispronouces "Antonia." He accents the 3rd syllable rather than the 1st syllable. Willa Cather even tells how the name should be pronounced in one of the early chapters (Chapter 3 I believe?). The Bohemian name "Antonia" places the accent on the first syllable, like the way we pronounce "Anthony" in English.

So I'll actually read the book instead of listening to it, as I've heard raves about it.

Kaye wastes far too much time dwelling on Cather's sexual orientation (lesbian) and how this, combined with "patriarchy," influenced Cather's fiction. Unfortunately, this detracts from an analysis of the literature itself. One gets the feeling that Kaye was acting out her own resentments against men in general when she penned this dreck.

(The 1 star is only to enable me to post this note.) I'm writing to point out that the quote you have from The Washington Post Book World by Louis Rubin is from his review of an earlier Stout book, "Katherine Anne Porter." Please correct it. Marie Arana, Editor, The Washington Post Book World