Great Plains Studies, Center for
Date of this Version
Winter 2011
Citation
Great Plains Quarterly 31:1 (Winter 2011).
Abstract
Can a regionalist be a major writer? That's the question at the heart of Modernism and Mildred Walker. It's a question that hovers over contemporary responses to Willa Cather and Wallace Stegner. Since their best work inhabits definable places (though far more varied than readers often realize), it's tempting to localize them, limit their power, impact, and appeal.
Not surprisingly, these two writers figure prominently in this sophisticated study of another writer often treated as limited in range (in every sense). Full disclosure: I have written on Walker as a Montana writer, one best known for her brilliant World War II novel Winter Wheat. I'm drawn to this and other Walker fictions (especially The Curlew's Cry) precisely because they do speak to my place, my family's history, our regional preoccupations.
Comments
Copyright © 2011 Center for Great Plains Studies, University of Nebraska.