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Why Have We Forgotten Willa Cather?
Her observational skills are more important now than ever
I have nothing against Dr. Seuss. Indeed, I admire his cleverness and wit. But is he truly worthy of being America’s most popular author, ahead of Shakespeare, Poe, Twain, Orwell, and Dickens? So says YouGov.com, based on the results of its favorite authors survey in 2022:
What disturbs me more though is the one name that isn’t on the list of nearly 300 writers: Willa Cather.
Cather is our home-grown queen of letters, a master of mood and physical description, a writer so close to the land and so familiar with the landscape of despair and desire that even her most humble passages crackle with sensory observation.
Cather, who died in 1947, is most famous for her Prairie Trio (O, Pioneers!, The Song of the Lark, My Antonia) and what some consider her best book, Death Comes for the Archbishop. She won the Pulitzer Prize in Literature in 1923 for her novel One of Ours. In all, Cather wrote 12 novels and numerous short fiction titles.
