Great Plains Studies, Center for

 

Authors

Ken Egan

Date of this Version

Winter 2011

Document Type

Article

Citation

Great Plains Quarterly 31:1 (Winter 2011).

Comments

Copyright © 2011 Center for Great Plains Studies, University of Nebraska.

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.

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