Cather in the Capitol

There’s now a statue of Willa Cather in the United States Capitol’s Statuary Hall. I watched as much of the unveiling ceremony as I could bear, with a series of political figures characterizing Cather as a Nebraskan, a nostalgist, a regionalist, a writer of the (so-called) heartland. No mention of the young woman who cut her hair, wore men’s clothing, and signed her name William. (Here’s a photograph of the young Cather.) No acknowledgement that Cather left Nebraska in her early twenties and lived most of her life in New York City, making a home with Edith Lewis, her companion (as they used to say) of nearly forty years. A low point that wasn’t a silence: a string quartet fumbling through “Maple Leaf Rag.” More nostalgia, I guess. Something that Thea Kronborg sang might have been more fitting.

I think of Susan Howe’s repudiation of another writer’s characterization of Emily Dickinson: “Who is this Spider-Artist? Not my Emily Dickinson.” Who is this Nebraska nostalgist? Not my Willa Cather.

Perhaps a lower point than the mangled Joplin: PBS NewsHour anchor Geoff Bennett mangled the name of My Ántonia, Cather’s best-known novel, as “My An-TOW-nee-uh.”

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After writing this post, I remembered something in a previous post, from a letter Cather wrote to the critic E.K. Brown (April 9, 1937):

I think you make a very usual mistake, however, in defining a writer geographically. Myself, I read a man (or a woman) for the climate of his mind, not for the climates in which he has happened to live.

Related reading
All OCA Willa Cather posts (Pinboard)