I have used many passagesįrom her fiction to document her life, keeping in mind constantly the need for caution. She turned her own life andĮxperiences into literature to a degree uncommon among writers. If he can successfully negotiate the minefields, the biographer of Cather has a greatĭeal of autobiographical fiction to help in his task. Image, and one has to use her data with caution. Matters still more difficult, Lewis's memoir of her friend also tries to manage the The biographer continually has to separate theįact from the fantasy, and he never can be sure he has succeeded completely. To be accurate in recalling facts, and it is hard sometimes to tell where the reality Of her life she exaggerated many events she revised her opinions. She changed her birth date she altered details Rather successfully by writing biographical sketches of herself and telling interviewers During her own lifetime she managed her image She threw up roadblocks, consciouslyĪnd unconsciously, to frustrate pursuit. Than merely locating the raw materials for the life. The problems that the biographer of Cather has to face, however, are more complicated
Saved for posterity the documentation of their lives. Still, one envies the chroniclers of those public figures who carefully Yet she and other writers who have wanted to cover their tracks always have been doomed She certainly made the task of writing her life more difficult Out of the limelight arid control access to her life have been unsuccessful in keepingīiographers off her trail. Park without being recognized and accosted by strangers, but all her efforts to keep Public interest." Cather resented the fact that she could not sit on a bench in Central He said himselfĪt the time of the centennial celebration of her birth in 1973 that "anyone who abhors contact with members of the public is best advised not to produce work which has
Knopf tried his best to preserve Cather's privacy, but it was difficult. Or quote from her letters (her will forbids it), but they are available for consultation,Īnd the information they contain is public property. To the world and her letters ought to be preserved. Fortunately,Ĭorrespondents who outlived her had the good sense to realize that Cather belongs Lewis destroyed as many of her letters as they could lay their hands on.
Into institutional collections from Maine to California, even though she and Edith Perhaps fifteen hundred of her letters by now have found their way She left a trail of published interviews and speechesĪnd public statements that surprises anyone who knows only her own pronouncementsĭesiring privacy. Hundreds of pages of Cather's journalistic writings have beenĭug from the dusty magazine and newspaper files where they first appeared and republished.Īll of her stories have been collected, including many she gladly would have expungedįrom the record if she could have.
He was wrong, of course, and since Catherĭied there has been a steady accumulation of material to fuel the ever-growing interest That biographical data actually was meager. Sale of Brown's book, he no doubt also thought Cather had been such a private person Jacket: "Here is all the biographical information anyone is likely ever to gatherĪbout Willa Cather." Even though he was understandably interested in promoting the Brown's biography of Cather appeared in 1953, Alfred Knopf wrote on the In presenting a life-size portrait of this remarkable woman. While no biography ever canīe definitive, this study contains a great deal more material than any previous oneĪnd goes considerably beyond my own earlier biography, as well as the efforts of others, She placed in the biographer's path, and until now sufficient material has not beenĪvailable to flesh out more than a medium-length life. The absence of a detailed biography is probably due to the traps, pitfalls, and barricades can be more certain than she to capture ultimately the admiration of posterity." At the time of her death J.ĭonald Adams wrote in the New York Times that "no American novelist was more purely an artist," and George Whicher declared four years later that "no American writer. Succeeding decades her stature has continued to grow. When she died, her reputation wasįirmly established as one of the most significant American novelists, and during the Has been the subject of a full-length biography. April Twilights and The Troll GardenĪlthough forty years have passed since the death of Willa Cather in 1947, she never
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