A.S. Byatt on Willa Cather
Thursday December 14, 2006
This past weekend, The Guardian online published a long essay by A.S. Byatt on the career of Willa Cather, a relatively unsung American modernist author ("She was a modernist when Dos Passos, Hemingway and Fitzgerald were boys...") best known in the U.S. for her book about Bohemian immigrants, "My Antonia." Byatt's review is worth checking out: Byatt manages to look at Cather's work both as a critic and as a writer, providing insights into how Cather approached her craft.
Willa Cather’s consideration of Mexican immigrants in the United States, the prejudices against Mexicans, the treatment of Mexicans, the contributions of Mexicans (notably in, ‘The Song of the Lark’) make her work timely – no one is matching her insights on this matter today.