On this day in 1947, Willa Cather died in her Park Avenue home, at the age of 73, not of the cancer that she had been living with for some while, but of a cerebral haemorrhage. Her life partner Edith Lewis, in accordance with Cather's instructions, subsequently destroyed most of the manuscript of an unfinished final novel, Hard Punishments, set in medieval Avignon. Fragments of it have subsequently surfaced, and it sounds like yet another departure for an author who, as A. S Byatt put it, reinvented the novel form with each new work she wrote: this would have been her only novel set entirely in the Old World. Cather was interred in the Old Burying Ground of Jaffrey, New Hampshire, where Edith joined her 25 years later.
For years Willa Cather was little more than a name to me, as to most readers on this side of the Atlantic, so I came to her very late – in 2012, I think – initially by way of My Antonia, the last of the 'Prairie Trilogy', soon followed by another little masterpiece, A Lost Lady. As I read on through her novels (search 'Willa Cather' on this blog for my reactions), finally devouring all of them – and much of the shorter fiction – my admiration and wonder grew and grew, and I realised that I was dealing with a truly classic writer, one of the greats. Indeed, if someone has to be the Greatest Novelist of the 20th Century, I would be happy to nominate her – and, as the reputations of many of the male contenders for that title continue to fall away, that might come to seem a pretty sound choice.
Love to see this. I began this year with Death Comes for the Archbishop, and loved it. One of the best novels I’ve read in years. Here in the states she’s often dismissed as a Midwestern author, someone who writes about is insignificant folk in the sky-over states. But she in fact is one of America’s greatest writers.
ReplyDeleteThanks Michael. I agree, of course.
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