Review of Willa Cather: A Literary Life

Authors

Karen Vierneisel, Chicago

Date of this Version

1989

Document Type

Article

Comments

Published in Great Plains Quarterly WINTER 1989. Copyright 1989 Center for Great Plains Studies, University of Nebraska—Lincoln.

Abstract

James Woodress wanted to create a life-size portrait of Willa Cather. But his own assessment of the work sums up its limitation. "[His] present view of Cather does not change in any basic way the image of her contained in [his] earlier book." Since then, he may have read Cather's letters to Louise Pound, the new interpretations of Sharon O'Brien, Doris Grumbach, and Susan Rosowski, and Bernice Slote's copious materials to which he had access. But none of this new information teased his imagination