Willa Cather and the Politics of Criticism

University of Nebraska Press
Unp - Nebraska
9780803210462
0-8032-1046-9

Expanding on her absorbing and controversial 1995 New Yorker article, Joan Acocella examines the politics of Willa Cather criticism: how Cather's work has been seized upon and often distorted by critics.

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on both the left and the right. Acocella argues that the central element of Cather's works was not a political agenda but rather a tragic vision of life. This beautifully written book makes a significant contribution to Cather studies and, at the same time, points out the follies of political criticism in the study of all literature. A staff writer for the New Yorker, Joan Acocella is the author of Creating Hysteria: Women and Multiple Personality Disorder and Mark Morris, and the editor of The Diary of Vaslav Nijinsky.