"Willa Cather, Enigma No More"

Willa Cather, a famous American author, died in 1947. She was born in West Virginia and moved to Red Cloud, Nebraska in her childhood. After graduating from the University of Nebraska she moved to Pittsburgh to begin a writing career. She spent her last 40 years living and working in New York City. Cather authored such classics as O Pioneer and My Antonia. The latter book has been a staple of most high school (some college) curriculum s for the last half century. She won a Pulitzer Prize in 1922 and numerous other major honors. Cather has plenty of fans, her books still sell well and her contribution to the American canon is significant. Why do I mention her in this posting?

Turns out this month a new book is coming out called, The Selected Letters of Willa Cather. This anthology will have in it 566 personal and professional letters from the estimated over 3,000 that Cather wrote in her lifetime. This will be the first time anyone has ever seen any of her correspondences. You see Willa Cather was the most secretive, enigma this side of another famous American writer J.D. Salinger (Catcher in the Rye). Like Salinger, she legally made sure that none of her letters would ever be quoted from, referenced in anyway or published during her lifetime. Like Salinger, she also took legal steps to make sure nothing would be revealed or published after her death. She personally burned many of her most deeply personal letters before her death and instructed her longtime friend and executor of her trust Edith Lewis to burn even more including an unfinished novel after her death. Some of the most personal letters are thought to deal with Willa’s long time “friendship” with Edith Lewis and even more racy a five year relationship with Isabelle McClung. It has been pretty well established that Isabelle McClung was a woman Cather seems to have shared her bedroom with for over 5 years. There is so much we don’t know about Cather and how her personal life is found in her works. That’s because she kept so much of her life private during her lifetime and just as private in the 66 years since. However, that’s about to change.

A Cather scholar, Janis Stout, a professor at The University of Nebraska, Lincoln has been in possession of about 1,800 notes and correspondences but until now could not publish any of them.  Willa, you see, set up a Willa Cather Trust and one of the executor’s main responsibilities was to keep under wraps all her personal correspondences. The first executor of the Willa Cather Trust was her friend of 39 years Edith Lewis. Lewis rigidly followed Cather’s instructions and wouldn't even allow Cather’s books to be published in paperback versions until the late 1960’s. The second and (as it turns out) last executor of her Trust was her nephew Charles Cather. He also continued the ban on making any of her letters public as well as a ban on everything else Cather related except sales of her books. As a result there have been no movie versions, TV adaptations of her works and no other information about Cather. Here is why the book will be on the shelves by April 30.

All direct descendants of Willa Cather have died, most recently her nephew and executor of the trust Charles Cather. Therefore, the Cather Trust has gone into a conservator-ship with the University of Nebraska at Lincoln. That is where Professor’s Janis Stout and Anthony Jewell come in. They both teach at the University and are Cather scholars. They now control what happens to at least a portion of her letters. They have the legal right to publish if they want and that is what they are choosing to do. Of course, in doing so they are flagrantly violating Willa Cather’s wishes. So why are they publishing the Selected Letters of Willa Cather?

The first reason is because Cather has been dead for 66 years and there are no significant family members left or any other people alive that would be directly affected by the publication of these letters.

The second and main reason is that the letters will help scholars understand what her driving forces, influences and personal connections to her work were. I agree with making these selected personal and professional letters (she wrote to Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Parker and many other known artists) available because the resulting study and scholarship can only help readers understand Willa Cather all the more. What is the point of writings being good enough to last generations but then know virtually nothing about the author and the author’s purposes? I mean I love Fitzgerald’s novel The Great Gatsby in and of itself but I especially appreciate it because I know something about the life Fitzgerald and his wife were leading in 1924-25 France. Knowing about their love, hate relationship the concept of the Golden Girl and other Fitzgerald biography makes that novel so more meaningful to read.

The legendary JD Salinger not only would never let his novels (most notably Catcher in the Rye) ever be made into movies or TV adaptations and no plays etc., he also was a writer that wouldn't even come out of his bunker like home in Cornish, New Hampshire to do an interview or talk to anyone about his works. He threatened to sue anyone that claimed to have interviewed him or anyone he thought had infringed on his copyright territory. He was either the ultimate temperamental “artiste” or a narcissist “curmudgeon”. I’d like to tell you he was both but that’s the point, who knows? He also has it in his will that no one can reproduce his works, do movies etc. after his death presumably forever.

The difference in his case is that he just died 3 years ago. My students used to ask me, “Mr. Bailey, is Salinger dead”? I would reply, “I have no idea and neither does anybody else”. I had visions of a news story coming out in 2009 saying he’d died in 1979 but the family was just now getting round to letting the public know. Let’s not forget other famous reclusive American writers like Emily Dickinson, Sylvia Plath, Harper Lee and even John Steinbeck to an extent. They all wanted to be thought of as good writers, most (not Dickinson) wanted to make a living at their craft but they also didn't want attention.

It’s ludicrous. I don’t ever remember hearing these writers refusing to cash a royalty check. Isn't it inherent with public fame and fortune that people want to know who you are? The minute you write a best seller (and especially an iconic book adopted as a standard in High School and college curriculum s  you become a public figure and I think that students, scholars and general readers have a reasonable right to ask you to share some of your ideas, your reasons for writing, any hopes and wishes for a particular book or future books.

I know what you are thinking, what if they are just shy people? The public understands shy, many people are shy. King George VI (the King’s Speech) was painfully shy and self-conscious, but he overcame it to some degree because he knew he had an obligation to the people of England to speak to them.  We can take pauses, stumbling, stammering, and gaffes. What we can’t take is the “buy my books, make me famous and rich but otherwise don’t bother me”. I’m sorry it doesn't work that way. Sign an autograph, do a carefully selected interview, do a print media interview, share your ideas in other writings just something. What’s the big deal? You wrote the book(s) you wanted publication, you hoped they would sell well and you cashed the checks so stop with the immature 8^th grade “don’t look at me, don’t talk to me” act.

Sorry, Willa your letters (566) are going to be published and yes, we might find out more about you. We’ll probably like you more and appreciate your work more. I can see a whole new generation of eager student scholars diving into the Cather works with fresh perspectives. If (you) writers want anonymity, fine, then publish under the name of anonymous or don’t write or publish at all. Be a mechanic, work on road construction or serve coffee at Starbucks. Instead of infringing on your delicate psyche we’ll just ask you to refill the half and half container.