Book Review: Willa Cather Living

Title: Willa Cather Living

Author: Edith Lewis

Date: 1953

Publisher: Knopf

ISBN: none

Length: 195 pages of text, 12 pages of introductiory matter

Quote: “I have written about Willa Cather as I knew her, but with the feeling that it is not in any form of biographical writing, but in art alone, that the deepest truth about human beings is to be found.”

Of few well-known people could this claim be truer than of Willa Cather. The big secret of her personal life is not that she had any kind of sex life (she wrote nothing about it, and probably had none) but that her own life was so uneventful, even monotonous. She wrote excellent novels by listening to other people’s stories about their adventures. She, herself, had no adventures. She was born in Virginia, lived in Nebraska, wrote and taught and occasionally travelled, and, as she grew older, had a few minor illnesses.

Was she a lesbian? Joan Acocella has discussed the evidence for and against this claim at some length. The evidence for it is weak; the argument seems based in the old sexist prejudice that “when a woman inclines to learning, there is something wrong with her sex apparatus.” There is some evidence that Cather sometimes wished she’d been male, but apparently for practical reasons. It's hard for us to imagine how much easier it was for Cather to get things done by simply dropping a letter from her name and dressing like "Will" instead of "Willa." Bleak reality was that peer pressure was applied to prevent women from living alone in Cather’s time; if not married or attached to family members, they were expected to provide themselves with female “companions” who were classified as a sort of domestic servants. Lewis was that sort of “companion” to Cather, more of a guard than a friend. There’s no hint of intimacy between the two roommates-for-convenience; there’s more than a hint that they didn’t like each other much, that Cather’s withdrawal to write helped Lewis endure the job of living with her. The sentimental “love and kisses” language in some of Cather’s letters to casual friends seems to have been whimsical, not passionate.

Lewis’s biography is a bit on the bland side. The highlights of Cather’s years were the publication and success of her novels. Alfred A. Knopf was alive when Cather was; her books made his fame as much as his publishing them made hers, but their friendship seems to have been a distant, business-related thing. Most of Cather’s friendships seem to have been constrained and impersonal anyway. Lewis said that most of the stories she used in her books had come from people Cather knew in youth or childhood, but one can imagine friends who didn’t want to be put into novels watching what they said to Willa Cather.

One of the livelier anecdotes in Willa Cather Living concerns Cather’s writing about the influenza epidemic “The local doctor...had served as medical officer on a troop ship...[and] kept a diary all through the voyage. He let Willa Cather borrow this diary.” Part of a novel called One of Ours was based on the diary. “Later...He was relating one of his experiences during this epidemic to a friend, and the friend said coldly: ‘That isn’t a true story. You took that from Willa Cather’s book!’”

“Society gossip” was considered interesting during their lifetimes. Cather and Lewis met other people who were well known; a few of their names are still well known. If more than small talk occurred when they were visiting Mabel Luhan or D.H. Lawrence, Lewis failed to capture it,. One might like to have read what occurred before and after “Nijinski...was...extremely courteous; but after he had been introduced and had kissed her hand, he went, after a little, and stood in a corner of the studio with his face to the wall. He believed himself to be a horse.” At least one would like to know how Lewis arrived at this explanation; but she doesn’t tell.

Recommended to those who enjoy Cather’s fiction and want to read more about her.