Paying homage

 While visiting New Hampshire this weekend I managed to get up to Jaffrey to lay flowers at Willa Cather's grave.

This past weekend marked the 100th anniversary of the Publication of Willa Cather's The Song of the Lark.

Barbara Stanwyck in A Lost Lady  (Alfred E. Green, 1934) via

The film is airing today on TCM. so I have it set to record.  Based very loosely on Willa Cather's masterpiece I don't have high hopes after reading the reviews but who can pass on a mash up of Stanwyck and Cather?

Remembering Willa Cather, who died 67 years ago today.

Will Myra Henshaw never cease to haunt me?

I re-read "My Mortal Enemy" for the umpteenth time today,

It's getting so I have to hide my copy.  Once I pick it up I cannot put it down

SIGNED LIMITED FIRST EDITION, ONE OF ONLY 220 COPIES SIGNED BY WILLA CATHER.

"My Mortal Enemy is actually a nouvelle, only about twenty thousand words in length, the shortest of all her works published separately... It is also the most unfurnished of her novels, a remarkable example of the novel démeublé, but it was properly published by itself and not as part of a collection. It is a complete entity and an almost perfect work of art" (Woodress, Willa Cather: A Literary Life).

New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1926. Original cloth backed boards; custom slipcase (original slipcase lacking). A FINE COPY.

Price: $850.00

- See more at: http://www.manhattanrarebooks.com/pages/books/655/willa-cather/my-mortal-enemy

And let me be perfectly clear here.  Yes  I will sleep with you for this

Happy Birthday!

 Willa Cather,  was born Wilella Sibert Cather on her maternal grandmother's farm in the Back Creek Valley near Winchester, Virginia, on this day in 1873.

Remembering the great Willa Cather (1873 –1947), who died on this day, aged 73. 

What is your favorite Cather story?

 

For those of you that know me, you're already aware of the torch I carry for Miss Cather.  From the early influence of  "Paul's Case" to the constant re-reading of "My Mortal Enemy".

Happy Birthday!

Willa Sibert Cather was born today in 1873

Happy Birthday!

 December 7, 1873 is Cather's birthday, although she variously claimed 1875 and 1876(but who isn't guilty of a little creative math)

(Photo of Cather as a 13-year-old tomboy in Red Cloud, Nebraska, The Nebraska State Historical Society).

Revisiting

I spent this weekend traveling to Portland, ME for a wedding.  Any travel of any kind requires that I bring and read my copy of My Mortal Enemy, by Willa Cather, one of my  particularly  favorite authors, as I've mentioned before.

Washington Square Park, New York City, 1924, left to right: S. S. McClure, Willa Cather, Ida Tarbell, and Will Irvin.

My Mortal enemy is one of her lesser known novellas, at 122 tight pages it reads more like a well crafted longer short story, immensely suited for short plane, bus or train trips.  Agreeably readable and enigmatically fathomable it can be entertainingly  read on both journeys to and from destinations.  Not until recently did I discover the equally fascinating history to the story which makes for more than enough drama on it's own before Cather so deftly took her hand to it.

It's a book I have to hide on my shelves, should I come upon it while dusting I am compelled to open and read it .And is most probably the source of  why I've never been fond of carved amethysts.

Find yourself a copy (I prefer the hardcover illustrated edition) and let me know what you think!

Early influence

 
It was one of my high school English teachers, Mr. Millman,  who first introduced me to Willa Cather. Her story Paul's Case was in the Norton Anthology we were studying that year.  Reading it set a slow incendiary burn into my psyche.  It was the perfect combination of  a "misunderstood" teenager stumbling upon one of the great literary gems done in the man against environment theme.  It helped to build and solidify the bonfire of attitude(platitude, in hindsight) that colored my teenage angst.  I re-read it almost weekly for a year or so, ensuring that whenever the gloom was breaking I could bring it right back. 

From Paul's Case I went on to read all of Willa Cather's output.  She led me to Edith Wharton who led me David Graham Phillips and Henry James.  They've molded me into who I am today..  Sometimes I wish I could go back and thank Mr. Millman.

 "Paul's Case", Water color by Yan Nascimbene