Willa Cather in Person - (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

As she grew older Willa Cather became ever more private, complaining of favor-seekers and other parasites of fame. But in her long career she granted thirty-four interviews, gave six public speeches, and published ten letters, discussing literature and the artistic life and illuminating her own life and writing. These fugitive pieces, here gathered for the first time, reveal the author's early thirst for fame and the reasons for her later renunciation of it.

Included are Cather's radio speech accepting the 1923 Pulitzer Prize for fiction (awarded for One of Ours), accounts of her other speeches, interviews conducted by Louise Bogan and Stephen Vincent Benét, and six little-known portraits of Cather.

From the Back Cover

'Cather's public utterances were expressed with the same honesty and clarity that distinguish her immaculate novels and short stories. As happens when experiencing Cather's fiction, the reader of these words warms to her gentle passion and quiet eloquence. This collection is valuable for anyone interested in the art of writing, in the genesis of the writer, or in the shape of American culture in the first decades of this century.

Review Quotes

"A valuable book. Bohlke gives us access to complete texts, and his headnotes establish the context and significance of individual entries."--South Atlantic Review.

About the Author

L. Brent Bohlke was a professor of English and chaplain for Bard College in New York. His essays on Cather appeared in American Literature, Great Plains Quarterly, Western Literature, and other journals.